You Can Always Count On The Nixon Guy

In her latest Huffington Post column, my Diocese of Los Angeles colleague the Rev. Susan Russell (shown photographing me in 2011) writes that she was a registered (although not always a voting) Republican until 1992, when she heard Nixon ex-aide Pat Buchanan's notorious cultural war speech at the George H. W. Bush convention:

I listened with increasing horror as his narrow, exclusivist, fear-mongering rhetoric laid out a vision for what this country needed -- a vision that bore absolutely NO resemblance to the values my parents had raised me to understand were core to the "Grand Old Party" of my Republican roots.

I turned the stove down under the simmering green beans, told the boys to finish their homework and that I'd be right back. I drove the six blocks down to the grocery store where earlier in the day I'd noticed the card table out front with the "Register to Vote" sign. And I changed my party affiliation that day -- explaining to the woman at the card table that if I got hit by a bus tomorrow I was NOT going to die a Republican. And I've never looked back.

This is one Huffington post GOP elites must read, mark, and inwardly digest. Susan's wasn't the only vote Buchanan lost for Bush in 1992. It could lose millions more socially tolerant, fiscally conservative voters this year, too. With the Paul Ryan pick, Mitt Romney pinned his hopes on the theory that enough former Obama voters will abandon him over the economy that Republicans will win despite tea party selfishness and a platform that envisions women in chains. With Romney's minions having massively out-raised Obama's in super-PAC funds, look for this Karl Rove-inspired script in more and more gauzy, minor-keyed TV spots: Obama meant well. He did the best he could! But it's time to give him a break and try something new for America. Romney and Rove had better hope that no more moments such as Todd Akin's unintended spasm of authenticity will make it as easy as Buchanan did for centrists to glimpse the true heart of today's Republican Party.

Being Excluded Because Of Who You Are

Writing at Huffington Post, my LA clergy bud the Rev. Susan Russell on the legacy of Rowan Williams:

[T]he truth is that the sacrifice that will hold the Anglican Communion together is not the sacrifice of the gay and lesbian baptized but the sacrifice of a false unity based in dishonesty. It is nothing less than rank hypocrisy that the Archbishop of Canterbury was willing to lay at the feet of Canadian and American Anglicans the blame for divisions in the Communion when the only difference between what's happening in our churches and in his is that we're telling the truth about it.

Because the truth is there is an ontological difference between feeling excluded because you're disagreed with and being excluded because of who you are. Brother and sister Anglicans walking away from the table because they've been disagreed with is a painful thing. The church walking away from the gay and lesbian baptized is a sinful thing.

Pro-Life And Pro-Choice: How Anglican

Episcopalians are often asked what our church teaches about abortion. We're a pretty democratic denomination, and it can appear that we've as many opinions as communicants. But my clergy bud the Rev. Susan Russell, in a post about the Komen controversy, provides a summary of holy writ insofar as General Convention is concerned:

In 1988 the Episcopal Church went on record with a powerful statement affirming its commitment to both the sanctity of life and a woman's right to reproductive freedom. From the resolution:

All human life is sacred from its inception until death. The Church takes seriously its obligation to help form the consciences of its members concerning this sacredness. Human life, therefore, should be initiated only advisedly and in full accord with this understanding of the power to conceive and to give birth which is bestowed by God.

We regard all abortion as having a tragic dimension, calling for the concern and compassion of all the Christian community. While we acknowledge that in this country it is the legal right of every woman to have a medically safe abortion, as Christians we believe strongly that if this right is exercised, it should be used only in extreme situations. We emphatically oppose abortion as a means of birth control, family planning, sex selection, or any reason of mere convenience.

And then, in 1994, as the anti-abortion movement mobilized to restrict reproductive freedom of American women, we added this "further resolve":

The Episcopal Church express its unequivocal opposition to any legislative, executive or judicial action on the part of local, state or national governments that abridges the right of a woman to reach an informed decision about the termination of pregnancy or that would limit the access of a woman to safe means of acting on her decision.

Freedom Of And From Religion

My Episcopal bud the Rev. Susan Russell on this morning's ruling by a three-judge federal appeals court panel overturning the result of Prop. 8:

[M]ake no mistake about it: There will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the days to come from those in the marriage discrimination business about how their freedom of religion is being trampled on by today’s decision for equality. But the truth of the matter is they are just as free today to decide for themselves whether God equally blesses our marriages. What the 9th Circuit Court said today is that they are NOT free to decide whether the Constitution equally protects them.

A Roman Catholic priest is just as free to NOT marry a gay and lesbian couple as he is to NOT marry a divorced couple. Meanwhile, and in my congregation – All Saints Pasadena – we can now get back to the business of offering equal pastoral care for ALL couples who come to us for the sacrament of marriage – because today’s ruling affirms that the First Amendment protects not just freedom of religion but freedom from religion.

