Welcome Rev. Davidson!

I am excited to introduce a colleague of mine as LGBTQ friendly! Rev. Sharon Davidson of the Unity Church of Tri-Cities has been added to the sidebar of our weblog and our webpage as a friend of PFLAG Tri-Cities!

Thank you Rev. Davidson and thank you Unity Church of the Tri-Cities for demonstrating God's all-inclusive love!

Rev. Sharon Davidson, Minister
Unity Church of the Tri-Cities
703 South Roan Street
Johnson City, TN 37601
975-9159
e-mail

Why Not Single Payer?

On my way home last night I was listening to Amy Goodman on DemocracyNow! (Thank Odin for WETS). She was interviewing a couple of doctors who were fed up with the American Medical Association and critical of President Obama for slamming the brakes on single payer health insurance. Check the transcript.

Dr. Chris McCoy: It’s the fact that the AMA’s sole focus in the last ten years on Capitol Hill has always been, you know, the SGR and physician reimbursement, to the point where they—when they meet with members of Congress, that’s all they ever talk about. They aren’t talking about public health issues, and they aren’t talking about what we need to do for patients. It’s, you know, what can we do for getting providers paid enough...

It is time for these physicians to be ashamed. Our healthcare system is not working.

Dr. Quentin Young: America’s difficulties, indeed the crisis in healthcare, is due to one big thing: the multi-payer and private insurance companies. Everybody knows that. Obama knows that. He said he was for single payer not that many years ago, and if he was starting from scratch, was the way he put it, he would go with it. Well, he is starting from scratch, and the failure to grasp the nettle and really give America the kind of healthcare reform system it deserves is very painful and very dangerous.

Not all physicians are against single payer insurance.

Dr. Quentin Young: Mr. Obama would be wisest to challenge the American people to support single payer, which, I might point out, America’s doctors, in a poll in the University of Indiana last year, April, showed 60 percent of our doctors now support a tax system that provides for healthcare. Doctors have learned there’s something worse than government; it’s called corporations. And we must trade on that insight. And the American public wants it. So, why is there this hesitancy and this currying favor with the reactionaries who talk about socialized medicine? It’s nonsense. It’s American medicine, and it can only grow and serve the people if we have a single-payer system.

Single payer is NOT government provided health care. It is government provided health insurance, like Medicare.

Amy Goodman: We have to break. And when you say, Dr. Quentin Young, single payer, you mean government paying for healthcare, not providing the healthcare.

Dr. Quentin Young: That’s very important. A private system of delivery, such as we have, hospitals and doctors, and primarily in the private sector, but a government-sponsored insurance plan, which works so marvelously in Medicare. And we have to just make it universal, and we’ll get out of this morass.

Find out more:

• Citizens Alliance for National Healthcare Insurance
• Physicians for a National Health Program
• Single Payer: Answers and Facts About Healthcare for All
• Animated explanation
• Take Action

HVUUC Welcomes ALL!!

The Holston Valley Unitarian Universalist Church is going through the process of education and awareness regarding becoming a welcoming congregation. This is a great opportunity to connect with our UU friends and find out how we can work together in breaking the silence. Here is the information:

WELCOMING CONGREGATION NEWS

A Welcoming Congregation is a UU church that thoughtfully and intentionally welcomes and affirms all persons regardless of sexual identity or affectional preference. To create a truly accepting and affirming environment, we must first examine our own hearts and minds: our knowledge and beliefs, our biases and fears, our behaviors and practices. Over the next several months, we will offer a workshop series designed to educate, encourage self-awareness and stimulate discussion. The workshops build on one another, so attending them all would be ideal, but not required. (Don't stay away because you're afraid you can't come to them all.) There will also be movies with discussion afterwards. Bring a friend.

To get us started, here are the activities for the summer. Get out your calendars.


Jun 21 noon
Movie: For the Bible Tells Me So
Bring a sack lunch


Jun 24 (after Wed Night Supper)
Movie: For the Bible Tells Me So


Jul 18 5 PM (followed by Coffee House)
Workshop: The Common Elements of Oppression
Bring a potluck dish to share. Stay for Coffee House afterwards.


Jul 30 6-8 PM
Workshop: Gender Socialization and Homophobia


Aug 23 noon
Movie: Milk
Bring a sack lunch


Aug 26 (after Wed Night Supper)
Movie: Milk


Sessions will all be 2 hours or less. Please make plans to join us in a spirit of fellowship, growth and enlightenment. It will help us plan space and materials needs if you will let us know whether you plan to attend a session.

Questions? Need child care? Ready to RSVP? Call Kim Ray at 423-967-0196 or email Kim. As we begin this very important journey together, remember the words we hear each Sunday: "We do not have to think alike to love alike." Amen. Shalom. Blessed be.

Yeah, right.

Ahmadinejad told a crowd of tens of thousands of supporters Sunday that Iran's elections are "the soundest, the healthiest of their kind." And he told reporters his country had a free press, and people "can say whatever they like." (link)

From Despair to Hope

Special thanks to the Kingsport Times-News for their front page stories today. These stories will save lives. The first is a story about a woman who attempted suicide because she learned negative and harmful messages about her sexual orientation. It is a powerful story of hope.

