Conservative feathers were ruffled by Trans Day of Visibility falling on the same day as Easter, but for me, it was a plus.
Tag: conversations
How to Talk to Kids about Queer People
A while back, I got a phone call from an old pastor friend who was struggling with a difficult situation and wanted my insights on how he could approach it. It turned out that his kid’s kindergarten was celebrating “Wear it Purple Day” and inviting all the kids to wear purple clothes to celebrate the … Continue reading How to Talk to Kids about Queer People
Presumption of Safety
In my last post I used the phrase ‘presumption of safety’ and promised to say more about it soon. This is a phrase that (to my knowledge) I’ve coined in order to finally put into words an experience that has caused me such extensive isolation and pain. The phenomenon it describes came to my awareness … Continue reading Presumption of Safety
Making the gospel [in]accessible
Evangelicals love to talk about how the good news of reconciliation to God through Jesus is life-saving good news for people "from every nation, people group, tribe, and language." (Revelation 7:9). But at the same time, our actions undermine our words when we treat trauma-informed practices as if they are an optional extra for a … Continue reading Making the gospel [in]accessible
Emotional Labour Part 2
In a short elaboration of my last post, I thought I'd share another example of the kind of emotional labour queer people (and others!) have to do to exist in the church. At the end of the last post I mentioned that emotional labour still happens even when we aren't directly participating in a conversation: … Continue reading Emotional Labour Part 2
Emotional Labour
Picking up where I left off in this series of 4 Ways Christians Burden Queer People, I wanted to talk about another burden queer people disproportionately carry in the church: emotional labour. If the first burden was "1. Telling us how to speak instead of listening to what we say," the second burden Christians place … Continue reading Emotional Labour
Life After the Closet
Today marks the first anniversary of my friend T choosing to courageously invite everyone in her life to know her more personally than she’d ever done before, and it seems like a timely opportunity to reflect on what life outside the closet is like for us who've had the privilege of emerging form it. Having journeyed with T for some years and been church family together, I got to see just how much courage this took and how significant this decision to be more fully known was for her. I have so much admiration and love for her, so today I want to honour T’s story and dedicate this post to her.
4 Ways Christians Burden Queer People: Language Policing (1/4)
Today I’ve been thinking about Jesus’ warning against hypocrisy to the religious leaders of his day in Matthew 23. At one point he says, “They tie up heavy, cumbersome loads and put them on other people’s shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.” (Matt 23:4 NIV). It’s not … Continue reading 4 Ways Christians Burden Queer People: Language Policing (1/4)
Solidarity
On Monday morning I woke up to a message from a friend that read, “I am sorry to hear about your lockdown!” I had literally just woken up moments before picking up my phone (I know, I know, I’m a millennial), so the fact that we were going into lockdown was news to me. When I’d gone to bed 8 hours earlier, I expected to wake up to another normal day. Instead, I found out from an interstate friend that Brisbane was going into a snap lockdown to control the spread of some new covid cases.
Life on Side B Podcast Episode
This week I had the privilege of being interviewed for an episode of the Life on Side B! I've so appreciated the work of Life on Side B and the way Josh Proctor has reached so many people with stories of Christian sexual minority people over the past few years, so it felt pretty surreal … Continue reading Life on Side B Podcast Episode
Singled Out 