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Leading the way

Local Methodist church hopes to change denominational law on marriage

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Palm Sunday at Foundry United Methodist Church. (Blade photo by Michael Key)

A Washington church hopes a campaign using video testimonials from gay and lesbian Methodists will help push through a resolution sanctioning marriage equality in the church later this month, reversing more than 30 years of anti-gay sentiment in the nation’s third largest denomination.

DoorsToEquality.org, described as a national, laity-led campaign for marriage equality, uses personalized stories and grassroots advocacy to encourage church leadership to revise what some are calling discriminatory language included in the Book of Discipline, according to organizers at Foundry United Methodist Church.

The book, which lays out the tenets of the faith, prohibits United Methodist ministers from performing same-sex marriages and churches from hosting them. Foundry leaders and campaign supporters say they don’t want a sweeping change to the tenets, rather, a compromise.

“Our resolution was what we thought was the most modest resolution that we could present, which is simply where marriage is legal, our clergy can conduct them and they can be held in their church buildings,” says Rev. Dean Snyder, senior pastor of Foundry.

The campaign, introduced in February, comes as delegates from across the globe prepare to attend the church’s General Conference, a denomination-wide planning meeting, later this month.

Snyder, who’s straight, believes the simple resolution could be a first step for the church, likely to bend further as more states legalize marriage.

“If that happens, four years from now we believe a resolution would pass allowing all churches to conduct the ceremonies,” he says.

For now, organizers are focusing on influencing some of the 1,000 delegates set to gather in Tampa from April 24 through May 4 to discuss church policy and vote on any revisions. That push includes building awareness through Twitter, Facebook and traditional press, as well as calling delegates and holding coffee-shop discussions.

But perhaps the campaign’s most impactful arm is its most visible one: a series of YouTube videos featuring gay and lesbian Methodists sharing their experiences with building families, coming out and the importance of their church and faith in their lives.

In one video, soft music plays as a transgender man describes a warm childhood relationship with the church and its painful end.

“As I got older, into middle and high school, I started to feel somewhat alienated because of my sexual orientation also just my gender expression and so I kind of walked away from church,” Ty Trapps tells the camera. “From there, I just sort of searched knowing that I wanted to go back to a church but not really finding the right fit.”

In another video, a lesbian couple embraces as they describe feeling invisible without the church’s recognition of their year-old marriage.

The women close the video shouting in unison “As Methodists, we believe that unity of love will open the doors to equality.”

“One of the things we strongly believe is that personal stories are very powerful here,” says Ann Brown Birkel, convener of Foundry’s LGBT inclusion advocacy group. “We need to connect with these people in parts of the country who don’t think they know any gay people. The more you personalize an issue, the easier it is to understand.”

If the campaign is successful, it will bring to an end an anti-gay doctrine that’s persisted since the early ‘70s.

At the time, “there was a group of bishops who knew that they had gay pastors serving in their areas, who suffered from the homophobia that much of society suffered from and they began to become worried that their service would be a problem,” Snyder says, adding the result was the 1972 statement that homosexuality was not compatible with Christian teaching.

The topic has since become the perennial subject of debate at the conference, with delegates voting related resolutions down every time, according to Wayne Rhodes, director of communications at the General Board of Church and Society for the United Methodist Church. The language persists, but Rhodes says there’s evidence Snyder and his supporters’ cause could have a shot.

“It has been getting closer and closer in the votes,” Rhodes says.

Surprisingly, a major hurdle has come as the faith spreads. A large percentage of the church’s expansion is in Africa, where conservative attitudes about homosexuality persist, Rhodes says.

“They get more delegates and if they are not in favor of homosexuality-positive language, they have more votes with which to defeat it,” says Rhodes. “But this all started long before Africa had as many delegates.”

Indeed, Snyder estimated much of the ground-level opposition is longstanding and is linked to baby boomers raised in a more conservative era.

Among younger people, however, Snyder said attitudes are more liberal. That combined with pressure as smaller denominations like the Episcopalians and Lutherans become more gay friendly could help trigger change.

“Larger organizations often change much slower,” Snyder says. “But when it changes, the larger the institution is, the more impact it has on the society.”

