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CLEVELAND, OH: Going to church at the Gay Games: On the run at the Gay Games
Cleveland's Episcopal Trinity Cathedral's dean presents El Salvador's Bishop Barahona with a T-shirt that says "God Loves You, No Exceptions."
By Sabrina Eaton
Plain Dealer
http://www.cleveland.com/gay-games/index.ssf/2014/08/going_to_church_at_the_gay_gam.html
August 10, 2014
Since some of the feedback on my blog about the Gay Games has cited biblical objections to homosexuality, I figured I might benefit from attending church this Sunday.
So I checked out the 10 AM service at Cleveland's Trinity Cathedral, a Gay Games sponsor whose front door is festooned with gay pride streamers. It was quite different from the Episcopal Church my family attended in suburban New York during the medieval 1970s.
Instead of having the altar and lectern on a raised area in front of the church, the celebrants at Trinity stood in the middle of the building with chairs arranged in semicircles on both sides. Instead of serving communion wafers, Trinity uses pita bread. Instead of being run by a priest like the one at our old church who told my mother I shouldn't be confirmed after I confided that I might be gay, Trinity is run by an out lesbian.
The service I attended featured preaching by the Rt. Rev. Martin De Jesus Barahona, Bishop of the Anglican Episcopal Church of El Salvador, who was in town for the Gay Games with a delegation of Salvadorean and Colombian athletes whose trip to the Gay Games was partially funded by Trinity.
The visiting priest from El Salvador discussed hearing from young parishioners excluded from sports teams because they were gay, and people in his home country who were excluded from churches for the same reason. He decried those actions.
"The gay people are also members of the team of Jesus Christ," he said, adding that all should be welcome at church.
After he wrapped up, the Very Rev. Tracey Lind (a lesbian) presented him with a green T-shirt that says "God Loves You - No Exceptions." Several members of the congregation were wearing them, as well.
Lind said having the Gay Games in Cleveland is "a really big deal" for the city, state and its many residents who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, inquiring and "collectively known as queer."
She described being repeatedly asked how important it was to her to be gay, and responding that being gay is as important to her as other inborn traits are to people who are heterosexual, black, Asian or Hispanic and don't get asked about it.
"How important is it to be who God made us to be?" she asked. "It is really important."
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