The Week in Review: A Candle in Your Heart

Another Friday, and as I look back on the week, once again, I've compiled a small compendium of online articles that have lit candles in my heart. It's often a struggle to keep hope alive in a world that conspires to convince us change is not possible.

It's a struggle to find and speak truth in a world in which the truth is systemically distorted by media, by powers and principalities, by those whose self-interest is served by manipulating the truth.

In such a world, the voices of witnesses such as these help keep the flame lit, when turbulent winds and dark days threaten to extinguish it:

First, I’m grateful for Rev. Andy Burnette’s 20 Feb. posting at Bilerico project entitled “Thanks for Your Concern about My Children” (www.bilerico.com/2008/02/thanks_for_your_concern_about_my_childre.php). Rev. Burnette addresses those who express concern about his daughter, given his decision to speak out courageously on behalf of LGBT rights as a minister in Indiana. He is grateful for those who are concerned about his daughter’s safety. He notes, though, that it is his very concern about his children and their future that compels him to speak out about prejudice wherever it is found:

“I can’t imagine having to admit that, while I believe prejudice is wrong, I didn’t say anything because I was afraid. That admission would teach her that self-preservation is more important than truth and justice, that it’s OK to be quiet about discrimination when speaking up could be uncomfortable. . . .May we have the courage to do what is right, for ourselves, and for the next generation.”

Rev. Burnette’s article includes the quotation from Martin Luther King, Jr., about shallow understanding and lukewarm acceptance that I highlight my own 20 Feb. blog entry.

And today, when a memorial service for Lawrence King is to be held in Westminster Presbyterian Church in Port Hueneme, CA, I want to highlight Sara Whitman’s comments in that same 20 Feb. blog entry. Whitman notes that the national media “has done a complete pass on the [Lawrence King] story.” She decries the silence of the major presidential candidates about Lawrence King’s murder. Sara Whitman’s Huffington Post article was picked up this week on the Towleroad blog at www.towleroad.com/2008/02/lawrence-king.html.

Given that silence, I was heartened to read in Pam’s House Blend blog this week an article entitled “Parents Confront Officials about Lawrence King Shooting” (www.pamshouseblend.com/showDiary.do;jsessionid=4A0DDC165E766AC3D00D71957B29D080?diaryId=4558). Pam notes that the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) is keeping track of local vigils organized to remember Lawrence King, and has issued a list of four concrete steps schools can take to confront school bullying of LGBT children.

I’m delighted to hear that GLSEN is calling on schools to address the issue of school bullying of LGBT youth, in light of Lawrence King’s murder. Yet, as I explain in my blog entry of 15 February, the mention of GLSEN reminds me of the role the churches and their institutions play in suppressing open discussion of homophobia and homophobic violence.

As that blog entry explains, in my last position leading faculty at a church-based institution noted for its commitment to civic engagement, I was severely punished by my supervisor for even mentioning GLSEN as a resource for faculty. This supervisor, who is the mother of a gay son and has worked in a leadership position in the United Methodist church, found the mere mention of GLSEN in a church-based school a way of “putting my lifestyle in the face of colleagues.”

The church has a long, long way to go. It is time to break silence.

Since I have chided the presidential candidates this week for their silence about Lawrence King’s shooting, I would like to give credit to Barack Obama for speaking out in Houston against the scapegoating of gay people. Mr. Obama stated, "I know how easy it is for politicians to turn us on each other, to use immigrants or gay people or folks who aren't like us as scapegoats for what they do." A link to a video of this speech is at www.towleroad.com/2008/02/obama-slams-pol.html.

And finally, I would like to give credit to one courageous church leader—in a church not known for its welcome of LGBT people—for daring to remind us that the rejection of LGBT folks by churches undermines the churches’ claim to walk in the footsteps of Jesus.

In a homily he gave last Sunday on the second Sunday of Lent, Bishop Thomas Gumbleton stated:

"When I think of how our church acts sometimes, and maybe without our knowing it, any one of us as an individual within the church, when we look at the way of Jesus and look at the way we act, we fall short. I think that within the church, Jesus was always the compassionate, welcoming, loving, forgiving messenger of God. In our church, we still reject people because of who they are. I've said this before and I repeat it today; we fail people who are of homosexual orientation. Most of them have not felt, and still do not feel, truly welcome, truly accepted as who they are and the person that God has made them."

