God Knit LarryTogether

Since I’ve complained repeatedly about the silence of both the mainstream media and the major presidential candidates re: the murder of Lawrence King, I want to give credit today to one candidate and one significant media outlet for speaking out.

Today’s NY Times has an article by Rebecca Cathcart reporting on yesterday’s memorial service for Lawrence King. The article quotes a wonderful excerpt from the sermon given at this event by Rev. Dan Birchfield of Westminster Presbyterian Church:

“God knit Larry together and made him wonderfully complex. Larry was a masterpiece.”

And, according to today’s Bilerico blog, yesterday Hillary Clinton spoke out about the death of Lawrence King, stating (www.bilerico.com/2008/02/statement_from_hillary_clinton_on_the_me.php):

“I was deeply saddened by the recent death of 15-year old Lawrence King, who was killed at his school in Oxnard, CA. No one should face intimidation or violence, particularly at school, because of their sexual orientation or the way they express their gender identity. We must finally enact a federal hate crimes law to ensure that gay, lesbian and transgender Americans are protected against violent, bias-motivated crimes. We must send a unified message that hate-based crime will not be tolerated.”

Kudos to Hillary Clinton.

And now, when will the churches speak out? I call on Hillary Clinton to challenge her own United Methodist church to make its stand against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and its opposition to homophobic violence more than rhetorical—particularly in the personnel policies and procedures of its own institutions.

Hillary, can we talk? I’d be interested in hearing how you can energize your own church and call it to accountability. The churches--all the "mainstream" churches--are at the heart of the problem of homophobia in American society.

And that needs to change. And it will change only when church members make it unthinkable for their churches to talk the talk without walking the walk. It is time for church members to call their churches to accountability. It is not too much to ask that churches accord the same simple justice to LGBT members that they ask church members to practice in their dealings with society at large.