California Senate passes the FAIR Education Act

Yesterday, with support from thousands of you, the California Senate passed the FAIR Education Act (SB 48, authored by Sen. Mark Leno), 23-14!

Your letters, emails and phone calls helped your senators understand how critical it is that all students are given the opportunity to learn about the contributions of LGBT people in school. They know that when young people learn about the diverse contributions of many different groups, incidents of harassment and bullying drop -- and schools become safer for all students.

We are thankful for Senator Leno’s leadership, the work of the Gay-Straight Alliance Network and your support,but this fight isn’t over yet. We need your support today to build support for this bill in the California Assembly and protect the rights of LGBT youth.

Yesterday’s vote has the most radical opponents of LGBT equality re-invigorated and working hard to sway legislators from supporting this bill. Their attacks are not surprising, but we have to respond as a community. Our legislators care about what their constituents want and say. We cannot let our voices be drowned out by their hatred.

Here’s what our legislators are hearing from the other side:

• A local church in Napa County is claiming that SB 48 “intends to play with the minds of all California's students; even as young as Kindergarten! …You are turning teachers into state-sanctioned propagandists by forcing them to teach our youth about sexual lifestyles that parents do not want taught.”
• Randy Thomason and SaveCalifornia.comclaim that the goal of the FAIR Education Act is “sexual brainwashing, behind the backs of parents, teaching boys and girls to admire those who engage in homosexual, bisexual, or transsexual behavior.”
• Ron Prentice and the California Family Council are claiming that “Senator Leno's intention with SB 48 is to increase every public school student's exposure to the homosexual lifestyle, while disallowing any accurate but potentially unfavorable content to be included in the related curriculum.”
• Even national organizations are joining the attack. WorldNetDaily calls the bill a “lesbians-as-role-models plan.”

We have to counter them. Make a contribution today to help us protect LGBT youth. We're getting expert witnesses such as school board members, teachers, students and school psychologists to Sacramento to defend against the bizarre claims of the radical right, who will be out in full force every time this bill is heard.

Passing SB 48 will be difficult, but thanks to your advocacy, the bill has made it this far. We can’t stop now. Give today to help us fend off their attacks and ensure that every kid in California can feel safe and respected at our schools.

Thanks for all you do for equality,

Jim Carroll
Interim Executive Director
Equality California

Is the KJV still relevant?

Is the KJV still relevant?

The effect of the KJV on the way people write – and think – can be seen in works from the speeches of Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. to the spare prose of Ernest Hemingway to Milton's "Paradise Lost" to the text of Handel's oratorio "Messiah" to the style Herman Melville employed in "Moby Dick.

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Diocese of Los Angeles declines to endorse Anglican Covenant

Thanking the Anglican Communion for “taking this time of discernment” to develop the proposed Anglican Covenant, elected representatives of the Diocese of Los Angeles have issued a response declining to endorse the document.

