Box Turtle Bulletin

Reaching Communities: What You Can Do Today

Much energy has been expended in the past few days in debating and discussing the conflicts and issues where race and sexual orientation overlap. And it is my hope that this discussion yields action rather than reaction and resolve rather than blame.

As I’ve said in prior commentary, I believe “do nothing, say nothing” is an ineffective and nonproductive choice. However, finger-pointing and grudge-holding is foolish and more counterproductive than playing Three Wise Monkeys. It does us no good to identify communities (whether ethnic, religious, or geographic) in which we do not enjoy voter support if we then do nothing but feel good that we are not part of that demographic.

Many of us may not “speak the language”, know the culture, or have the connections necessary to bring about change in communities other than that in which we live. But we each have the power to support those who do have the language, culture, and connection to bring about a greater understanding of the concerns of gay men and women.

The following is a small selection of groups who are dedicated to working in specific populations to build bridges and work for equality. This is not by any means a comprehensive list, and I am not endorsing any of them.

But these that have come to my attention as groups that work in communities that may be beyond the abilities of many of our readers to reach. And I believe that these organizations could make a difference in changing the perspectives of their communities.

Ethnic Communities
One organization that I’ve noticed is the National Black Justice Coalition. And when their name has come up it seems to be linked to successes in bringing about inclusion and breaking down barriers.

Their website states

The National Black Justice Coalition is a civil rights organization dedicated to empowering Black same-gender-loving, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. The Coalition works with our communities and our allies for social justice, equality, and an end to racism and homophobia. NBJC envisions a world where all people are fully empowered to participate safely, openly and honestly in family, faith and community, regardless of race, gender-identity or sexual orientation.

If you would like to financially contribute to NBJC, you may do so here. And guess what, folks, you don’t have to be black to support an end to racism and homophobia.

(I’ve not yet identified effective national organizations whose purpose is bridge building with Hispanic, Asian, or other significant ethnic voting blocks).

Religious Adherents
Those who attend conservative churches are often exposed to language that is dismissive, demonizing, or factually inaccurate. And efforts by gay organizations to discourage religion-based homophobia are seen as an attack on Christianity.

SoulForce, due to the history and religious affiliation of its members, often has access to even the most vitriolic of fire and brimstone mega-preachers. I am especially impressed by the bridges built by their Equality Ride program.

Click to contribute to SoulForce or Equality Ride.

There is one other denomination-specific group that I think needs some attention. By all reports, Mormons were instrumental in the financing, organization, and footwork of the Yes on 8 and Yes on 102 Campaigns.

Affirmation is primarily focused on providing emotional and spiritual support for gay men and women who were raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. However, they do seek within the church hierarchy to encourage policies that are less hostile and to open lines of communication. If the Mormon Church is to take a less aggressive role in the attack on gay equality, it may well come as a result of the efforts of Affirmation.

To help them in this work, you may contribute here.

Republicans
Log Cabin Republicans is a controversial organization.

Some gay people see them as an enemy or an enabler or as a group that seeks to make excuses and provide cover for anti-gay Republicans. And those on all sides can quickly become quite heated in the debate. I am not bringing up Log Cabin so that commenters may rail one way or the other on whether it is ever acceptable for gay people to be registered as Republicans (and will delete comments that seek to hijack the thread).

But there are some hard facts that our community must face. And one is that the Republican Party is not going anywhere soon and that there are many many elected Republicans in very powerful positions.

Further, our community needs to acknowledge that elected Republicans are not easily swayed by lobbying from those organizations that are perceived as an unofficial arm of the Democratic Party. And many gay lobbyists that I’ve experienced have difficulty speaking with a vocabulary that does not immediately raise alarm and opposition among elected Republicans.

Like it or not, folks, the gay community has one vehicle of access to Republicans. We are not going to win Republican support without them, and they have not been without their successes. Looking at the voting on much of our nation’s gay rights legislation will show that quite often it has been Republican support that added the votes necessary to pass laws that have been vital to the needs of our community. We must keep a voice on the inside of the Republican Party.

