General Convention 2018: A Time to Celebrate

Less than a year from now we will have finished General Convention (GC) 2018. This is the first opportunity Integrity USA has had to actually celebrate what happened during General Convention 2015.

GC 2015 represented the accomplishment of a legislative mission that began in earnest about 26 years ago. At the Episcopal Church-wide level, canon law now exists that prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender expression, gender identity…among all of the other prohibited discriminations in the life of the church, access to the ordination process and a myriad of areas that impact the lives of all, but especially the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer-plus (LGBTQ+) members of the church.

Similarly, we now have rites to celebrate same sex unions, including the first reading of changes to the language of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer to make marriage rites gender neutral. These rites in conjunction with the Supreme Court ruling in July 2015, makes marriage between members of the same sex available in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and the territories of the United States. We do note that the bishops of eight of the 101 domestic dioceses still do not permit same sex marriages in their dioceses, in clear violation of canon law.

The overarching mission of Integrity USA has been accomplished at the church wide legislative/canonical level. What still remains to be accomplished needs to be done at the diocesan/parish level as grass roots missionary work.

So yes it is time for celebration.

Integrity USA wants to celebrate at GC 2018 in two ways: One is in staffing a booth in the exhibit hall. The other is in sponsoring a Celebratory General Convention Eucharist. The cost of both is outside our budget. So we turn to you.

We need to raise approximately $42,500 to support our booth in the exhibit hall and to cover the expenses of a General Convention Eucharist (space rental, communion supplies, bulletins, etc., usual expenses for a large Eucharist outside our normal church setting.)          

Those of us whose names appear below have served as national presidents of Integrity USA. We seek your prayerful support and your financial support to help us make GC 2018 a holy celebration for the accomplishments achieved over decades of work. Will you join us?

Donate to the General Convention 2018 fund

Kim Byham
Fred Ellis
Bruce Garner
Matt Haines
Caro Hall
Michael Hopkins
David Norgard
Susan Russell

Requiescat in Pace: The Right Rev. Edgar Otis Charles

St. Mark's Cathedral, Salt Lake City
PHOTO: Christian Paolino

The board and staff of Integrity sadly mark the passing of the Right Rev. Edgar Otis Charles, eighth Bishop of Utah, who died December 26th in San Francisco.  Bishop Charles came out as a gay man shortly after his retirement, the first Christian bishop to do so.

"As a bishop, I have been privileged to be with Otis as a fellow bishop, colleague and friend," said the Right Rev. Scott Hayashi, the present Bishop of Utah. "My prayers are being offered for Otis and all his family and friends who, like me, will always be grateful for his life and witness, and who will miss him terribly."

Born in April 24th, 1926 in Norristown, Penna., Bishop Charles grew up in New Jersey, attended General Theological Seminary in New York, and was ordained a priest in 1951. He worked in the Diocese of Connecticut from 1959-1971, founding two schools there.

In 1971, Charles stood for the episcopacy of both that diocese and Utah, ultimately being called to the latter. He served as Utah's eighth bishop but the first following its conversion into a diocese from a Mission Area, while also shepherding the neighboring Navajoland Mission Area and chairing the board of St. Mark's Hospital in Salt Lake City.  "[Otis] carried the diocese forward during a time of great challenge and few resources," said Bishop Hayashi. "Where others might see scarcity, Bishop Charles saw an abundance of spiritual resources from God and in the hearts and wills of the people of the Diocese of Utah."Active in the peace movement, Bishop Charles helped organize resistance to the development of missile sites in Utah and Nevada.

Between 1968 and 1982, Bishop Charles also participated in the creation of the current Book of Common Prayer as a member of the Standing Liturgical Commission.  In 1985, he left Utah to become the Dean of the Episcopal Divinity School at Cambridge, Mass.  In 1997, the Otis Charles Chair of Applied Theology was created via a $1.7M grant, the largest single gift in the school's history.

The Right Rev. E. Otis Charles surrounded by members of the
El Camino Real chapter of Integrity at San Jose Pride in 2001
PHOTO CREDIT: Bart Bartosh

Bishop Charles was married for over 40 years and had five children.  He discussed his same-gender attraction with his wife Elvira in the 1970s, but they remained married until after his retirement 1993, when he made headlines by identifying publicly as a gay man.

"Otis' decision to come out, even though he was retired, changed the equation in the House of Bishops," said the Rev. Michael Hopkins, former President of Integrity.  "No longer could they talk about them."

Bishop Charles moved to the San Francisco Bay area and, in 1995, helped establish the California branch of The OASIS, a diocesan ministry to gay and lesbian (and now bisexual and transgender) people. "At whatever age you come out, you have to live through whatever you've missed," he told the San Francisco Chronicle. "Even though you're 67, you have to go through a process I associate with adolescence. Hopefully, you do it with a little more maturity and grace."

"Otis Charles was part of the bridge generation - those who dared to reach across the chasm of what was to what could be - building a bridge to somewhere. Those who had no examples of how to live authentically as LGBT people and so became examples for those who came after them. Examples of how to tell the truth about their lives - even after decades of denial to themselves and to others. Examples of how to claim the blessing of God's presence in their life and in their love as a witness to a work of healing, of hope, of wholeness," wrote the Rev. Canon Susan Russell, a fellow Californian who also served as Integrity's president.  Her memories of Bishop Charles were republished by The Episcopal Cafe.

Bishop Charles frequently lobbied the church on behalf of LGBT people, including at the 73rd General Convention in Denver in 2000, when he rallied with the Christian justice group Soulforce.