"We cannot endorse a covenant that, for the first time in the history of The Episcopal Church or the Anglican Communion, will pave the way toward emphasizing perceived negative differences instead of our continuing positive and abundant commonality," states the response, signed jointly by the diocese’s bishops and General Convention deputation. A video report documenting the process by which Diocesan Convention initiated the response is here. Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, House of Deputies President Bonnie Anderson, and Executive Council member Rosalie Simmonds Ballentine jointly requested that each of the Episcopal Church’s 110 dioceses provide responses by April 24 in preparation for review by General Convention’s 2012 meeting in Indianapolis. Full text of the response follows here: The bishops, clergy and laity of the Diocese of Los Angeles, at the request of Katharine Jefferts Schori, our Presiding Bishop, Bonnie Anderson, President of the House of Deputies, and Rosalie Simmonds Ballentine, Esq., Executive Council member and Chair of the Executive Council D-020 Task Force, have actively engaged in discussion, discernment, study, prayer and dialogue concerning the proposed final draft of the Anglican Covenant. The study culminated at our Diocesan Convention, held December 3 and 4, 2010, with round-table discussions in which more than 800 delegates, representing our 147 congregations, participated. This discernment leads us to recommend that The Episcopal Church not endorse the final draft of the Anglican Covenant but that we patiently continue the conversation out of our bonds of affection and mutual loyalty to the entire Communion, for the following reasons: One of our chief strengths as Anglicans has been our ecumenical availability to Christians who find in us the essence of the faith once delivered to the saints, along with latitude in “things indifferent.” We have been a tradition of bridges, not walls. Ours is a tradition that has upheld seven Ecumenical Councils, three historic Creeds, the Thirty-Nine Articles, and a liturgical heritage blessed by the Book of Common Prayer expressed and celebrated through a wonderful variety of cultural influences. Our tradition holds Holy Scripture as containing all things necessary for salvation, the Nicene and Apostle's Creeds, the two sacraments instituted by Christ himself: baptism and communion and the Historic Episcopate essential to our faith. It is a tradition of reason that values the scholarly pursuit of truth which has allowed our Anglican ethos to be the middle way of a catholic and reformed faith “not as a compromise for the sake of peace, but as a comprehension for the sake of truth” (Collect for the Feast of Richard Hooker). Our hope is that our prophetic witness of openness to the Spirit’s actions might not be foreclosed by a desire to stake out too narrow a spiritual turf on which to stake our flag, but rather a desire to continue to be obedient to the Spirit’s call on our church. The Episcopal Church was founded in democracy and has enjoyed a polity which is free and democratic since 1789. This long-standing course cannot be reversed. We do, however, acknowledge, honor and support the differences in polity and governance that distinguish the various churches of the Communion. We believe respect for those differences is a crucial component of our tradition that should undergird any Anglican Covenant. For that reason, we support Sections One and Two of the Covenant, which positively affirm the foundation of our faith, our common Anglican vocation, and do not challenge our unique polity. We are concerned about the omission of the laity from Section 3. As St. Paul teaches, we are all of us the Body of Christ and individually members thereof (I Corinthians 12). There are four orders of ministry in the Church – bishops, priests, deacons and lay people, who also minister as members of the baptized people of God. Such an ecclesiology should both undergird the theology expressed in the Covenant and the church structures developed as means of connecting and serving the churches of the Communion. A Covenant to which we could subscribe would need to re-imagine the Instruments of Communion to provide a stronger representation from all the orders of ministry. Section 4 is of greatest concern. It creates a punitive, bureaucratic, juridical process within the Standing Committee of the Anglican Communion, elevating its authority over the member churches despite previous affirmations of member church autonomy (see, e.g., Section 4.1.3). It contains no clear process for dispute resolution, no checks and balances, no right of appeal. The concept of mediation, introduced in Section 3.2.6, is not mentioned in Section 4. The covenant’s focus on “maintenance, dispute and withdrawal” bodes of an immobilized church mission instead of one that is flexible and prophetic. For these reasons, we cannot agree to Section 4. We cannot endorse a covenant that, for the first time in the history of The Episcopal Church or the Anglican Communion, will pave the way toward emphasizing perceived negative differences instead of our continuing positive and abundant commonality. We strongly urge more direct face-to-face dialogue, study, prayer and education before the adoption of a document that has such historic significance in the life of the Anglican Communion and The Episcopal Church. Our differences should not be seen as something that must be proved wrong or endured but rather a motivation to dig deeper into discerning God’s purposes for God’s church. In conclusion, the Diocese of Los Angeles thanks and commends the entire Anglican Communion for taking this time of holy discernment and suggests that the period of discernment continue so that no hasty decisions are made that would undermine the process of conversation and reception by all the churches of the Communion. We pray that the Holy Spirit illuminates our future steps so that we all may celebrate our common bonds of affection while respecting our varying cultures, ethos and polity within the one body of Christ. Respectfully submitted, The General Convention Deputation and the Bishops of the Diocese of Los Angeles

Retired Uganda bishop speaks at UN, calls for global decriminalization of homosexuality

Retired Anglican Bishop Christopher Senyonjo, an outspoken activist for human rights and equality in Uganda, delivered a presentation at the United Nations in New York on April 8 calling for the global decriminalization of homosexuality as a way to make progress in the HIV/AIDS pandemic.

"The criminalization of homosexuality remains the most significant barrier that needs to be dismantled to reduce the spread of AIDS," said Senyonjo, during a panel discussion that formed part of an informal interactive hearing at the U.N. "We need to make our laws and agreements more binding. We need to ask if our laws or beliefs help or prevent the spread of HIV and hinder or support families caring for loved ones."

Senyonjo noted that more than 80 countries still criminalize homosexuality "and see it as a crime against God and nature. Denying people their humanity puts us all at risk because AIDS spreads fast in the darkness of ignorance."

The panel was moderated by Mark Schoofs of the Wall Street Journal, and also featured presentations by Eric Goosby, Global AIDS Coordinator for United States; Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook and executive director of Jumo.com; and Pardamean Napitu, co-founder of Indonesia Social Changes Organization.

The day-long event brought together a diverse mix of non-governmental organizations, faith-based organizations and the private sector, governmental leaders and other observers to weigh in on issues to be tackled at the U.N. General Assembly's High-Level Meeting on AIDS, which will be held June 8-10 in New York.