I have my doubts about the effectiveness of Log Cabin’s efforts to defeat Proposition 8. But I will give them credit that in the campaign they saw a lack of targeted message and tried to speak directly to those whom they hoped to influence.

If you would like to contribute to their efforts at reaching and influencing Republicans, you may contribute here.

There are, no doubt, a great many more communities we could reach or organizations we could support. If I’ve not listed one you care to support, find one you can. Don’t forget the organizations that have already achieved some support in their communities, but please give some financial assistance to those who may be fighting for your rights in communities that are less receptive.

Heterosexual Menace: Exodus 21:7 Returns

In today’s verse we read this in Exodus 21:7-11, in which God himself told Moses:

“If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as menservants do. If she does not please the master who has selected her for himself, he must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to foreigners, because he has broken faith with her. If he selects her for his son, he must grant her the rights of a daughter. If he marries another woman, he must not deprive the first one of her food, clothing and marital rights. If he does not provide her with these three things, she is to go free, without any payment of money.

In today’s news, we read:

Police have arrested a Greenfield [California] man for allegedly arranging to sell his 14-year-old daughter into marriage in exchange for $16,000, 100 cases of beer and several cases of meat. Police say they only learned of the deal after 36-year-old Marcelino de Jesus Martinez went to them to get his daughter back because payment wasn’t made as promised. Martinez was arrested Sunday on suspicion of human trafficking.

Officers also arrested 18-year-old Margarito de Jesus Galindo on suspicion of statutory rape. Investigators believe the girl went willingly with Galindo, but she’s under California’s legal age of consent and can’t legally marry. Police say arranged marriages involving underage girls have become a problem in this small Central Coast farming community.

Now you see, if de Jesus had only followed the Biblical model and paid the man, he wouldn’t be in trouble with the police right now.

You can read more examples of the heterosexual menace here, and in our report, “The Heterosexual Agenda: Exposing the Myths.”

[Hat tip: Homer]

Ted Haggard Is Okay With Same-Sex Marriage…

…Except when his people call back an hour later to say he’s not.

The San Francisco Chronicle’s Joe Garofoli was talking with Ted Haggard last week about an HBO documentary, about his fall from grace. That documentary, “The Trials of Ted Haggard,” which will premiere on January 29, documents the rise and fall of one of American’s Evangelical leaders in a scandal of gay sex and methamphetamines.

As Garofoli explains it, he and Haggard were talking about his former church and how they could have used his fall from grace as an example on preaching forgiveness. He also said that he thought the church is blowing other opportunities to reach out in other areas:

“I think we’re blowing it right here in California with the No. 1 way evangelical believers are communicating their belief are things like Prop. 8,” Haggard told The Chronicle Friday.

…

“I think the government should recognize the union between people whether they’re gay or not in whatever the language they choose, whether they call it a marriage or a civil union, it’s up to them. If the government is going to be in the business of recognizing people grouped together as couples, then they need to that across the board. It’s a big change for me.”

“It’s not a change in my view of civil liberties. I’ve always believed this. It’s a change in semantics. I’m saying prior to the crisis, I would defend marriage as the sacred term for the church to use for heterosexual monogamous couples. Now I’ve broadened that and said it’s not worth having a war over the definition of a word. I believe that under civil law people should be respected. And it should be equality under the law. So either the government needs to get out of recognizing that couples are together and make everybody file the same tax returns, etc. Or they need to recognize all of them. I don’t think it’s wise for the government to separate based on what goes on in a person’s bedroom.”

Sounds great, right? Except an hour later an HBO publicity person called. Haggard wanted to clarify that he wasn’t saying he was for gay marriage.

Haggard recently acknowledged that “I have struggled and continue to struggle from time to time with same sex attraction.” How sad. He is struggling all over the place between what he thinks and what he knows.

