Respect

I created this image last year using Paint Shop Pro This phrase just popped into my head and I felt it fitting with regards to LGBT rights as people. Mickie Newton-Carline Doncaster

Pride & Community

Went to my first World Pride event in London recently – not so much a sense of a community but rather lots of interconnected communities.

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I walked with pride on the road I shared with you, You gave me those glances that broke my backbone. I wonder how will I ever be able to take that road, The road that doesn’t exist for me anymore.

Questionnaire

I like the website. I think communities sounds better than community, which suggests a homogenous whole rather than recognising and valuing the diversity within. At the same time the idea of a community/ies sounds appealing – a place to have a home. It is hard to feel the community – it feels nebulous at times and yet when one goes to events which are designed for LGBT like Pride or the recent gay fringe festival in east london, the community is visible and this feels reaffirming. I think this community/ies like all, share as many differences as similarities, perhaps the problems start to occur if one sees community as being about sameness. If the communities come from anywhere perhaps it has been about sharing adversity and then valuing ourselves and our experiences when so many others do not. In a shadowy way, the communities have been there as a reminder, a recognition and a validation of self....

Blessings and Marriages

It has been quite a rough couple of months for me at church as there have been one or two occasions when I have wished the ground would swallow me up. The faith in God that I was so certain about a year ago and the sexual identity that was so preciously defined by myself over the past forty odd years (lesbian at last) have been brought into question. Of course as a liberal politically I would go for gay marriage and not just blessings but my God appears to not be ready for this. The literalness of the Bible is what we are talking about and it comes down to equal opportunities in this day and age when in Biblical times we lived in a very different society. The Bible is the foundation of my faith but I choose not to be too literal about everything and do accept that moral boundaries that it teaches are good but are also based in culture from so long ago. It has been really tough over the past year or two. When will we learn to love our neighbour? Peace is the most important thing and if we don’t live in peace then we will lose...