"It is a fundamental principle with us that to renounce reason is to renounce religion, that religion and reason go hand in hand, and that all irrational religion is false religion." JOHN WESLEY
"I see myself as a new being -- ready to move on -- secure in the knowledge that I am to be loved forever." MICHAEL COLLINS
"Though its varied dynamics are complex, the root cause of homophobia is always fear, and the gospel has resources for dealing with fear." JAMES B. NELSON
"The church hardly ever is ready for the radical inbreaking of the Spirit." MARY JO OSTERMAN
"I have learned my name for God and her name is Justice. God is in me and I love her (furiously, fearlessly). Gentle, angry love. Heretic Take care and know that I love you." MICHAEL COLLINS
"Hospitality is at the core of God's message to the world... And it is the fundamental attitude God has toward us. My lesbian sisters and gay brothers, my heterosexual sisters and brothers, welcome!" STEPHEN GREGORY
"Gay men and lesbians have now become the barometer and the litmus paper of human rights attitudes and social change." BAYARD RUSTIN
"Homophobia thrives wherever there is fear of death, for then people try to dominate and control others to assure themselves of their own future." JAMES B. NELSON
"If people cannot accept gay men and lesbians, they may not be able to accept anybody who is different." BAYARD RUSTIN
"Walls of color, ways of loving, Money, pow'r and war Keep us locked in lonely prisons; God calls us to more: Reconciling, building bridges 'cross the gap between Visions of what ought to be And what we know and see." C. ELIZABETH
"One of the challenges before lesbians and gay men in the 1980s is to move alongside people of color and women, in confronting the religious institutions. For there is not a single historical religious institution that stands in solidarity with our people..." MICHAEL COLLINS
"Estrangement develops over a period of time, separating loved ones from one another. Likewise, reconciliation has to be intentionally developed with harmony restored over a period of time." HOWARD & MILLIE EYCHANER
"As a reconciler, I am called to love those who are homophobic, realizing how painful and how frightening it is to change and to grow...My responsibility is to create an atmosphere of acceptance in which change can happen." VIRGINIA HILTON
"Reconciliation is, therefore, not a human possibility. It is completely and absolutely an act of divine mercy, which brings about a new reality." JOSEPH C. WEBER
"I know now that I am doing what a loving, compassionate God wants me to do. My life is more open, more honest, more compassionate, and much happier than it ever was when I was concealing so inherent a part of my humanness. I am at peace with my God and myself. I am no longer afraid, ever, to speak out." FRED METHERED
"Don't worry, honey. Somebody up there gave you credentials they can't touch." CUSTODIAN to GENE LIGGETT
"Whatever happens I know that my life has been interesting and has made a positive contribution to the living of many others." MICHAEL COLLINS
"Homophobia thrives on theologies of works-justification, wherein all persons must prove their worth and all males must prove their manhood." JAMES B. NELSON
"The cost of the closet is very great--to the church, to the ministry of Christ, to every gay or lesbian person called to the ministry, to every lay person who would receive the gifts of that ministry..." JEFFREY SNYDER
"Healing rejects coercive power and authority. Healing is its own authority; its energy cannot be controlled...The internal wisdom of each of us must participate in and want wholeness before it will come." RITA NAKASHIMA BROCK
"We recognize that sexuality is a good gift of God, and we believe persons may be fully human only when that gift is acknowledged and affirmed by themselves, the Church and Society." UNITED METHODIST SOCIAL PRINCIPLES
"I need you, my family. I need to be hugged and held, and told I am loved. I want to hear that I am still your son. PLEASE LISTEN TO ME and see and feel that I am loveable. Please don't allow society to take you away from me. Watch and you will see that there is no shame in having a child who is gay. Give me a chance." ANONYMOUS
"God's reconciliation encompasses the whole kosmos, the whole created order. God has blessed and redeemed not only heterosexual love but homosexual love as well, since God created both." ROBERT MCAFEE BROWN
"We need to take Christianity seriously because there is within its historic tradition a hope and source of power for our people. A power that has been maintained and nurtured by a remnant of people who have shown us how to balance on edges of the societies which have come and gone." MICHAEL COLLINS
"Those most wounded by reality are the most attuned to the brokenness of reality and the demands of relationships." RITA NAKASHIMA BROCK
"And what thou art can never be destroyed..." EMILY BRONTE
"In Christ no one is cast aside Not straight or lesbigay; We form communities of love: No separate we and they." CAROLINE PRESNELL
"If worship is to be of the whole people it will necessarily include the lives of our lesbian, gay, and bisexual sisters and brothers. Let the whole people of God join hands in the worship of our God, who makes all things new." JON O. NELSON
"I believe we also need to restore to God all the sensuousness of creation. The One who created the wonder of our earth and the wonder of our bodies is not divorced from that creation." LYNN MICKELSON
"Metaphors and symbols for the Deity cannot be voted upon. They emerge from a culture, communities, and individual searching." CAROLYN BOHLER
"Our sense of order is disturbed when God becomes flesh in our own backyard." KITTREDGE CHERRY
"Once we acknowledge the inclusivity of God, nothing else remains exactly the way it was, and that is both the glory and terror of an encounter with the living God, who is zealous to call all into service and to be deprived of the witness and gifts of no one." PETER GOMES
"Our metaphors equip us for the work of change." JEANNE KNEPPER
"The church needs us if it is to start acting like a church again." JACK HOFFMEISTER
"We are called to honor God by nurturing and bringing to maturity the unique genuine selves that we are." ANN B. DAY
"Freedom is to love ourselves and others deeply, and to be created continually by the many complex dimensions of relationship to ourselves and others." RITA NAKASHIMA BROCK
(If you wish any of the citations, send me e-mail and I'll see if I can find them again! -- ben@tde.com)