A man divided against himself cannot stand.

Huckabee vs. Coulter: “I’m More Anti-Gay Than You”

This is what the far right has sunk to: who is more anti-gay?

Is it any wonder that nine out of ten nine-Evangelicals think Christianity is “too anti-homosexual” — and 80% of Christians of all stripes agree?

But this kind of debate is going on as a man who says out loud that being gay is a “compulsion” like kleptomania and likens gays to barnyard animals is running to head the Republican Party. At least he appears to be pulling ahead of Chip “Barack the Magic Negro” Saltsman for the time being. Meanwhile, the Log Cabin Republicans are in serious financial straits, which means that the one Republican voice for gay issues will be weaker in 2009.

The self-destruction of the Grand Old Party continues.

Belated Congratulations, Norwegians

I don’t know how I forgot to mention this earlier this month, but on January 1, 2009, Norway became the sixth nation to offer marriage equality nationwide.

Netherlands – 2001
Belgium – 2003
Canada – 2005
Spain – 2005
South Africa – 2006
Norway – 2009

Second Gay Employee Fired From Tennessee Hotel

There’s a follow-up to the story of David Hill’s firing from the Artee Hotel in Brentwood, Tennessee. The hotel’s owner, Tarun Surti, had Hill fired when he found out Hill was gay. The Assistant General Manager, Leonard Stoddard, did the firing as ordered by Surti, and explained what happened to the local media. In the process, we learned that Stoddard was also gay, and that he expected to be fired as well.

Today we learn that other shoe dropped. Stoddard was terminated via email on Thursday. Surti wrote that Stoddard was fired because he alledgedly lied to the media about Hill’s termination. Stoddard and Hill plan on picketing outside the hotel on Saturday, January 17 at 9:00 a.m.

Peterson Toscano: Why I went Ex-Gay

Peterson Toscano has been thinking lately about some conversations he had last October with other ex-gay survivors about why they tried the ex-gay route. In an email, Peterson further shared:

In sharing ex-gay survivor narratives, I see the importance of digging up the many non-religious reasons people go ex-gay. For too long Focus on the Family, Exodus, etc, have been hiding behind a religious curtain. Similarly many ex-gays and former ex-gays I meet express that their ONLY reason for going ex-gay was their faith. Warren Throckmorton capitalizes on this sort of thing claiming that the struggle is an incongruence between faith and sexuality, when in reality for many it is primarily a conflict between society and sexuality.

Here’s Peterson in his own words:

Anti-Marriage Amendment To Be Introduced In Indiana

We were tipped to this press release from the Arizona-based Alliance Defense Fund announcing a press conference on a proposed anti-marriage amendment for Indiana. State Reps. P. Eric Turner (R-Marion) and Dave Cheatham (D-North Vernon) are listed as co-sponsors for the amendment during for the current General Assembly session. Also participating at the press conference are unnamed representatives from the Family Research Council and the Indiana Family Institute.

[Hat tip: Mike]

Ken Blackwell: “Homosexuality Is A Compulsion”

That’s what the former Ohio Secretary of State told Michelangelo Signorile during an interview at last September’s Republican National Convention:

MS: But you realize people were insulted when you compared [homosexuality] to arson and kleptomania. I would like you to explain that because, how does that get into this whole “choice” issue? I mean, kleptomania is a compulsion.

KB: Well, the fact is, you can choose to restrain that compulsion. And so I think in fact you don’t have to give in to the compulsion to be homosexual. I think that’s been proven in case after case after case…

…

KB: If in fact you would feel better for me to say to you that, one, I believe homosexuality is a compulsion that can be contained, repressed or changed, and that makes you feel better, then that is what I’m saying in the clearest of terms.