Bishop Gumbleton’s sermon may be found at the blog café of National Catholic Reporter (http://ncrcafe.org/node/1619). Courageous advocates like Bishop Gumbleton deserve to be supported and celebrated by the LGBT community. All too often, they suffer reprisal at the hands of their own church when they speak out—and this has happened to Bishop Gumbleton.

Those whose words I’m citing in this post have been candles to my heart this week, as I continue to ponder the senseless murder of LGBT youth in our land, along with the silence of the churches (and media) about this national social cancer. As the Persian mystic poet Rumi reminds us in his poem “Candle in the Heart,” there is a candle in our hearts ready to be kindled. And it is love that kindles that candle—love that comes to us of its own accord, love that should be accepted and celebrated as it is, not excused or explained away, when it kindles candles in our heart. The love that fills human hearts, changes lives, and pours forth into the lives of others in endless creativity is a precious resource for all of society. Those who love should never be chastised for their loving. They should certainly not be maimed or killed because they love. As Rumi urges:

“Remind those who tell you otherwise that

Love

comes to you of its own accord,

and the yearning for it

cannot be learned in any school.”

In memoriam, Lawrence King (1993-2008). Love never fails . . . .

We Are the Ones We've Been Waiting For

It’s impossible to understand (or confront) the silence of the leading presidential candidates about the murder of Lawrence King without looking at how progressives in the U.S. have dealt with values-laden issues for some decades now. Today’s AlterNet blog (www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/77366/) has an enlightening article by Trish at Pensito Review entitled "The Secret of Obama’s Success: He Listens to George Lakoff.” Lakoff (who founded the Rockridge Institute—see www.rockridgeinstitute.org/) argues that the political discourse of American progressives avoids values-laden rhetoric in favor of reason-based analysis of policies. Lakoff notes:

Progressives regularly mistake policies with values, which are ethical ideas like empathy, responsibility, fairness, freedom, justice, and so on. Policies are not themselves values, though they are, or should be, based on values. Thus, Social Security and universal health insurance are not values; they are policies meant to reflect and codify the values of human dignity, the common good, fairness, and equality.

In Lakoff’s view, the unwillingness of progressives to engage values is a mistake. I agree wholeheartedly. As my profile for this blog notes, among my chief interests are challenging the religious right’s claim to own God, calling the churches to accountability for injustice to LGBT persons, and stopping bullying of LGBT youth in schools. These are interrelated goals, and it’s impossible to understand the silence of both the leading “progressive” candidates for president and the silence of the churches about the death of Lawrence King, without looking at what progressives have done to values issues in the recent past, as the right wing has dominated the political landscape of America.

During this period, progressives have been all too willing to relinquish values-laden discourse to the right, and especially the religious right. We who recognize that the values represented by the religions of the world and their ethical traditions are far more diverse and revolutionary than the religious right wants Americans to believe have been conspicuously silent, as people who betray the core values of the world’s religions posture as the sole owners of values discourse.

We who want to keep progressive political options alive in the U.S. have allowed the religious right to railroad values discourse into a dead-end shouting match about abortion, reproductive rights, and “family values,” while a large number of our citizens go without basic health coverage, while we let ourselves be herded like dumb sheep into a war based on lies, while the obscenely rich grab an even larger share of the world’s resources, while children born in poverty in our nation have a decreasing chance at an adequate education, while the globe spins towards irreversible climactic changes due to global warming.

These issues are all values-centered issues. Yet we on the progressive end of the political spectrum treat them as policy issues. We relinquish the language of values to the religious right, and allow our fellow citizens to assume that these issues—all deeply and inherently related to the core ethical values of our religious traditions—have no basis in values at all.

Hence the ability of the major presidential candidates—in particular, the “progressive” ones the ones who should most be expected to speak out—to remain silent about the murder of a fifteen year-old boy by a classmate who considered the boy gender-inappropriate. Such murders ought not to happen in American schools. Not ever. Not ever again. Parents everywhere should be up in arms at the thought that an American child can be shot to death in an American school for questioning gender roles.

Churches all over the land should be holding vigils, pray-ins, sit-ins, classes about school violence and homophobia. But they’re not doing so. And those who claim to represent the most progressive options for us in the current presidential campaign continue to remain silent.