Woman who attempted suicide in lake says rescuers 'saved someone's soul'

Despair and anger can drive you to places you thought you’d never go, but so can inner peace and acceptance. This is what Moriah May has learned in the year and a half since she drove her car into Fort Patrick Henry Lake the day after Christmas 2007.

May said she wasn’t thinking of suicide when she went to the lake. She was just seeking solace from emotional turmoil.

“I’ve always loved the outdoors. It helps me relax,” she said.

But that day, “I saw the water and just how quiet and soothing it looked, and I guess I wanted to be like the water and it drew me in. It’s peaceful, and that’s what I was looking for — peace. I thought that is what death would be like, the peace and the calm of the water.”

May, who was 21 at the time and had entered her second semester of college, had told her immediate family that fall that she is gay. While she said some family members were supportive, others were not. (Read More)

The second article features the work of PFLAG Tri-Cities:

PFLAG Working to Make Its Presence Known in the Tri-Cities

Celebrating its first year in existence, PFLAG has taken steps to let those in the gay and lesbian community know they have a voice and that they have support.

PFLAG Tri-Cities is a chapter of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, a national organization founded in 1972 to promote the health and well-being of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons, their families and friends.

One of their members said Moriah May’s experiences after she told family and friends she is gay are not uncommon. (Read More)

PFLAG Tri-Cities meets the third Thursday at 7 p.m. on the campus of ETSU. Our next meeting is June 18th. Here is contact information:

423-483-7129
webpage
weblog
Facebook
Twitter
On-line discussion group
e-mail
Myspace

Thanks again to Kevin Castle of the Kingsport Times-News for these important stories! Be sure to pick up a hard copy of the Times-News today.

Appalachia Service Project--Success!

We just returned from Mingo County, West Virginia. What a great week with the Appalachia Service Project! A sign of success? All of the youth said, "We gotta go back next year!" A lot of work. A lot of rain, but we managed to get some things done, make friendships, and to develop a deeper understanding about folks who live in different conditions than those of us who visited there.

Mingo County is one of the poorest counties in the United States.

The median income for a household in the county was $21,347, and the median income for a family was $26,581. Males had a median income of $31,660 versus $18,038 for females. The per capita income for the county was $12,445. About 25.90% of families and 29.70% of the population were below the poverty line, including 38.90% of those under age 18 and 18.60% of those age 65 or over.

The U.S. average is $41,994.

Yet the trains run on time sending out massive amounts of coal to power plants in the southeast.

One area resident says that Mingo County is the only place where the snow coming down is black. The coal dust and truck traffic have made her ashamed of where she has lived her entire life. Recently, a sister she had not seen for 38 years planned a visit. The reunion never happened: the road was too dangerous and the community too dirty.

There is a disconnect. Wealth, riches and power under the mountains, yet poverty for those who live in the mountains.

I did find enough down time to finish my book, Strange As This Weather Has Been by Ann Pancake. She writes beautifully about the people who live in these mountains and the hold the mountains have on the people. She writes how they struggle with coal, particularly the latest extraction technique, mountain top removal. Her main character, Lace, whose home is directly beneath a slurry fill from a removed mountain writes about the hold the mountains have on those who live in them:

...maybe it was something about the mountains' layers. Something about everything layered in them dead. All that once-live stuff, strange animals and plants, giant ferns and ancient trees, trapped down there for 250 million years, captured, crushed, and hard-squeezed into--power. That secret power underground, that sleepy force lying all around, contagious somehow, catching, setting off the power pulls on top, the trickery and thievery, the violence and the loss, the way power will fight for power. The power under here, I told myself, if it can cause all that, it must also put a hold on us. Not greed for coal, not that kind of hold, we'd never got the the profits from that. No. But just the pull, the draw, of so much power in the ground, and the kind of hold that makes. p. 312

Our week with ASP was not about mountain top removal. That is my interest. We were there to meet the people these mountains have cradled. These are intelligent, hard-working resourceful people who are facing conditions and forces far beyond what many of us face. We were there to do our little part to make homes dry and safe as best we can.

And of course, most importantly, to connect.

"Only connect," writes E.M. Forrester in his novel Howard's End.

Maybe we will make connections between turning on light switches in Johnson City and removing mountains in Appalachia. Maybe we can connect on the deeper level of a common humanity beyond the forces that wish to divide us for gain.

At the end of Ann Pancake's novel, she provides some websites regarding mountain top removal:

Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition
Appalachian Voices
Kentuckians for the Commonwealth
iLoveMountains.org
Center for the Rocky Mountain West

To find out more about poverty in Appalachia and how the Appalachia Service Project helps to raise consciousness and make connections, check this overview of poverty in Appalachia:

Fundamentally, Central Appalachia's problems stem from the fact that in an eighty-county area, 72% of the surface acreage and 89% of the mineral rights are absentee-owned. Historically much of this land has been greatly underassessed and undertaxed. As a result of this undertaxation, local municipalities have had very little revenue to finance adequate educational systems, construct and maintain water and sewage treatment facilities, provide for county landfills, roads, and basic health care.