Blackwell is now in the running to become the Republican Party’s chairman with the blessing of fellow ardent anti-gay conservatives, including Focus On the Family’s James Dobson and the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins. Ohio’s GOP all but collapsed in 2006 with Blackwell as the standard-bearer. He’s been largely absent from Ohio politics since then. They say “As goes Ohio, so goes the nation.” Republicans may discover that this saying applies to their party as well.

Bishop Robinson To Deliver Invocation At Inaugural Kickoff

In an apparent olive branch to the gay community, President-elect Barack Obama’s inaugural committee has announced that the Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson, who became the Episcopal Church’s first openly gay bishop in 2003, will deliver the invocation at the inaugural kickoff at the Lincoln Memorial on Sunday. However, the Obama camp denies that this invitation came about as a response to controversy over Rick Warren’s selection to give the invocation at the inauguration itself:

An Obama source: “Robinson was in the plans before the complaints about Rick Warren. Many skeptics will read this as a direct reaction to the Warren criticism – but it’s just not so.”

The NGLTF Study On Race and Prop 8: The Problem of Margins of Error

Well, I’ve said before I had some homework to do this weekend. It turns out that this weekend was jam-packed with unexpected activities, but I did manage to give the NGLTF report (PDF: 420KB/17 pages) a careful read this morning while sipping tea from my family’s heirloom Fiestaware handed down from my great-great grandmother. Yes, I’m a dish queen.

Margin of Error: The Key
Timothy’s Kincaid’s analysis garnered a lot of controversy last week. Many people privately called and emailed to ask if I agreed with it. My only response at the time is that I hadn’t had a chance to look over the NGLTF report or Timothy’s analysis, but I generally trust his judgment. Well, now I have studied the report, and I do think it falls short, but in very different ways than what Timothy found.

My concerns about this report begin with one important paragraph on page 2:

Table 1 displays findings from a poll of California voters conducted by David Binder Research (DBR) between November 6th and 16th, 2008. The survey included 1,066 respondents selected at random from state voter registration lists, including an oversample of 266 African American, Latino, and Asian-American voters. Participants were asked a series of questions about Proposition 8, as well as basic questions about their demographic background, religion, political views, and other characteristics. The sample in the DBR survey was limited to those who reported voting in the November 4 general election, and its margin of error was 3 percentage points (although the margin is greater for analyses of subgroups within the sample).

The DBR survey is the backbone of this study. That three-percent margin of error applies only to the 1,066 respondents overall, not to the smaller sample of 266 African-American, Latino, and Asian-American voters. The authors acknowledge that “the margin is greater for analyses of subgroups within the sample,” but they don’t tell you what those margins are. This is important, because as sample sizes get smaller, the margin of error gets larger.

A simple calculation for the 266 African-American, Latino, and Asian-American voters reveals that this margin of error is actually plus or minus 6 percentage points. That is margin of error for the three groups combined. Nowhere in this report is a breakdown of the three groups revealed. Of the 266 participants in the subgroup, how many were African-American?

Since they don’t tell us, we’re left to guess. If Blacks made up half of that pool, then responses from African-Americans alone are subject to an 8.5% margin of error. Cut that in about half again to separate the church-going from the non-church-going, then you’re up to about a plus or minus 12 percentage point margin of error for the two groups of African-Americans separately. If Blacks only made up a third of that pool, then the margins of error are greater still — about 10.4% and 14.7% respectively. This is huge. How do these large margins of error affect the rest of the report?

Religiosity As An Explanation
To see, let’s move on to this graphic, which illustrates the religiosity of the four ethnic groups using the DBR survey data with the margins of error we just talked about. You’ll have to click on the image to see it clearly:

According to the DBR survey, 57% of African-American voters attend church service weekly, compared to 40% for Asians, 47% for Latinos, and 42% for White. The authors assert that the differences between African-Americans and the rest of the population is statistically significant, which checks out according to the standard measures for statistical significance. Even with this small sample size and large margin of error, the DBR data does successfully demonstrate that African-Americans are more likely to attend weekly religious services than the other groups.

