Arts & Entertainment
Leading the way
Local Methodist church hopes to change denominational law on marriage
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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Uncloseted Media published this interview on July 7.
By SPENCER MACNAUGHTON, ISABEL STOKES, and BELLA SAYEGH | After appearing on the 11th season of “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” the first season of “Canada’s Drag Race: Canada vs. the World,” the sixth season of “RuPaul’s All Stars” and now the 11th season of “All Stars,” Silky Nutmeg Ganache, known by many as the Reverend, is undoubtedly a legend.
Born and raised in Moss Point, Miss., Ganache bears all in this episode of “UNCLOSETED with Spencer Macnaughton.” She speaks about her relationship with gender, her 100-pound weight loss, what it’s like living as a queer person of color in a red state and why she’s calling on allies to stand up for the trans community.
Patrons enjoyed a night out at the popular LGBTQ venue Crush Dance Bar on Friday, July 3.
(Washington Blade photos by Landon Shackelford)
Theater
‘My Favorite Sociopath’ debuts at Shepherdstown’s CATF
Gay playwright Aurin Squire’s take on D.C. journalism in the ‘90s
‘My Favorite Sociopath’
Contemporary American Theater Festival
July 10-Aug. 2
Shepherdstown, W.Va.
Catf.org
Discernment. It’s a thing some people have, explains playwright Aurin Squire, especially when you’re gay or Black in America (Squire is both).
“You instinctively know when the mob is teaming up for the best interests of the powers that be. You can feel it in the air.”
In his sharp new satire “My Favorite Sociopath,” Squire writes about life experiences but set in a different time and place: It’s the 1990s, early days of the 24-hour news cycle, and three ambitious journalism students are pursuing success in D.C.
And now, Squire’s play, along with other new works, are making their world premieres at the annual Contemporary American Theater Festival (CATF) at Shepherd University in historic, queer-friendly Shepherdstown, W.Va. (just a 90-minute drive from D.C.).
“All of my plays are queer in some way,” says Squire, 46. “This one touches on harmless and dangerous lies. The characters are on the spectrum sexually, and it’s interesting how all that falls out.”
And he’s given it a lot of thought.
“Already as a kid, it seemed to me that the rage against rap music and sex was coming from closeted people resisting their own urges and temptations. For me, it was interesting to see a witch hunt led by witches. Queer people can always call out a lie.”
Since September, Squire has also been working with a TV show about the tech industry set in Silicon Valley. He says, “It seems the general flow of the tech industry is that humanity and civilization is finished and it’s just about accumulating as many goods as possible before everything collapses. In fact, those who are profiting actually agree. But for those who disagree, they believe the solution is to build bigger gates, but activists believe we can stop this”
Yet, he’s learned from folks associated with the show. “Many say the quickest way to divorce yourself from any responsibility or regulations — smash and grab. Otherwise, you have to stop and think and regulate your desires for greed and power”
Squire possesses a penchant for pithy titles. He laughs, explaining the first thing he wrote as a student at Juilliard was “Obama-ology,” the comedy with contemporary message. While a lot of people liked the name, it didn’t necessarily vibe with the author. He concedes that he chooses names based on “easy to remember” and titles that won’t be easy to lose as a file.
Another is “Defacing Michael Jackson,” a coming-of-age dramedy set in rural Florida in 1984, specifically Squire’s native town Opa-locka, Miami, a fantastical place famed for its fanciful Moorish revival architecture.
Living in the shadow of exotic structures, he wasn’t particularly fazed. Squire says “It wasn’t until returning to visit after my freshman year at Northwestern University in Chicago that I realized how weird it was: When you grow up in a place, you take surroundings for granted no matter how over the top.”
Now based in New York (where for two happy years, 2017-2019, he shared digs with drag king Murry Hill), Squire returns frequently to Miami to be with family, but this summer has been filled with both work and travel.
Currently, he’s in Shepherdstown with CATF shaping up “My Favorite Sociopath.” Later this summer he will travel to South Africa for research, followed by a silent writing retreat in Santa Fe, N.M.
Much of Squire’s work reflects the Latino, African, Caribbean, African-American, and Jewish cultures he grew up around in South Florida.
When asked if today’s winds of anti-multiculturalism worry him, he replies, “No, because that’s going to pass. Most people don’t like, people are seeing the negative results of it, and the young people coming up despise it. White male gamers were tricked momentarily through the algorithms into voting against their own interests and they’re now seeing how it’s not working out for them.
“Conservatives always try to stop progress and eventually they always lose. It’s just a question of where we’ll be in the middle of the end of civilization before that happens. I’d like to hope we can turn the ship around before then.”
In addition to “My Favorite Sociopath,” CATF summer season features three other world premieres (Lisa D’Amour’s comedy “The Smoker,” “Refugee Rhapsody” by Yussef El Guindi, “Best Line Wins: A Play Inspired by the Improvised Lives of Elaine May & Mike Nichols” by Beth Kander) and “¡VOS!” by Christina Pumariega.
CATF runs from July 10-Aug. 2 in three venues on the Shepherd University campus: Frank Center, Marinoff Theater, and Studio 112.
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