A 1982 land study discovered that in the eighty-county area, the average tax per acre was $.90, and almost 25% of the land was taxed at less than $.25 per acre. In this same area, 75% of the owners of mineral rights paid less than $.25 per acre.

In twelve counties surveyed in eastern Kentucky, the average tax for minerals was 1/5 of a cent. In West Virginia, the study revealed that absentee corporate landowners paid 16% of the total property tax for the state, yet they owned 50% of the land and 75% of the mineral rights.

With 72% of the surface land owned by people outside the region, local residents must compete with each other and with businesses and municipalities for the balance of the land. Compounding the shortage of land are the rugged terrain, steep mountains, and narrow valleys. Often the only places available for home sites are the mountainsides and the flood plains, thereby complicating the issuance of septic permits and increasing the likelihood of flooding and landslides....

....The people of Appalachia are rallying to preserve the beauty of their land and to provide future generations with stable employment, public utilities, strong educational systems, safe housing, and affordable medical care. Mountain pride runs deep. Love of the land is what brought people here and love of the land is what brings those who have left back. We encourage you to come to Appalachia to enjoy the grandeur of the majestic mountains, to listen to the people who live here, to share their joys and struggles, and to experience first-hand the work of the Appalachia Service Project.

The Appalachia Service Project is not just for youth. Throughout the year, adults can volunteer with ASP including right here in the Tri-Cities.

Off to Appalachia

Actually, I am in Appalachia. But I am off to another part of Appalachia. Ten high school students and four adults including me are spending a week with the Appalachia Service Project in Mingo County, West Virginia.

I will be taking a computer break and check back with you upon my return on the 14th!

In the meantime, light a candle for our participants (Jim, Richard, Randall, John L., John S., Allison, Merrilee, Samantha, Dillon, Rion, Taylor, Kirby, Heidi, and Isaac) and for all those with whom we will connect.

I have been reading an excellent novel, Strange As This Weather Has Been by Ann Pancake. One reviewer called her the Steinbeck of Appalachia.

That is no exaggeration. She has created characters with real depth in this precisely paced story about West Virginia mountains and the price that is paid to get at the coal underneath them.

The Inquisition

I recently blogged about Dr. Robert Jensen and his new book All My Bones Shake. He has posted a piece adapted from his book called, The Inquisition:

One of the most surreal days of my adult life was spent sitting in a Presbyterian church in San Antonio, listening to several hundred church officials discuss the state of my soul.

Throughout my childhood I attended a Presbyterian church, trudging off to Sunday school as a youngster, then to church services when I got older. I don’t want to be overly dramatic, but this early experience with church was life-threatening—I was bored, nearly to death. My participation in this social ritual was decidedly not voluntary; I was told to do all this by my parents, which was not unusual in the world in which I grew up. Not surprisingly, I fled from church as soon as possible, intending never to look back.

Three decades later I decided to take another look...(Read More)

The Dilemma of Being Gay and Christian in Northeast Tennessee

I received an e-mail about a Christian gay couple who want to attend a church but are looking for one with a charismatic worship style. That is no easy find near our mountain.

We have had a number of lgbt people (and straight folks) attend our congregation because they know we are inclusive. Some have found a home with us. Others appreciate our inclusivity but our worship style is not one in which they are comfortable. We are Presbyterian after all (stand up, sit down, sing hymns). I do think we are kind of fun, though.

Here is the dilemma for those who are gay and Christian in East Tennessee. Do you attend a congregation that suits your worship style but regards you as a second-class citizen (or worse) or do you attend a congregation whose worship style isn't your cup of tea but affirms you as a person?

(I would choose the second option).

Most churches (in fact nearly all) have horrendous views regarding homosexuality (ie. "sinful sexual behavior and lifestyle rooted in man’s depravity.") The only congregations that are openly and publicly inclusive (in other words they say it) are the Holston Valley Unitarian Universalist Church and us.

If I am wrong, I will be the first to refer people to your congregation. I will be thrilled to list your congregation on the PFLAG website and blog as long as you can affirm the PFLAG vision statement.

We, the parents, families and friends of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons, celebrate diversity and envision a society that embraces everyone, including those of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities. Only with respect, dignity and equality for all will we reach our full potential as human beings, individually and collectively. PFLAG welcomes the participation and support of all who share in, and hope to realize this vision.

Even if you are an inclusive clergyperson and your congregation has not taken that step, I will include you and gladly refer people to you and to your congregation.

Neither First Presbyterian nor HVUUC can be all things to all people, gay and straight.

Here is an opportunity for congregations of the Tri-Cities. Consider it an evangelism opportunity. The field is ripe for harvest as they say. LGBT folks are looking for congregations that will welcome them and not condemn them. That can't be too hard, can it?

Consider it a challenge. Take me up on it.

See You at the Blue Plum!

The Blue Plum Festival opens tomorrow in Johnson City.






When you go, make sure to look for the PFLAG Tri-Cities/TEP Tri-Cities booth.





Look for our banner!






You will get a friendly smile and an opportunity to find out more about PFLAG Tri-Cities and the Tennessee Equality Project!