How has it come to this? In addition to relinquishing discourse about (and the very definition of) values to the right, we who stand for progressive change have also tolerated for far too long faint, insulting blathering about values on the part of many of our churches—blathering that is much ado about nothing, all sound and fury signifying nothing. We allow the churches to salve their consciences (and our own) by talking rather than walking.

We allow the churches to deplore homophobia and homophobic violence while fueling homophobia and homophobic violence. Not only do many churches observe the silence of the tomb regarding a social problem that can cause a fifteen year-old boy to be murdered in cold blood. Many of the same churches discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation in hiring and firing employees in their institutions, refuse to ordain openly gay-lesbian members, and hold national meetings at which the lives and fates of LGBT church members are discussed without permitting those whose lives and fates are being determined to have a voice in the discussion!

I could point to many churches as examples of this shell game. The one that leaps to mind now, however, as I think through the damages caused to LGBT persons by church talk in the absence of church walk, is the United Methodist church. It does so for two reasons. First, one of the two “progressive” candidates for president, Hillary Clinton, is a United Methodist. I would argue that some of Ms. Clinton’s inability to engage issues like homophobia from a clear, forthright, unambiguous values standpoint has everything to do with the shell game her own church plays about this issue, over and over.

My second reason for pointing to the UMC as an exemplar of the talk-but-no-walk tendency of “progressive” and “gay-friendly” churches has to do with my own work experience. Though I am an alienated Catholic, my last two administrative positions were in UMC colleges. I have become very familiar—sadly familiar, far more familiar than I would prefer—with how some UMC institutions treat their LGBT employees, and with the ravages the shell game represents for the lives of some employees in UMC institutions.

The UMC Social Principles have clear statements forbidding discrimination and violence against employees on the grounds of sexual orientation. The UMC Social Principles also have very unambiguous statements about the right of all employees to demand workplaces that afford mental and physical safety.

Unfortunately, some UMC institutions do not adhere to these Social Principles even to the extent of adopting a non-discrimination policy on grounds of sexual orientation. My most recent place of employment has no such statement in its catalogue, which is the institution’s official arbiter of personnel policy. The institution is also in a right-to-work state where an employee may be fired at the mere whim of the college, with no reason provided. Needless to say, as with many right-to-work states, the state has no—as in nada, zilch—laws prohibiting discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation.

In my experience, churches that talk but don’t walk will go as low as they are permitted to do, when an unjust law is on their side. This is how white Christians in the American South behaved when I was growing up, and it is how many churches now behave towards LGBT people, when the law permits. They will do whatever is permitted to them, when the law protects them, regardless of whatever high-minded statements their ethical codes or social principles declare.

In my experience, it is sadly and entirely possible to find oneself summarily booted from a UMC institution after having been reprimanded for “putting your lifestyle in the face of colleagues,” after having been given written instructions not to take your partner to the doctor (while married couples at the institution routinely take each other to doctors), or after having done outstanding work, but not ever having been given any evaluation at all, to which one might respond with information that challenges the supervisor's misrepresentation of one's work record. One can have all this happen even as one approaches the age of 60, with the full complicity of a retired dean of a UMC seminary, an ordained man, who, in addition to his retirement income, is making a plush salary at the college as a consultant. One can also have it happen while the board of the college is comprised of large numbers of UMC ministers and the UMC bishop of the state in which the institution is located—though one can also be told that the bishop has “problems” with the hiring of openly gay couples . . . .

Why are Mr. Obama and Ms. Clinton able to remain silent about the cold-blooded murder of Lawrence King? Because we allow them to do so. We who call ourselves progressive have allowed the religious right to capture God and the discourse of values. And we allow our churches to talk about their disdain for homophobic violence while practicing homophobic violence towards their own employees and LGBT members.

If we are the ones we have been waiting for, then it is time we speak out. No child should be murdered ever again in an American school for engaging in behavior the mainstream considers gender inappropriate. And the churches should be challenged—and challenged hard—to recognize that their silence in the face of this event and the social cancer it reveals is as shameful as the silence of the German churches while the Nazis came to power.

Shallow Understanding, Lukewarm Acceptance

Tolerance and diversity: as I read the news today, I think I'd like a moratorium on those words, especially from church folks.

I'll take justice instead. I'll take breaking silence and speaking out when people are being killed. I'll take doing in remembrance that is really doing in memory of Jesus.

