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by Ken Sehested

        I was planning an abbreviated edition of “Signs of the Times” to allow time this week for other projects. The Pulse nightclub butchery, in a location named by many of its patrons as a “sanctuary,” sent us all tumbling into ravaging emotions of grief, horror, anger and despair.

        I’m not alone in the work of attempting to write my way out of such despondence. (See “Hate crime vs. terrorism: How our language highlights or disguises violence.”)

by Ken Sehested

        By now you know about the judicial lenience given by California Judge Aaron Persky to Stanford student Brock Turner for raping an unconscious woman at a campus party. You may also know about the absolutely clueless letter read to the judge by the student’s father.

        And you were probably shocked to learn that a Vanderbilt University athlete, convicted of the same crime under similar circumstances, is facing 15-25 years behind bars. Turner got 6 months. One of the two is African American, the other white.

by Hillary Brownsmith

        The Body of Christ has seen queer folks angry. That anger is warranted. The church as the purveyor of a lot of violence against the queer community should witness that anger and make efforts to understand it. But I think the church also needs to see queer folks in our grief for the loss we experienced when we learned that the church is rarely the safe space it should be. The church may not have earned our vulnerability but it needs to bear witness to our grief for there to be true reconciliation.

        That being said, I want to share with you my personal story of grief and then, in the spirit of this month, I want to talk to you about pride.

by Ken Sehested

            A decade or so ago I served on the board of an organization connecting the work of the several “welcoming and affirming” organizations within various denominations. At one meeting, as part of a self-assessment of the movement, one admitted that the “t” in “lgbt” was still not exactly welcomed at the table. The admission brought nods of acknowledgment around the room.

            Going further back in time, partly for personal confession, when in the early ‘90s the Baptist Peace Fellowship board first began intentional conversation on questions of sexual orientation, an initial draft of a resolution used the word transgendered and I, among others, had never heard it before.

by Ken Sehested

        On this, my 65th birthday, I’ve made a new vow. From here on, whenever some public figure says “we need more boots on the ground” in any of our nation’s 134 theaters of conflict, I shall write them to say,

        “Sir/Madame (bloodlust increasingly an equal-opportunity villainy), please come out from behind the dishonesty of your words: When you advocate for more “boots on the ground,” have the courage to say “we need more of your sons and daughters.”

Shortly after President Barack Obama’s historic visit to Cuba, Rev. Eduardo Gonzalez, pastor of Iglesia Enmanuel in Ciego de Avila, Cuba, wrote a letter to his congregation’s “partner,” Northminster Church in Monroe, Louisiana, and copied others here in the US who have visited. Here is the text, along with a brief response of my own.

         “Dear brothers and sisters

         “For many years our brothers and sisters from Northminster Church have been asked by their fellow citizens what kind of mission work they come to Cuba to do. It has been hard for their inquirers to understand that they do not come to build schools, because we have schools and education, available for everyone, that they do not come to do medical work, because we have free medical service, that they do not come to evangelize, in the traditional sense of the word, because we have pastors and preachers that can do that.