That then leads us to this graphic, based again on the same DBR survey. Again, you’ll have to click on it to see clearly:

The authors say that the differences shown in this graph between ethnic groups are not statistically significant, and they conclude that this shows that religiosity explains the differences in how African-Americans voted relative to everyone else.

Well, at least one part of their statement is absolutely correct. The differences between ethnic groups in the figures referenced in this table are not statistically significant according to all the standard measures of significance — but that’s because the sample sizes are so small.

There is a logical fallacy in saying that just because this data shows no statistically significant difference, that there is no actual difference. That’s not true. All we can say is that this data is incapable of showing a statistically significant difference based on these results and these small sample sizes. It cannot demonstrate that there is no difference in actuality. Remember, we’re dealing with a probable margin of error for the African-American churchgoing sample of somewhere in the neighborhood of plus or minus 12% to 14.7%. With an uncertainty that large, these numbers could be all over the place and still be a statistical tie. Any assessment of actual differences is completely swamped by the margins of error.

If the study consisted of a larger pool of African-American respondents to get a lower the margin of error, we might have been able to converge on a statistically significant difference. Or maybe then we can prove that there really is no difference in how religious African-Americans voted compared to the other groups. But with this data, we cannot tell either way. The Achilles Heel in this study remains the very small sample size for African-Americans and the resulting large margins of error for that sample. I don’t think they are able to make the case that religiosity explains the African-American vote with this data.

The African-American Vote on Prop 8
So how did African-Americans vote? Let’s go to this graphic from the NGLTF report:

The NGLTF study is being used to throw cold water on CNN’s NEP exit poll, which said that 70% of African-Americans supported Prop 8. The middle set of bars are the NEP exit poll, which shows African-Americans voting 70% for Prop 8 (in gray) versus 52% overall voting for Prop 8 (in black). The graphic also shows two surveys taken before the election (The Field Poll of 10/23 and SurveyUSA on 10/30) and two surveys taken after the election (the DBR poll we’ve already mentioned showing 58% of African-Americans supporting Prop 8 versus 51% overall on 11/11, and the SurveyUSA on 11/19). The study authors note:

As shown in Figure 2, two surveys conducted just before Election Day (by Field and SurveyUSA) found insignificant differences in support for Proposition 8 between African Americans and Californians as a whole. Two surveys conducted in the weeks following Election Day found similar results. On average, the difference in support between African Americans and all voters in these four surveys was just two percentage points. The NEP exit poll finding—that black support for Proposition 8 was 18 points higher than Californians as a whole—is most likely an “outlier,” a result that is very different than what concurrent data trends suggest to be the case. [Emphasis mine]

The authors dismiss the NEP exit poll as an outlier, an assessment that I can agree with. Exit polls, by their nature, don’t include margins of error. But since it is likely that the sample size of African-Americans was very small in this exit poll, I can accept that it is probably not an accurate snapshot of how African-Americans voted.

However, the study authors claim that the four remaining surveys show a difference of just two percentage points on average. True enough, in a strictly mathematical sense. But since the last SurveyUSA was the only survey showing African-Americans actually opposing Prop 8 to a remarkable degree compared to everyone else — that difference is a whopping eight percentage points in the other direction — I don’t see how we can regard that as anything but an outlier as well. So, with the three remaining polls, the difference is now back up to five percentage points.

Is this significant? I can’t tell, since again, we don’t know the sample sizes of African-Americans in these polls to judge whether they are robust enough to draw a reasonable conclusion.

The problem of sample sizes and margins of error, in my mind, does lay to rest one of Timothy’s concerns, and that is this:

In their Table 1, they lay out their breakdown of ethnic voting:

Well sorry, but those numbers don’t get us to 52.3% support. One of those ethnic demographics is understated.

Given the likely margins of error involved, I don’t think that this chart is off base entirely. No poll is likely to mimic the 52.3% of the actual vote at the means, but shoving all of these figures around their margins of error will get there quite easily. (I also wonder if maybe there ought to be an “other” category not included in the table.)