Dr. Felipe Sanchez-Paris & Bishop Otis Charles
at the Castro Street Fair in 2009
PHOTO CREDIT: Robert Sokol
flickr.com/viamediainsfo

In 2001, he met Dr. Felipe Sanchez-Paris, who would become his new life partner.  Bishop Charles and Sanchez-Paris appear together in the documentary about The Right Rev. Gene Robinson Love Free or Die, in which Bishop Charles compared trying to living as a straight man to wearing a suit of the wrong size.  "With Felipe, the suit fits."

On April 29, 2004, Bishop Charles' 78th birthday, the two were united at St. Gregory of Nyssa Episcopal Church in a ceremony that lasted nearly three hours. They legally married in 2008, and testified together at the 2009 General Convention in Anaheim in favor of the rite for blessing same-sex relationships which was subsequently approved.  Just days before Bishop Charles' death, Utah became the 19th state with marriage equality.

Bishop Charles is preceded in death by his beloved Felipe. Dr. Sanchez-Paris died unexpectedly in his sleep on July 31st of this year.  In recent months, Bishop Charles struggled with a series of health setbacks, and he entered hospice care earlier this month.  Services will be held both at St. Gregory's in San Francisco and St. Mark's Cathedral in Salt Lake City, where Sanchez-Paris is interred.

Christian Paolino is Chair of the Stakeholders' Council of Integrity

Susan Russell: An Unexpected Blessing

When Integrity's Treasurer, Elisabeth Jacobs, asked me last week if I would "write something about marriage equality for the Integrity blog" of course I said I’d be happy to. And I thought I’d jump right in and write a quick piece about how encouraging it was to see the dozens of bishops stepping up and signing the amici ("friends of the court") briefs that went to the Supreme Court on the pending marriage equality cases.

I thought I’d reflect back on what an extraordinary shift there has been in the Episcopal Church – in what is arguably an astoundingly short period of time.

I planned to begin by recalling the day in June of 2003 when the House of Bishops' Theology Committee was literally shamed into inviting then-Integrity President Michael Hopkins and me to come meet with them. I say "shamed" because they were on the verge of finishing their presentation on Human Sexuality for the upcoming General Convention of the Episcopal Church  and they had not included the voices, perspective or input of a single, out gay or lesbian person. Not. One.

And so they invited us to come. To Chicago. At Seabury-Western. Where we were ushered into a large conference room with a big circle of bishops and theologians and two empty chairs near the door … one for Michael and one for me. And we had an entire hour of their time. And they were scrupulously polite as we told our stories and talked about our vision – Integrity’s vision – of a church where all the baptized were fully included in all the sacraments. And they thanked us. And we were ushered out. And it felt like nothing so much as a trip to the zoo – only rather than going to the zoo, the zoo had come to them – and we were the "live in captivity: actually gay and lesbian people!" they had arranged to come so they could say they did.

What a difference a decade makes.

I don’t flatter myself that anything Michael or I did or said that day moved any heart or changed any mind. Not in and of themselves. What we did that day was what we had done many, many times in the past … and would do many, many, MANY times moving forward: we showed up. We did what those who’d gone before us – on whose shoulders we stood in that conference room full of bishops in Chicago – had done in order to even get us in that room: we told our story. And we did what our spiritual ancestor – the persistent widow in Luke's Gospel – did when confronted with the unjust judge: we kept coming back … again and again.

So that’s the blog I was going to write. To celebrate the power of story and persistence to work with the Holy Spirit to move the Episcopal Church from a time when our bishops had to be shamed into even talking to us to a time when every-bishop-save-one (Albany) in a jurisdiction with civil marriage equality signed a friend of the court brief calling for the repeal of DOMA (the so-called "Defense of Marriage Act") and an end to federal discrimination against married couples of the same sex.

And then today I woke up to the "breaking news" that Rob Portman – a conservative, Republican congressman from Ohio – had "come out" for marriage equality. In his op-ed in the Columbus Dispatch, Rep. Portman wrote:

"Knowing that my son is gay prompted me to consider the issue from another perspective: that of a dad who wants all three of his kids to lead happy, meaningful lives with the people they love, a blessing Jane and I have shared for 26 years.

I wrestled with how to reconcile my Christian faith with my desire for Will to have the same opportunities to pursue happiness and fulfillment as his brother and sister. Ultimately, it came down to the Bible’s overarching themes of love and compassion and my belief that we are all children of God."

Ultimately, he made the decision for equality not in spite of his faith but because of it – but it was "knowing that my son is gay" that prompted him to open his heart and change his mind.

And so I’m glad I waited until today to sit down and write the blog on marriage equality Elisabeth Jacobs asked me to write last week. I’m delighted that there is yet-another-example of the power of speaking up, stepping out and showing up to bend that arc of history toward justice.

Yes, it would be nice if everybody figured out that "liberty and justice for all" really means ALL whether or not they have a gay kid. AND ... when they do figure it out ... we say thank you. Not only because our mothers brought us up right... but because [a] it's the right thing to do and [b] because we know they're getting slammed from the other side. So do the right thing. Make your mother proud. Do what I did and call Rob Portman's office and leave a message and thank him. Seriously. Go. Do it. Now: 202-224-3353

And then invite others to go and do likewise. Because this is yet another way of standing up, showing up and speaking out with that great cloud of witnesses – including our Patron Saint "The Persistent Widow" – determined to come back again and again until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.

 - SUSAN RUSSELL +


The Rev. Canon Susan Russell has served as Integrity's President and is currently the convener of Claiming the Blessing, a national collaborative ministry focused on the full inclusion of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender baptized into the Episcopal Church. She is also a founding member of the Human Rights Campaign’s Religion Council and a regular contributor to the Huffington Post's religion forum. Her personal blog may be found at An Inch at a Time.