Two Must-Reads

From Timothy Kincaid and Jim Burroway at Box Turtle Bulletin.

The first, from Kincaid, about building bridges with Christians. It's strategic, and makes a lot of sense.

Wendy Gritter of New Directions is seeking to increase communication and decrease hostility between the Christian community and the gay community. While I do not see these as necessarily exclusive communities, it is unquestionable that conservative Christians and gay people are to some extent at war with each other.

Towards the goal of healing, Wendy came up with the concept of a synchroblog, a time in which everyone would focus on their perspectives about such communication. She chose today, the Wednesday of Pride Week, for this effort. So today, a couple dozen bloggers with various Christian or gay perspectives will be participating in this joint conversation and Wendy invited me to join them.

Kincaid goes on to give his position. It's a good, and thought-provoking, read. Realizing full well that I am one of the angrier posters on gay issues (although in my own defense, I do try to maintain a relatively moderate tone and not go into shrill mode -- I have this thing about factual accuracy, you see, although my diction is sometimes blunt), I strongly support what's being proposed here.

Burroway's comments are more tactical:

About the White House cocktail party on June 29:

But a cocktail party? I can’t imagine that any self-respecting gay person would agree to go to a cocktail party at this stage in our difficult relationship with the current administration. . .

The seeds for my turnaround were planted when I finished that sentence:

…although I have to concede that House and Senate Republicans, even some of the most conservative ones, have taken the White House up on similar invitations.

Burroway points out something that I hadn't known and that radically changes my thinking on this event:

The third argument concerns His Friendly Gays themselves, and builds on the much-hated image of “A-Gays” drinking and schmoozing and not getting much done. That’s a hard image to knock down, but we do have to remember that in a town like Washington, D.C., relationships are formed and messages put across over exactly these kinds of activities. This is true in D.C. much moreso than in anywhere else, where these events are typically little more than non-work social hours.

And as for His Friendly Gays, it appears the gathering will be much broader than that. Some of those invited include some of the administration’s harsher critics on LGBT issues. One of those who will be there is Lt. Colonel Victor Fehrenbach, who is about to be fired from the Air Force for being gay. He’ll be there as a guest of the Servicemember’s Legal Defense Network. The invite list isn’t limited to those from inside the Beltway, which is exactly what’s needed to punch through the Presidential bubble. They aren’t the get-along-to-go-along usual suspects, although I’m sure some of them will be there also.

Knowing that it's not going to be the A Gays only makes a big difference in my thinking on this, because it's the non-As that need to be heard.

I'm still not happy with Obama's lack of support for gay issues, and to be honest I don't expect a big turn-around after something like this, but frankly, if increments are all you've got, then use the increments.