My story of why it's important that FCC is ONA comes from before I was a member here.  When Spirit of the Lakes was being considered for membership into the UCC there was much debate about whether or not a GLBT dominant church should be gratned membership.  I remember the debate at the annual meeting.  One of First Church clergy stood up and said, "If you don't accept Spirit of the Lakes, what are you going to do with us?"  First church had made the decision to be Open and Affirming and, in that meeting were willing to cast their lot with Spirit of the Lakes.  That solidarity meant more than you will ever know to so many people.  In fact, it was that moment that I remembered when I was looking for a new church to attend.

This make not be the exact forum topic for me to make these comments. My years at First Church (as a former Music Director, not a member) date back to the early 1970's, before any church in this area was formally "Open and Affirming". I was openly gay when I was hired, and had had problems with my previous church employer (an Episcopal congregation) about my participation in what was then called "gay liberation". But I had friends at First Church who knew me, and my being gay seemed to be (unless there was something I missed!) almost a non-issue when I was hired. So I experienced at first hand what was recently described in the Chimes as the "tacit acceptance of those with 'differently oriented' sexuality" that First Church "had always had"—I although I find it difficult to believe the "always" (in 1890? 1910? and just when did such a thing come to be true?).

But the first half of the real point I would like to make is how important that was in my life at that time. Today I look around and see many churches in the Twin Cities where one can be both "open" and "at home", but this was not true in 1971.

The second half of the point, however, is that even 36+ years later not everyone is so lucky as I was then. Many LGBT people have the misfortune to grow up in churches where they still fear for acceptance should they be open and honest about who they are, and where they receive little useful guidance, for example, in negotiating the tricky passages of adolescence, or in forming meaningful sexual relationships should they be anything but heterosexual, and on and on. And many people still have the misfortune to live in a town where there are no "Open and Affirming" churches, even if there is a local UCC Church.

So, as an "outsider" who still cherishes friendships in the First Church community, I would like to offer you congratulations on your twenty year anniversary. And I would also like to offer you encouragement in continuing and extending this work; it is easy to take such openness for granted in a liberal community and forget how important your stand is to the denomination, to the larger community, and to the many people who have yet to fully benefit from such openness and acceptance.