Foundry has always had a higher-than-average number of LGBT members, which church staff attributes to its location near Dupont Circle and 14th Street. The church has been “open and affirming” for years.

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Theater

Round House explores serious issues related to privilege

‘A Jumping-Off Point’ is absorbing, timely, and funny

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Cristina Pitter (Miriam) and Nikkole Salter (Leslie) in ‘A Jumping-Off Point’ at Round House Theatre. (Photo by Margot Schulman Photography)

‘A Jumping-Off Point’
Through May 5
Round House Theatre
4545 East-West Highway, Bethesda, Md.
$46-$83
Roundhousetheatre.org

In Inda Craig-Galván’s new play “A Jumping-Off Point,” protagonist Leslie Wallace, a rising Black dramatist, believes strongly in writing about what you know. Clearly, Craig-Galván, a real-life successful Black playwright and television writer, adheres to the same maxim. Whether further details from the play are drawn from her life, is up for speculation.

Absorbing, timely, and often funny, the current Round House Theatre offering explores some serious issues surrounding privilege and who gets to write about what. Nimbly staged and acted by a pitch perfect cast, the play moves swiftly across what feels like familiar territory without being the least bit predictable. 

After a tense wait, Leslie (Nikkole Salter) learns she’s been hired to be showrunner and head writer for a new HBO MAX prestige series. What ought to be a heady time for the ambitious young woman quickly goes sour when a white man bearing accusations shows up at her door. 

The uninvited visitor is Andrew (Danny Gavigan), a fellow student from Leslie’s graduate playwriting program. The pair were never friends. In fact, he pressed all of her buttons without even trying. She views him as a lazy, advantaged guy destined to fail up, and finds his choosing to dramatize the African American Mississippi Delta experience especially annoying. 

Since grad school, Leslie has had a play successfully produced in New York and now she’s on the cusp of making it big in Los Angeles while Andrew is bagging groceries at Ralph’s. (In fact, we’ll discover that he’s a held a series of wide-ranging temporary jobs, picking up a lot of information from each, a habit that will serve him later on, but I digress.) 

Their conversation is awkward as Andrew’s demeanor shifts back and forth from stiltedly polite to borderline threatening. Eventually, he makes his point: Andrew claims that Leslie’s current success is entirely built on her having plagiarized his script. 

This increasingly uncomfortable set-to is interrupted by Leslie’s wisecracking best friend and roommate Miriam who has a knack for making things worse before making them better. Deliciously played by Cristina Pitter (whose program bio describes them as “a queer multi-spirit Afro-indigenous artist, abolitionist, and alchemist”), Miriam is the perfect third character in Craig-Galván’s deftly balanced three-hander. 

Cast members’ performances are layered. Salter’s Leslie is all charm, practicality, and controlled ambition, and Gavigan’s Andrew is an organic amalgam of vulnerable, goofy, and menacing. He’s terrific. 

The 90-minute dramedy isn’t without some improbable narrative turns, but fortunately they lead to some interesting places where provoking questions are representation, entitlement, what constitutes plagiarism, etc. It’s all discussion-worthy topics, here pleasingly tempered with humor. 

New York-based director Jade King Carroll skillfully helms the production. Scenes transition smoothly in large part due to a top-notch design team. Scenic designer Meghan Raham’s revolving set seamlessly goes from Leslie’s attractive apartment to smart cafes to an HBO writers’ room with the requisite long table and essential white board. Adding to the graceful storytelling are sound and lighting design by Michael Keck and Amith Chandrashaker, respectively. 

The passage of time and circumstances are perceptively reflected in costume designer Moyenda Kulemeka’s sartorial choices: heels rise higher, baseball caps are doffed and jackets donned.

“A Jumping-Off Point” is the centerpiece of the third National Capital New Play Festival, an annual event celebrating new work by some of the country’s leading playwrights and newer voices. 

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Nightlife

Ed Bailey brings Secret Garden to Project GLOW festival

An LGBTQ-inclusive dance space at RFK this weekend

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Ed Bailey's set at last year's Project Glow. (Photo courtesy Bailey)

When does a garden GLOW? When it’s run by famed local gay DJ Ed Bailey.