Fifty-eight percent as a very rough ballpark figure could be about right for the African-American vote. But given some of the margins of error we tossed around earlier, that figure could be as high as about 67% to 70%, or as low as 49% to 46%. Which means that if we used the DBR survey as the reference survey as the NGLTF study authors did, then none of those surveys which I (or the NGLTF authors) suggested were outliers may be outliers after all. The DBR survey may well validate all of them.

The study authors then replicate a 58% estimate by using data depicted in this figure, which is based on precinct-level voting data from five California counties:

The line drawn through the figure represents a “running-mean smoother” to show the overall trend as the racial mix of precincts moves from 0% to 100% African-American. Unlike Timothy, I’m satisfied with this representation which the authors use to arrive at a 58% figure for African-Americans, although I am keen to learn the algorithm for the smoother. But generally this verifies what many of us suspect: Those who live in diverse settings are more comfortable with diversity. Those who don’t, aren’t.

The reason I’m okay with this is that the authors also ran this same data set through two other independent analyses which led them to report a degree of comfort with an estimate of 58% of African-Americans voting for Prop 8. They do caution however, that “rather than being treated as definitive, these estimates should be considered as helping to corroborate the individual-level findings discussed earlier in this section of the study” — namely, the discussion of the five surveys we discussed earlier.

But in the end, I do believe the authors were successful in demonstrating that the Black vote may be closer to 58% than 70%. The higher figure, technically speaking, still barely remains in the theoretical realm of possibility, but I think we can safely dismiss it. But I would also caution that 58% might not be accurate either.

Can The Scapegoating End?
But if 58% is plausible, does this mean that the scapegoating of African-Americans can come to an end? Of course it does.

But what if the authors instead determined that the figure was closer to 70%? Would that have meant that blaming African-Americans for Prop 8’s passage was legitimate? Ask yourself this and take a hard look at how you answer, because this is critical to where our movement goes next. The answer to this question speaks loudly to our own character as a community.

If all it takes is a survey to give one oppressed minority the justification it needs to blame another oppressed minority for its woes, then we have a lot more work to do before we can credibly address society’s attitudes about fairness and equality. We will have to change our own attitudes first.

We cannot assume that one oppressed minority ought to automatically empathize with another oppressed minority’s oppression. If that were true, Jews and Palestinians would see themselves in each other and peace would break out all over the Middle East. Well that certainly hasn’t happened, has it?

Just to touch the tip of a few icebergs, gays were never enslaved or lynched in mass numbers. Non-Black gays really have no idea what it’s like to have that in their history. On the other hand, heterosexual Blacks were never obliged to undergo cruel “cures,” nor were they ostracized from their own families because of their Blackness. We really don’t know — internally know — the other’s experiences with history, and we can no longer be so naive in assuming that others will naturally see and recognize our experiences with discrimination just because they were discriminated against in a different way for different reasons.

So we must begin the task of reaching out to the African-American community, and more importantly, we need to work to raise the visibility of African-Americans within our own raucous LGBT family. If we want to confront homophobia in the Black community, we must also deal with examples of both overt and underlying racism within our own.

And we need to talk honestly and listen patiently to each other. We need to do this not to “educate” the other, as though we had some sort of special prize that we wish to arrogantly bestow on some poor, unenlightened folks. Instead, we need to do this with the sincere intent of understanding each other and ourselves better.

We need to do this not because a survey says we ought to. We need to do this because it is the right thing to do.

And we need to do this not just because elections are at stake, but because lives are at stake as well.

Heterosexual Menace: Now Elementary School Teachers Are Recruiting Children!!!

A married elementray school teacher in Abington, MA has been arrested and charged with seven counts of statutory rape of a teen. The boy was thirteen years old when he lost his virginity to Christine A. McCallum, 29, a teacher at an Abington elementary school. McCallum plied the boy with alcohol and had her way with him an estimated 300 times. According to the now-sixteen year old teen, this went on for about 18 months, about every other day. The seven counts in the indictments represent specific incidents that police were able to document.

