On June 30, 2019, several thousand folx from MIRAc (Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Committee), CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations) and dozens of co-sponsoring organizations marched in protest against the torturous family separations that are happening at our Southern border in the Stop Separating Families March and Protest. Below are the words I spoke at the rally.

I need to start with a shout out: As we marched down Lake Street today, five million people marched down Christopher Street on this 50th Anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising against state sanctioned violence. I am only able to be here because they paved the way for me and so many other LGBTQ folx.
 
A little over 500 years ago, several Popes wrote letters to the kings and queens of Portugal, Spain and England urging them to go first to West Africa and then to the Americas. In both locations, these letters, which were really commands, told the white Europeans to try to convert any pagan or Muslim folx they encountered. If they couldn’t convert them to Christianity, they were ordered to kill them and take their possessions and land. These letters are known as the Doctrine of Discovery or the Doctrine of Christian Dominance.
 
It is almost impossible to exaggerate the genocide, brutality and suffering the Doctrine of Christian Dominance has caused. And one of its core practices has been breaking up families and separating children from parents. African American parents were regularly sold away from children during slavery by Bible-carrying, church-attending white Christians. Native children were, for several generations, stolen from families and put into boarding schools run by churches in order to “civilize” them. In both cases, sexual and physical violence were rampant.
 
The painful truth is that what is happening at our southern border has happened before and it’s all been done in the name of God.
 
And so, as a white, Christian pastor, I stand before you today to confess the truth of this violence done in the name of the collar and stole that I wear. The weight of the sin of genocide must be named--over and over again.
 
I also stand before you to turn away from this violent and distorted version of Christianity and toward the gospel of justice and love. We call this turning, repentance.
 
As part of repenting, is also important to name that the kind of Christianity that calls for genocide and dominance is bad Christianity, it is worshiping the false idols of capitalism and war. It is Empire Christianity, not the gospel of Jesus Christ which calls us to justice and love.
 
The true gospel of justice and love also calls us into repair and reparations. And so, as we march and protest and powerfully resist, we must also continue the work of healing and repair and find ways for concrete reparations.
 
I thank God for each of you and all of you. And may God bless us all in this sacred, holy work of resistance and repair. Que Dios nos bendiga en la lucha. Gracias.

Here is video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THFIqDcBfrU&feature=youtu.be

I was born on March 5, 1969, almost four months before the Stonewall Riots. As we gather here tonight, I am profoundly aware of the fact that my life has been  intertwined with and deeply impacted by the life of the modern LGBTQIA+ movement. I’m also profoundly aware that many of those rioters and resisters who rose up at Stonewall, people like Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera and other trans+ women of color like those in STAR—the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries-- didn’t make it to age 50, nor were they honored in their lifetimes in the way they deserved for all they were and did. So, particularly as I am honored with a Courage Award, I want to name the reality that I stand here because so many have loved and laughed, struggled and died to make the path I’ve trod.
 
So the first image: the path I’ve trod has been made by others, or at least they’ve laid cairns and other markers to guide me on my way.
 
A second image I want to share was referenced this week at National Gathering by Rev. Nekira Evans-Hernandez. The giant redwoods in California—some of the tallest trees in the world-- don’t have very deep roots. Instead, in order to withstand storms and grow to great heights, their roots are connected with all the roots of the other redwoods around them.
 
These two images form the core of what I want to say tonight: while I am deeply honored to receive this Courage Award, nothing I have done is singular. I am because so many others are. And much of who I am, much of any courage I have is because of you and the Open and Affirming movement in the United Church of Christ.
 
In order to illustrate this truth, I want to do two things. I first want to name a few folx whose being and struggle for intersectional, queer liberation within the UCC have been the roots intertwined with mine. Some of them are older than I and some of them are younger.

Bill Johnson, Nancy Krody, Loey Powell, Jan Greisinger, Ann B. Day, Donna Enberg, John Selders, Margarita Suarez, Barbara Satin, Sam Lolliger, Tim Tutt, Bishop Yvette Flunder, Gwen Thomas, Phil Porter, Ruth Garwood, Tim Brown, Ashley Harness, Sonny Graves, Lesley Jones, Mak Kneebone, Kevin Tindell, Peter Barbosa, Roberto Ochoa, Elaine Kirkland, Lisa Lally, Cathy-Ann Beatty, Mitzi Eilts, Janice Steele, Patrisha Gill, Yvonne Delk, Sharon Day, Paul Sherry, John Thomas, Traci Blackmon, John Dorhauer, Kathie Carpenter, Edith Guffey, Malcom Himschoot, Oby Ballinger, Andy Lang, Kimi Floyd Reich, Ann Randall, Lawrence Richardson, Louis Mitchell, Liz Aguilar, Marguerite Unwin Voelkel, Bill Voelkel, Maggie George and Shannon MacKenzie George Voelkel…
 
And, secondly, I want to recognize so many of you in this room whose names I may or may not know but whose lives are woven with mine.
 
If you in the room have ever come out in any church-related space, please raise your hand and keep it raised. If you have ever participated in an ONA process, please raise your hand. If you have ever preached or sung in a worship service celebrating the LGBTQIA, same-gender loving, two-spirit community, raise your hand. If you have ever been to The Fellowship of Affirming Ministries Convocation or National Gathering or an event hosted by El Proyecto, raise your hand. If you have ever marched with your collar on or your church’s banner with Black Lives Matter or Mi Gente or been at Standing Rock in the Two Spirit camp or danced in a Pride parade or shut down Capitol Hill with disability justice activists, raise your hand. If you have ever baked a hotdish or brought pizza for a campaign to repeal anti-trans+ laws or knocked on doors to get people to vote against voter suppression or got arrested with the Poor Peoples Campaign in support of minimum wage laws, please raise your hands and keep them raised. I invite you to look around.
 
You are the root system, the unbreakable connections that allow any of us to have courage to act for justice and liberation and God’s bodacious, sexy, intersectional realm of God which is here and is coming. But we need to keep reaching wider if we are going to truly hearken the realm of God and withstand today. We desperately need our connected, collective courage.
 
Because a storm of Empire Christianity, woven with a virulent white nationalism, deploying the practices of family separation on our Border that devasted indigenous communities through Boarding Schools and African American communities during slavery at auction blocks, this storm is blowing through the trees of our movement and we must withstand and resist.
 
So, hold fast to one another. And know that I am holding fast to you and to the deep roots of the Open and Affirming Movement.
 
I need you, you need me, we’re all a part of God’s Body…. I pray for you, you pray for me, I love you, I need you to survive.
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