{"id":569,"date":"2011-01-16T04:28:25","date_gmt":"2011-01-16T04:28:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/yearofsundays.com\/?p=27"},"modified":"2011-01-16T04:28:25","modified_gmt":"2011-01-16T04:28:25","slug":"unitarian-universalist-queer-indeed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/yearofsundays\/2011\/01\/unitarian-universalist-queer-indeed.html","title":{"rendered":"Unitarian Universalist: A Queer Church Indeed"},"content":{"rendered":"
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[Insert EYEROLL here]<\/strong><\/h4>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

I’ve already written about my experience at the Unitarian Universalist church, but sadly, it took me a while to muster up the nuts to publish this letter I sent to the Reverend the next day. Here it is, in all its closet-free glory. I think it’s definitely worth noting that I have yet to receive a response…<\/p>\n

Dear Rev. Sinkford,<\/p>\n

I attended Sunday’s service as a first time visitor to your parish. In fact, it was the first Sunday I’ve been to church in over a decade. Like you, I am a blogger and I always appreciate feedback, be it constructive, flattering, or my perennial favorite: critical. As such, I thought you’d like to see what I wrote about the service on Sunday.<\/p>\n

I’m a staunch libertarian, a\u00a0single mother, and\u00a0a\u00a0bisexual. I’m also an agnostic at the beginning of my own personal spiritual quest. Everything I had read about UU made it sound like a perfect landing spot for someone like me and I was more than a little shocked to find out\u00a0that, in fact, I wasn’t actually welcome there at all.\u00a0At least not if I wanted to feel safe.<\/p>\n

My specific beef\u00a0is with\u00a0the church’s stance on the second amendment and its allegiance\u00a0with Cease Fire. It’s not so much the\u00a0Gun Free Zone\u00a0that bothers me, actually. I’m used to that particular\u00a0knee-jerk response (guns are bad!). It’s that\u00a0the issue\u00a0deserves a much deeper exploration than that.<\/p>\n

I know that you stand for victim’s rights, but has it not occurred to you that GUN rights are also GAY rights? By taking guns off the streets – away from law-abiding citizens who have every right to protect themselves and those around them – you are actually putting ME at risk. Considering the fact that 95% of all gun massacres occur\u00a0within supposedly “gun free” zones, I think it’s a bit of a stretch to assume that criminals are actually following<\/em> such rules.<\/p>\n

It saddens me that my right to protect myself\u00a0from being a victim also makes me unwelcome\u00a0at your church. And I’ll be honest:\u00a0my blog post is\u00a0not flattering. It’s snarky and a bit mean and for that, I sincerely apologize.\u00a0I hope that won’t prevent you from giving some additional thoughts to this subject. The post\u00a0can be found here: http:\/\/www.mandajuice.com\/mandajuice\/2011\/01\/unitarian-universalism-progressive-indeed.html<\/a><\/p>\n

I would love to hear your thoughts. I would also encourage you to learn more about the Pink Pistols, a national organization dedicated to promoting gun safety and self-defense for homosexuals: www.pinkpistols.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I look forward to your feedback.<\/p>\n

Sincerely,<\/p>\n

Amanda P. Westmont<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.mandajuice.com<\/a>
\nhttp:\/\/twitter.com\/mandajuice<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Insert EYEROLL here] I’ve already written about my experience at the Unitarian Universalist church, but sadly, it took me a while to muster up the nuts to publish this letter I sent to the Reverend the next day. Here it is, in all its closet-free glory. 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Westmont","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/yearofsundays\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/yearofsundays\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/fad\/fadf85b5114a8999a17a40cd3a1e765fx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/yearofsundays\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/fad\/fadf85b5114a8999a17a40cd3a1e765fx96.jpg","caption":"Amanda P. Westmont"},"description":"Amanda P. Westmont has a co-dependent relationship with her Kindle and a blog named after her breast milk. She lives in the suburbs of Portland, Oregon with a deaf rat terrier named Harry, two delectable children and a collection of vinyl motorcycle jackets. She co-authors a religion blog called yearofsundays.com with her cute, bald boyfriend who likes to keep her up all night and then clean her kitchen the next morning. For everything you ever wanted to know about Amanda (and plenty you didn't), visit her website at http:\/\/www.mandajuice.com.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.mandajuice.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/yearofsundays\/author\/awestmont"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/yearofsundays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/yearofsundays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/yearofsundays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/yearofsundays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/388"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/yearofsundays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/yearofsundays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/yearofsundays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/yearofsundays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/yearofsundays\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}