A Welcoming Congregation

What does it mean to be a ‘Welcoming Congregation”?
To be ‘Welcoming’ means to be intentionally inclusive towards bisexual, gay, lesbian and transgender people. One way to accomplish this is by participating in the Unitarian Universalist Association’s “Welcoming Congregation” workshop series. This is an introspective and interactive educational journey into the issues surrounding the lives of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. The yearlong program developed by the Unitarian Universalist Association is intended to educate the congregation and community about how to be purposeful in its welcome and outreach to the LGBT community. Grosse Pointe Unitarian Church began the Welcoming Congregation program on February 7, 2010. It was concluded March 6, 2011 with a congregational vote to become officially recognized as ‘Welcoming’. Official recognition as a Welcoming Congregation allows churches to be acknowledged as deliberately open safe spaces for bisexual, gay, lesbian and transgender persons; to take positions on oppression in our larger communities, and to accomplish outreach.
During the year of our program, we also designed and constructed a fully compliant ADA gender-neutral restroom.

How does being a Welcoming Congregation benefit me, a "straight"?
Confronting prejudices in a non-judgmental, non-threatening group allows us to explore their origins and gain knowledge. Understanding our prejudices leads to spiritual growth and congregational unity.

Now that we’ve become a Welcoming Congregation, what next?
Though we’re one of the later congregations to complete this process, it will never be too late to support and promote awareness, compassion, understanding, and acceptance. Continuing education about others and the issues they face is truly a life-long endeavor! It has helped us to become newly united and focused in fulfilling a vision and commitment to build connections, advocacy and an on-going atmosphere of being deliberately welcoming towards LGBT individuals among us and in our community at large.

In order to keep our momentum fresh, former members of our Welcoming Congregation steering committee, our new minister, Rev. Shelley Page, and many new faces have come together to begin to plan what comes next.

A great tool for UU congregations to use to keep the welcome alive is available from Religious Institute, Faithful Voices on Sexuality and Healing founded by UU minister Rev. Debra Haffner, www.religiousinstitute.org. There we found, “Full Inclusion: A Congregational Self-Assessment” covering preaching and worship, education, administration and operation, and overall environment. A first rate tool for self-evaluation, it is also a rich source of ideas for keeping our welcome authentic and alive. Here's their link: http://www.religiousinstitute.org/acting-out-loud/full-inclusion-a-congr....

We are actively using “Full Inclusion: A Congregational Assessment” as our guide in order to analyze what we are currently doing and how we want to expand and add best practices in order to achieve our goal. We have new members who may not have had the opportunity to participate in the initial offering of workshops, so we will include programming that will help them become informed participants. We have various other resources plus a collection of DVD’s that were part of the original program still available for sign-out.

We will be developing new strategies for work in the area of social justice and LGBT Rights in Michigan through the Michigan Unitarian Universalist Social Justice Network. Read more about MUUSJN at http://www.uujustice.org/

With renewed enthusiasm, we are looking forward to an exciting journey, and are determined to avoid falling into the ‘pit of complacency’!
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Clippings of Opinions in the Press

From LEONARD PITTS JR., in the Detroit Free Press, March 2010
I Am Gay

Three little words.
That’s what keeps bringing us back to this intersection of low comedy and pathos. Three words, none longer than three letters — and yet some of us still find them nearly impossible to say.
Three words: I am gay.
If he had been able to say those words, who knows what Roy Ashburn might be today? But we already know what his inability has made him: an object of ridicule.
Ashburn is a Republican state senator in California. He has always been rather reliably anti-gay in his law-making, voting against virtually every gay-friendly piece of legislation, from marriage equality to a simple motion to set aside a day in honor of Harvey Milk, a gay political icon who was assassinated in 1978.
So, naturally, we’re all shocked — shocked, I tell you, shocked! — to learn that Ashburn himself is gay. This revelation came after he was arrested for drunken driving earlier this month. Turns out he had done his drinking at a gay bar. “I am gay,” he told a conservative radio host. As for his anti-gay record? He said he was just following the wishes of the people he served.
Because who wants a leader who thinks for himself?
Then there’s Eric Massa, a now former Democratic representative from New York. He stands accused of sexual harassment by a number of his male staffers who claim he groped them. It has since come to light that he faced similar accusations two decades ago when he was in the Navy.
Massa who, according to the Washington Post, shares a town- house with several unmarried male staffers, still declines to speak the three little words, but he confirmed the latest charges in a bizarre interview with Glenn Beck on Fox News. He also tried to portray it as nonsexual. “Not only did I grope a male staffer, I tickled him until he couldn’t breathe and then four guys jumped on top of me. It was my 50th birthday.”
Oh. Well, that explains it, right? When we turn 50, all us manly men like nothing better than to jump atop one another and tickle ourselves silly. Clint Eastwood, Bruce Willis, Alan Greenspan ... all the manly men do it.
Sorry. As I said, low comedy. And pathos.
Because for all the laughter these men evoke with their lies to self and tortured rationalizations to us, I find I have also, hidden in the breath between ha and ha, a certain bitter- sweet pity. There’s just something ineffably pathetic in the inability of these middle-age men, in the Year of Our Lord 2010, post-“Will & Grace,” post-Ellen DeGeneres, post-Barney Frank, Elton John, Meredith Baxter and Neil Patrick Harris, to simply stand up and say those three simple words.
Perhaps that sounds judgmental. Perhaps it is.
But if so, it is a judgment fueled by the cowardice and mendacity of those who lack the courage to be what they are, by anger at the hypocrisy of a Roy Ashburn willing to sell out his own for 40 shekels of political approval from those who would hate him if they only knew, and, ultimately, by the realization that we have been at this intersection too many times before.
So you have to wonder: How many Massas and Ashburns, how many James Wests, Ted Haggards, Mark Foleys and Larry Craigs do we have to see, how many shocked spouses and embarrassed children do we have to endure, how many lies, alibis and justifications do we need to hear, before we accept the obvious — that gay is not a choice, gay is not a sin, gay is not a shame. Gay simply is.
And their inability to say, “I am gay,” doesn’t just speak poorly of gays and lesbians.
Because if what we see here at the intersection of low comedy and pathos indicts certain of them for cowardice and mendacity, you could argue that it indicts the rest of us for much the same thing.
After all, their inability to say what they are only reflects our inability to accept it.
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