The Towleroad blog today (http://www.towleroad.com/) links to a Huffington Post article by Sara Whitman in which she states,

"In my LGBT community, we argue about who is more pro LGBT rights, Obama or Clinton. It's been days since Lawrence King was shot dead. Neither candidate has issued a statement or said a word. The national media has done a complete pass on the story. Both candidates make me sick...Don't worry. I get the message, loud and clear. Just one more dead faggot."

Give me Fred Phelps any day, Fred Phelps who actually speaks out, who articulates his distaste for gay people honestly, rather than the church people who mouth little driblets of mumbling pity for the pain that the poor gays suffer. Give me Phelps's God hates fags signs over the Social Principles of the United Methodist church, which profess to deplore violence against gay people--in a church that will not even ordain an openly LGBT person, in a church whose annual meetings discuss the fate of gay believers without even allowing gay people to speak for themselves, and in a church whose institutions often have no policies prohibiting discrimination and in which openly gay employees can still be fired simply for being gay.

As Martin Luther King, Jr., once said,

"Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."

Shameful, the silence from the media. Shameful, the closed mouths of the presidential candidates.

But far more shameful the silence--or worse, the faint maundering sympathy--of a church that is right at the center of this social problem, right at the engendering center of violence against LGBT youth, and which will not break silence to speak unambiguously against such violence, or to admit that its own hands are bloody with complicity in this crime.

The Struggle to Remember

Continuing to think today of the struggle to remember: the struggle to keep in memory. I think that the churches have not reflected sufficiently about all that is entailed when they proclaim that the heart of ecclesial vocation is to keep the memory of Jesus alive in the world.

Do this in remembrance of me: when I hear those words in light of the many victims of history—those who have died without voice, those not given a chance to make their contributions, those whose lives have been snuffed out by powers and principalities that do not wish for these voices to be heard—I think of the imperative verb “do” with which the statement begins.

Remembering is doing. It is doing something. It is doing something quite specific. Remembering, within the Judaeo-Christian theological context, is committing oneself and one’s commemorative community to keep alive the memory of those whose voices have been silenced.

By its very nature, remembering is a subversive act, since the ones who most demand to be kept alive in memory are those whose memory powers and principalities most wish to suppress. The Christian church draws together in daily worship to remember a man who died as a common criminal, executed on a capital charge at the behest of the power brokers of his culture. This was a man whose end was supposed to signify the end—the definitive, all-silencing end—of anyone whose life made people think that something else was possible. The Romans learned from the Persians to splay the lowest kind of criminals out for all to see, on hilltops outside cities, near city gates, to splay them out on a cross as warnings of the fate awaiting anyone who subverted the status quo.

Remembering those whom we’re supposed to forget engages us in struggle—both the struggle to keep alive a memory and a voice that is supposed to remain silent, and the struggle to eradicate all those social conditions that permit the classification of some people as throwaway people, the social decisions that justify crushing some people and forever silencing their voices.

It is easier to forget. It is easier to sanitize our religious consciousness of what we really imply when we speak the words, “Do this in remembrance of me.” It is more comfortable by far to allow Jesus to remain in the tomb, turning his command to remember into a comforting ritual of coziness, in which we gather around the table, our table, the table belonging to family and friends, and eat and drink—without doing anything else, without committing ourselves to do in remembrance.

This option is easier. It also betrays the fundamental significance of Christianity and its common table. It betrays the Jewish sense of commemoration-as-commitment that forms the theological foundation of the Christian eucharist: the Passover meal, at which the youngest child of the family, the least significant and most easily overlooked one, asks, “What happened to us on that night?” At Passover, the liberation from slavery is remembered not as a past event—what happened to them—but as a present event—what happened to us. We who are alive carry on exodus, moving in our own life journeys from slavery to freedom, committing ourselves to assist others in the same journey.

Of course, I am thinking of all of this in light of what happened to Lawrence King. I am thinking of how easy it will be to forget—of how easy it will be for me to forget. It is easier to write a condolence check, shake my head in disbelief, and go on.

But that is not remembering. That is not doing in remembrance. Forgetting participates in the conspiracy of silence that requires us to be amnesiac, because otherwise, we would recognize that things might—that they must—be different. Otherwise, we would have to wake from our easy slumber and recognize that remembering involves us, implicates us, forces us to make choices to keep alive the memory of those whose voices the powers and principalities have sought to snuff out forever.