Senyonjo was ousted by the Anglican Church in Uganda in 2007 for his ministry serving the marginalized and oppressed, including the gay community, in a society where corruption and intimidation are commonplace. Through the Kampala-based St. Paul's Centre for Equality and Reconciliation, Senyonjo ministers to those in need regardless of their gender, social background or sexuality.

The center also runs programs in illiteracy and education, and provides support to single mothers and those living with HIV.

In Uganda, current laws on homosexuality carry sentences of up to 14 years in prison. In October 2009, a controversial bill was proposed to the Ugandan Parliament that called for broadening the criminalization of homosexuality in the East African country and introducing the death penalty in certain cases.

Following international public condemnation, the bill has been temporarily withdrawn, but is expected to be reintroduced. In March 2010, Senyonjo was among those who delivered to the Ugandan Parliament an online petition containing more than 450,000 signatures of people opposing the law.

"We need to decriminalize homosexuality globally. Further we need to remove laws that criminalize sex workers because these laws are often used to prevent education and services being given to these stigmatized populations," Senyonjo said, calling for the creation of a "gay/straight alliance ... [to] win the battle against this prejudice. We have to defeat the prejudice before we can defeat the virus."

"We leaders in the faith community must teach one another to listen and to live with differences," Senyonjo added. "We must work hard to not to impose our religious values on the whole society. It begins as simply as couple counseling before marriage and, on a larger scale, to respect human rights and avoid scapegoating a vulnerable minority."

CHICAGO CONSULTATION RELEASES PUBLICATION ON PROPOSED ANGLICAN COVENANT

The Genius of Anglicanism includes essays by theologians, church leaders

April 5, 2011—The Chicago Consultation, which advocates for the full inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Christians in the worldwide Anglican Communion, has released a collection of essays and study questions on the proposed Anglican Covenant.

The Genius of Anglicanism, a 64-page booklet, includes eight essays and study questions, and may be downloaded at no cost atwww.chicagoconsultation.org.

“We believe that congregations, bishops, General Convention deputations and individual Episcopalians will benefit from this careful exploration of the proposed covenant,” said the Rev. Lowell Grisham, co-convener of the Chicago Consultation and rector of St. Paul’s Church in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

“The proposed covenant is a complex document that could have a major impact on the Episcopal Church and its many vital and longstanding relationships within the wider Anglican Communion,” he added. “We are grateful that well-respected theologians, clergy and lay leaders were willing to analyze it for us.”

The Very Rev. Jane Shaw, Dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco and former dean of divinity at New College, Oxford, wrote the introduction for the guide, which was edited by Jim Naughton and includes essays by:

• The Rev. Ruth Meyers, Hodges-Haynes Professor of Liturgics at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in Berkeley, California, on the relationship of the proposed covenant to the Baptismal Covenant of the Episcopal Church

• The Rev. Ellen Wondra, editor in chief of the Anglican Theological Review and academic dean at Seabury Western Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois on how a theological innovation, such as the proposed covenant is received or rejected by a community of faith

• The Rev. Timothy Sedgwick, Clinton S. Quin Professor of Christian Ethics at Virginia Theological Seminary, on the concept of episcopal authority in the proposed covenant

• Fredrica Harris Thompsett, Mary Wolfe Professor Emerita of Historical Theology at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cam bridge, Massachusetts, on how the proposed covenant will affect the participation of the laity in Communion affairs

• The Rev. Canon Mark Harris, of the Diocese of Delaware, a member of the Episcopal Church’s Executive Council on the proposed covenant and the traditional concept of “the historic episcopate locally adapted”

• Sally Johnson, chancellor to Bonnie Anderson, President of the House of Deputies on the judicial and disciplinary provisions in the fourth section of the proposed covenant

• The Rev. Gay Jennings, the Episcopal Church’s clergy representative to the Anglican Consultative Council, on the Anglican Communion’s existing covenant, which is grounded in the Five Marks of Mission

• The Rev. Winnie Varghese, priest-in-charge at St. Mark’s-Church-in-the-Bowery in New York City and member of Executive Council on the kind of covenant necessary to make the Communion an ally of the poor and the oppressed.

Grisham, who prepared the study questions that accompany each essay, said he believes the booklet will be widely used in the run-up to the Episcopal Church’s next General Convention in July 2012.

The Chicago Consultation, a group of Episcopal and Anglican bishops, clergy and lay people, supports the full inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Christians in the Episcopal Church and the worldwide Anglican Communion. To learn more about the Chicago Consultation, visitwww.chicagoconsultation.org.