Walking With Integrity: The Importance of Telling Our Stories

Thursday, March 25, 2010

The Importance of Telling Our Stories

In the award winning documentary VOICES OF WITNESS, the stories of the LGBT faitful in the Episcopal Church, Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire said, "It is time we stop talking about being gay and start talking about God. That way, they will know, that the Jesus you and I know, is the Jesus they know."

He is right!

From a Letter to the Editor of the New York Times titled "An Openly Gay Bishop, and a Church’s Message" published March 23, 2010 in response to an article titled “Episcopalians Confirm a Second Gay Bishop” (news article, March 18)

"As an evangelical Christian, I once held the attitude that heterosexuality was the only sexual orientation sanctioned by God. But I have since met hundreds of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people of all faiths who in their hearts and minds find great joy and peace in their spirituality. Their spiritual experience is as real as mine — and perhaps more profound considering how some people work so hard to turn them away."

Read the entire letter here.

Telling your stories does change hearts and minds. Keep it up!

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Blog Faerie Commandments

Thou shalt be a current Integrity member; for as the
Psalmist says, “No good thing will YHWH withhold from those who walk with integrity.”
Thou shalt post legitimate news and public opinion
from recognized sources; for few blogs are fonts of true wisdom.
Thou shalt not post gossip; for it is serious sin that nobody preaches about anymore.
Thou shalt not include thine own opinions in posts; but thou mayest post thine own opinions using the comments feature.
Thou shalt not post hate speech nor engage in personal attacks against thy neighbor—neither in posts nor in comments. Love thy neighbor as thyself.
Though shalt post items that emphasize the LGBT-positive side of issues whenever possible; for there are more than enough blogs devoted to denegrating us.
Though shalt mostly post items dealing with LGBT
equality in The Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion; but thou mayest post some LGBT secular news and LGBT news from other faith traditions.
Thou shalt not post copyrighted material in its
entirety; for it is abhorrent to the United States government. Rather, thou shalt post an excerpt or summary with a link to the original source.
Thou shalt cite the original source (author,
title, affiliation, publisher, date) of a post whenever possible; thus may readers direct their rants and raves in the right direction.
Thou shalt be wise with the quantity of material thou posteth to the blog; for the reader unsubscription rate is inversely proportional to the number of daily posts.
Thou shalt replace shaped quotation marks and
apostrophies (“ ” ’) with straight equivalents (" " ') whenever possible; for shaped characters are not supported by all e-mail servers.
Though mayest embed YouTube and Google video clips in a post but thou shalt also provide a hyperlink to the clip; for the clip itself may be stripped out of the e-mail version.
Thou shalt include graphics with thine posts when possible; for plain text is really boring.