This weekend, music festival Project GLOW at RFK Festival Grounds will feature Bailey’s brainchild the Secret Garden, a unique space just for the LGBTQ community that he launched in 2023.

While Project GLOW, running April 27-28, is a stage for massive electronic DJ sets in a large outdoor space, Secret Garden is more intimate, though no less adrenaline-forward. He’s bringing the nightclub to the festival. The garden is a dance area that complements the larger stages, but also stands on its own as a draw for festival-goers. Its focus is on DJs that have a presence and following in the LGBTQ audience world.

“The Secret Garden is a showcase for what LGBTQ nightlife, and nightclubs in general, are all about,” he says. “True club DJs playing club music for people that want to dance in a fun environment that is high energy and low stress. It’s the cool party inside the bigger party.”

Project GLOW launched in 2022. Bailey connected with the operators after the first event, and they discussed Bailey curating his own space for 2023. “They were very clear that they wanted me to lean into the vibrant LGBTQ nightlife of D.C. and allow that community to be very visibly a part of this area.”

Last year, club icon Kevin Aviance headlined the Secret Garden. The GLOW festival organizers loved the its energy from last year, and so asked Bailey to bring it back again, with an entire year to plan.

This year, Bailey says, he is “bringing in more D.C. nightlife legends.” Among those are DJ Sedrick, “a DJ and entertainer legend. He was a pivotal part of Tracks nightclub and is such a dynamic force of entertainment,” says Bailey. “I am excited for a whole new audience to be able to experience his very special brand of DJing!”

Also, this year brings in Illustrious Blacks, a worldwide DJ duo with roots in D.C.; and “house music legends” DJs Derrick Carter and DJ Spen.

Bailey is focusing on D.C.’s local talent, with a lineup including Diyanna Monet, Strikestone!, Dvonne, Baronhawk Poitier, THABLACKGOD, Get Face, Franxx, Baby Weight, and Flower Factory DJs KS, Joann Fabrixx, and PWRPUFF. 

 Secret Garden also brings in performers who meld music with dance, theater, and audience interactions for a multi-sensory experience.

Bailey is an owner of Trade and Number Nine, and was previously an owner of Town Danceboutique. Over the last 35 years, Bailey owned and operated more than 10 bars and clubs in D.C. He has an impressive resume, too. Since starting in 1987, he’s DJ’d across the world for parties and nightclubs large and intimate. He says that he opened “in concert for Kylie Minogue, DJed with Junior Vasquez, played giant 10,000-person events, and small underground parties.” He’s also held residencies at clubs in Atlanta, Miami, and here in D.C. at Tracks, Nation, and Town. 

With Secret Garden, Bailey and GLOW aim to bring queer performers into the space not just for LGBTQ audiences, but for the entire music community to meet, learn about, and enjoy. While they might enjoy fandom among queer nightlife, this Garden is a platform for them to meet the entirety of GLOW festival goers.

Weekend-long Project GLOW brings in headliners and artists from EDM and electronic music, with big names like ILLENIUM, Zedd, and  Rezz. In all, more than 50 artists will take the three stages at the third edition of Project GLOW, presented by Insomniac (Electric Daisy Carnival) and Club Glow (Echostage, Soundcheck).

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Out & About

Washington Improv Theatre hosts ‘The Queeries’

Event to celebrate queer DMV talent and pop culture camp

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The Washington Improv Theatre, along with the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs and the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington DC, will team up to host “The Queeries!” on Friday, April 26 at 9:30 p.m. at Studio Theatre.

The event will celebrate Queer DMV talent and pop culture camp. With a mixture of audience-submitted nominations and blatantly undemocratically declared winners, “The Queeries!” mimics LGBTQ life itself: unfair, but far more fun than the alternative.

The event will be co-hosted by Birdie and Butchie, who have invited some of their favorite bent winos, D.C. “D-listers,” former Senate staffers, and other stars to sashay down the lavender carpet for the selfie-strewn party of the year. 

Tickets are just $15 and can be purchased on WITV’s website

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