Some of these trysts happened in the teacher’s home as her husband slept upstairs. She also wrote him passionate love letters, some of which are now in police custody. McCallum’s neighbors, of course, who are also probably all heterosexuals themselves since Abington is an overwhelmingly heterosexual community, all claimed they didn’t know what was going on.

You can read more about what heterosexuals really want here, and in our report, “The Heterosexual Agenda: Exposing the Myths.”

[Hat tip: Peter, who read this halfway around the world in Australia.]

Al Sharpton Supports Atlanta Pro-Gay Interfaith Alliance

The Southern Voice is reporting:

Rev. Al Sharpton is coming to Atlanta to bless the start of a new religious organization that aims to unite gay-friendly churches. Sharpton is the keynote speaker at the Human Rights Ecunemical Service today at 5 p.m. at Tabernacle Baptist Church.

The Alliance of Affirming Faith Based Organizations is the effort of a number of Atlanta ministers, including Pastor Dennis Meredith of Tabernacle Baptist Church and Rev. Dr. Kenneth Samuel of Victory Church in Stone Mountain.

Rick Warren to the Rescue of Anti-Gay Anglicans

We have previously discussed how President-Elect Obama’s selection for his inaugural invocation, Rick Warren of Saddleback Church, has sought to meddle in the current internal affairs of the Anglican fellowship in Africa. He has, on the international stage, sided with those who are anti-gay.

Well now it seems that Warren wants to meddle on a local scale.

Last week, the California Supreme Court found that the current leadership and congregation at St. James Parish in Newport Beach could not just walk away from the Episcopal Church and take the buildings and property with them. This left those discontented with the Episcopal denomination without a physical home.

The Episcopal Church is hoping that the physical ownership of the site will remove leverage from the local anti-gay activists and will allow for this congregation to be again a part of the fold.

But it seems that this does not fit with Warren’s agenda. He is encouraging the congregation to stay in discord and is offering the assets of Saddleback to keep the pot bubbling. Christianity Today has extractions from letters written by Warren:

… [The Episcopal Church has] already considered me an adversary after partnering on projects with Kolini, Orumbi, and Nzimbi, and writing the TIME bio on Akinola.

But since last summer… I’ve been on Gene Robinson and other’s attack list for my position on gay marriage. ….[Our] brothers and sisters here at St. James in Newport Beach lost their California State Supreme Court case to keep their property.

We stand in solidarity with them, and with all orthodox, evangelical Anglicans. I offer the campus of Saddleback Church to any Anglican congregation who need a place to meet, or if you want to plant a new congregation in south Orange County.

Rick Warren has, in so many words, declared war on the Episcopal Church.

It is one thing to take an anti-gay position based on one’s theology. It is quite another to encourage schism in another denomination. It is now time for the Episcopal Church to make a formal protest to the President Elect. Rick Warren cannot invoke blessing on a nation if he is seeking to divide a denomination of which he is not even a part.

Further, the ECUSA should be joined by every church body sharing the belief that those who seek discord should not be given a place of prestige. I do not doubt for a moment that Rick Warren will endeavor to bring about splits in the Presbyterian (USA) and United Methodist denominations if he is left unchecked.

What Happens When You Hit The Wrong Button

Oops!  Some of you might have seen a post in this space titled, “The NGLTF Study On Race and Prop 8” It was a first draft of something I am working on for tomorrow morning. I put all my thoughts in this software thingy, left a few open questions for me to go and look into further in my notes, and left to take a shower. When I returned, I found that instead of hitting the “Save” button, I somehow managed to hit “Publish”. My bad. I’m afraid you’ll have to come back tomorrow. Meanwhile, there’s still Timothy’s discussion which is still getting a lot of attention, pro and con.