What shall we do, those of us who seek to remember Lawrence King? How will we keep memory alive?

Speaking Truth in Love

I've just posted a comment in response to Colleen, in reply to her response to the "Do This in Remembrance of Me" posting yesterday.

As that comment states, I continue to feel deep sadness as I ponder what has happened to Lawrence King. I also continue to commit myself not merely to remember, but to act: to keep memory alive by doing all I can to assure that no young person ever again endures what happened to Lawrence King.

As my comment to Colleen notes, a website has now been set up to remember Lawrence King. It allows one to leave messages for his family, as well as to make contributions to a memorial fund. The url is http://www.rememberlarry.com/.

As I tell Colleen, in meditating on the tragedy that has befallen this family, I am also pondering some experiences I have had in my career as a professional educator and theologian who struggles to be faithful to my calling to seek truth, to speak the truth in love, and to go beyond lip service in my commitment to social justice. In reflecting on what has happened to Larry King, I think of people I have met in my own calling as a professional educator who profess to be aware of the ravages of homophobia in our society, yet who are perfectly willing to engage in homophobic behavior when it assists them in achieving political goals that are more easily attained by bashing someone who is gay.

One of these people whose story I am now pondering is a woman whose son is gay, and who has held a position of responsibility within the leadership structures of a major Christian church.

Though this professional educator with strong church ties professes support for LGBT persons, she has a strange track record of hiring and then discarding gay employees. The gay-lesbian employees whom she has hired and then fired are far out of proportion to our numbers in the population at large, and out of proportion to the straight persons this educator has hired and fired.

I wonder how a mother of a gay son who claims to detest homophobia is capable of such behavior. This is a question my partner Steve and I have talked frequently about with his own mother, who has met this mother of a gay son. Steve's mother is a very faithful Catholic, but she finds it impossible to reject her own gay sons. In meeting the professional educator who has a gay son, she was struck by a sense of terrible conflict--terrible duplicity--in the soul of the other gay mother. She was struck by a sense that this is a mother whose conflicts about accepting her own gay son are so deep, she must lash out at the gay people with whom she surrounds herself periodically.

As I think about this story, what strikes me is how often family members of some gay persons must experience this tragic conflict in their hearts. It is easy to think of ourselves as affirming. It is much harder to affirm in reality. And the heart divided against itself is capable of inexplicable cruelty . . . .

I pray that, for those who find themselves in such a conflicted posture (and I certainly do feel compassion for them), the tragic death of Lawrence King will somehow reach into their hearts. I pray that, by remembering what has happened to some gay sons, such mothers may one day come to understand what LGBT people--and LGBT children, in particular--experience daily.

I hope this event will touch the hearts of family members of LGBT persons who have not yet found it in their hearts to accept, affirm, and, most of all, make solidarity with their gay family members (and gay co-workers and gay friends) to stand against all forms of abuse of gay people in our society.

I hope, in other words, that in remembering Lawrence King, more people whose lives have connection to gay persons will become activists--activists who work to prevent incidents like this happening ever again. I also hope that those who have gay family members, friends, and colleagues, and who have voice within the churches, will raise their voices to call on their churches to stop contributing to violence against LGBT persons.

For educators, in particular, it is keenly important to find ways to shape a new mentality among those we educate. It is urgent that we contribute to the healing of social attitudes and institutions that create violence against LGBT people.

And yes, this must also be the charge of educators in church-based schools. It baffles me that church-based schools continue to seek to silence faculty and staff who call for open dialogue about LGBT issues. If church-based schools do not have a vocation to educate students who combat social violence in all its forms, who does have such a vocation? And how can a violence that cannot even be named be combated? How can educational institutions that enforce silence about LGBT people and their lives combat homophobia?

I have experienced inexplicable roadblocks in several church-based universities where I had the charge of leading faculty, whenever I sought to address these issues. I have encountered overt homophobia from faculty who speak of transformative leadership and civic engagement, and I have sometimes found myself punished by my superiors when I spoke out against such homophobia, while those using homophobia as a weapon against gay colleagues were protected by the same superiors. I have encountered underhanded homophobic tactics on the part of faculty who are training the teachers of the future, and I have been reprimanded when I sought to expose this underhanded behavior.