The Dignity Of Certain Human Lives

My Diocese of Los Angeles bud the Rev. Susan Russell on the Santorum surge:

This week I had sad news from two long time friends. One was a clergy colleague who lost his wife of 55 years to a long illness on New Year's Eve. The other was an [Episcopal Church Women] friend who lost her partner of 23 years on Christmas Day.

Both are now coping with their own grief and loss while planning services to celebrate the lives of their beloveds as they claim the resurrection promise that in death life is changed -- not ended -- and the sure and certain promise that God's love never ends.

And one of them is also having to deal with frozen assets in bank accounts while trying to pay funeral expenses; "proving" her next-of-kin status in order to carry out the last wishes of her beloved; facing the financial challenge of no "standing" in terms of Social Security survivor's benefits.

Meanwhile, in Iowa, the Republican presidential poster child for political homophobia Rick Santorum proclaims: "Ask me what motivates me, it's been the dignity of every human life."

Unless it's a gay or lesbian life. In which case, he argues that gay relationships “destabilize” society, wouldn’t offer any legal protections to gay relationships and has pledged to annul all same-sex marriages if elected president.

Red, Black, And Flash

In a venerable Episcopal and Anglican tradition, on Holy Tuesday deacons, priests, and bishops hasten to a cathedral and renew their ordination vows. In the Diocese of Los Angeles, it's at the Pro-Cathedral of St. John in downtown Los Angeles, where the deans and rectors, The Very Revs. Daniel Ade and Mark Kowalewski, liturgical Jedi masters, put on one of the most beautiful services I've ever experienced.

This year, Bishop Diane celebrated, Bishop Mary preached a warmly pastoral sermon (trust God's abundant love and risk abundantly!), and Bishop Jon genially oversaw proceedings. Each deacon and priest got a personal episcopal blessing. Refreshed, renewed, and lunched, we came home with newly blessed vials of holy oil for our churches' healing and baptism services.

The picture at top shows my presbyteral buds the Revs. Kirby Smith, newly installed as vicar of Faith Episcopal Church in Laguna Niguel (red), Michael Bamberger, co-chair of the Commission on Ministry (black), and my fellow blogger Susan Russell (flash), who returned the favor.

The Domestic Freedom Agenda

A former GOP state senator from Iowa makes the conservative case for permitting gay marriage.
Hat tip to Susan Russell

Welcome To The Pigpen

My colleague the Rev. Susan Russell has blogged about a report that the divorce rate in Massachusetts has dropped since gay marriages began five years ago.

A blessing that this is happening, whatever the reason. But I doubt it has anything to do with the uniquely mature or conciliatory qualities that gay and lesbian people may be bringing to their marriages.

Here's how you get that statistic. Lots of gay couples got married all of a sudden. Some were longtime, stable couples, ergo fewer divorces. Either way, the marriages are relatively recent, ergo fewer divorces. Both these factors would drive down the state average. Take the same measure in ten or 15 years (or even seven!), or constrain the samples by controlling for marriages' duration, and we shall see.

My guess is that, statistically speaking, gay people will make precisely the same muck of their marriages as straight people.

Pastor Souljah?

Has there ever been such controversy about who's going to give the invocation at a Presidential inauguration? Bill O'Reilly thinks the PE's made a deft move designed to disassociate himself from Pastor Jeremiah Wright. My Episcopal colleague the Rev. Susan Russell, who heads Integrity, our church's advocacy group for gay and lesbian people, says she's disappointed because of Warren's prominent role in the culture wars.

Andrew Sullivan thinks some critics have overreacted to the Warren choice:

I think Obama is different. I think the earnestness and sincerity of his campaign, and its generational force, have given us a chance for something new, and I fear that in responding too viscerally to the Warren choice, we may be throwing something very valuable away far too prematurely.

That has always been Sullivan's hope about Obama, and while it would be churlish at this early date to say he's wrong, Obama's earnestness and generational force don't especially impress me (especially after we saw the youthful author of all that highfalutin rhetoric pawing a cardboard Clinton).

What's bothered me about the Warren choice was that it felt calculated and even a bit cynical from the beginning. Isn't there someone in the country who could've invoked the healing power of the Almighty without inspiring more anger and division? Instead, it looks as if the PE was either repaying Warren for inviting him to Saddleback Church early in the campaign cycle or using the choice to make straight (with apologies to Isaiah and my friend Susan) his pathway to the political center -- basically, a Pastor Souljah move.

I'm not saying that Pastor Rick's views on homosexuality or any issue disqualify him from a star turn at the inauguration. Any number of pastors, left, right, and center, are toting potentially controversial theological baggage. Warren's ministry has made a difference in tens of millions of lives. And yet because of his prominent role in the campaign and outspokenness on highly emotional questions, Warren lacks the magisterial, above-it-all quality of a Billy Graham.

Obama may not have grasped the difference between choosing someone to pray for the nation and someone to head HHS. As a result, the man who was supposed to bring us together politically has taken wedge politics all the way to the gates of heaven.