This has to stop, in colleges and universities. It has to stop in church-based schools. The leaders and teachers of the future will be working in environments in which more and more people are openly gay. If educational institutions--and, above all, church-based ones--do not shape genuinely understanding, accepting, and gay-affirming leaders, who will do so? If church-based colleges and universities demand that the leaders in their educational institutions keep silence about these issues, how can they produce teachers who will heal rather than contribute to homophobia?

We must go beyond lip service in combating homophobia. It is a social cancer, and it eats at the very core of our society. Tolerance that is only on the lips is not tolerance at all. Acceptance and affirmation that is only spoken, but not acted, is not acceptance and affirmation at all. As Josh Kilmer-Purcell noted recently, “By not hiding his repugnance under a bushel, Pastor Phelps is one of America’s most effective gay activists. Middle America finally gets to see what homophobia looks like when it’s stripped of such polite, compromising words as tolerance, and states’ rights activist judges. . . .I believe that each time Fred Phelps gets a little airtime, a fallen AIDS hero gets his wings” ("Donate to the Partridge Family of Hate,” Out [Feb. 2008], 40).

Do This in Remembrance

I've just read on the internet that churches prayed today for the victims of the school shooting in Illinois. And, of course, it's fitting that they do so.

I wonder, though, how often churches remember the victims of incidents such as the one that took Lawrence King's life this week. Have churches prayed today for those who lose their life in hate crimes against LGBT people? Did they pray for Lawrence King's grieving family? Did they pray for the young man who took his classmate's life?

Do churches pray to be cleansed of prejudice against LGBT people? Do they pray that God will move the hearts and souls of church members to combat this form of social violence? Do churches pray to be forgiven of the violence they incite when they misuse the Bible as a weapon of hate against LGBT people, or when they speak of gay persons as intrinsically disordered? Do churches pray for the gift of repentance when they drive LGBT people out of their midst?

Remembering is at the very core of the church's calling in the world: Do this in remembrance of me.

Forgetting is all too easy. We inhabit a throwaway culture, which treats some of its citizens as throwaway people. Out of sight, out of mind. . . . Remembrance is a daring act, an act of rebellion against the status quo, one that commits us not merely to hold a person or event in memory, but to do something that commemorates the one we remember.

Do this in remembrance of me. Lawrence King deserves to be remembered. Matthew Shepard deserves to be remembered. These and so many other young lives obliterated or malformed by homophobia deserve the attention of a Christian community called to combat violence and hate, as it remembers a founder executed for his willingness to sit at table with the outcasts of his culture.

In fighting to remember, when so much tempts us to forget (out of sight, out of mind), we fight to construct more humane societies that will eventually make the kind of violence we witness in gay-bashing unthinkable.

In memory of Lawrence King, I'd like to share the following poem that I wrote after the sudden death of a young Dominican priest I hired to teach theology at Xavier University in New Orleans when I chaired that school's theology department two decades ago:

I try to keep you in my memory,

Old friend,

But each day your photo fades

One color more,

A picture in the lake,

Fraught to pieces by the rising of the wind.

In my heart I've carved a shrine,

Where red carnations vie with daffodils

To chant you to your rest.

But no one that we know

Comes now to worship there.

Pilgrim feet forsake the path

That leads to you.

The shade beside the road

Invites foot-weary travelers

Grown tired of sun and rain along the way.

And I, yes even I:

That shrine within my heart

Holds one blossom fewer every day.

In Memoriam

And, as a sad addendum to what I posted earlier today, I have just read that fifteen-year old Lawrence King has been taken off life support: http://365gay.com/Newscon08/02/021608life.htm.

This senseless violence against LGBT youth must stop.

It is time for Christian institutions, including Christian educational institutions, to break silence and challenge the hatred fueling this violence. Institutions that look to Jesus as their founder have no business siding with hate, no business remaining silent when children are assaulted for being considered gender-inappropriate, and no business silencing their members who wish to speak out against such hatred.

As the worldwide Anglican communion and the United Methodist church both prepare for meetings at which, yet again, members promoting homophobic agendas will be permitted to defend hate in the name of Christ, I hope that someone, somehow, will keep the memory of Lawrence King--and what we have all lost through his death--in the forefront of these church folks' minds.