October 28, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

I applaud Rev. Dan Smith both in his courage and in his reasoning why Proposition 8 is wrong and unfair:

For public release  October 28, 2008

Brothers and Sisters of many faiths,

Let us be absolutely clear that in our opposition to Proposition 8 we are asking nothing more than what already exists in the respectful balance between the beliefs and practices of our many faiths and California constitutional law.

Within the many communities of faith in our State we have conflicting doctrines and beliefs that already govern the practice of marriage.

Our Roman Catholic, Mormon and many of our evangelical churches do not and will not marry persons who are divorced. But that does not mean that those who are divorced are constitutionally prohibited from the right of legal marriage in our state.

Likewise, our Roman Catholic, Mormon, and some Jewish and Muslim faith traditions will not marry persons of different faith traditions. But that does not mean that interfaith couples, or those of no particular faith tradition, cannot be married in our state.

Our California constitution honors all religious traditions by respecting our differences about religious marriage while at the same time providing and protecting the right of all couples to marry the person of their choice.

Prop. 8 would ELIMINATE the constitutional right of same sex couples to marry. That is unfair and unjust. California constitutional law already honors and respects religious differences. No religious institution is forced to marry anyone. But that does not mean that any person in our state should lose their constitutional right for legal marriage.

I urge you to protect our constitutional rights as well as our right to religious diversity and pluralism by voting NO on Proposition 8.

Thank you.

Rev. Daniel E. Smith, Pastor, West Hollywood Presbyterain Church, 7350 W. Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90046

Posted in Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Hollywood, LGBT Christian, LGBT Rights, Public Affairs | Print | No Comments »

September 7, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

At a special congregational meeting convened today, September 7, the voting members of Hollywood Lutheran Church unanimously approved a motion to endorse the No on 8 campaign, adding its public voice against the ballot measure that would eliminate marriage rights for same-sex couples.The congregation received and discussed information about all 12 measures on the November 2008 general election ballot, as well as information about taking positions on matters of public policy from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Lutheran Office of Public Policy in Sacramento, and other faith and justice organizations.

Posted in Hollywood, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, LGBT Rights, History, Public Affairs, ELCA | Print | No Comments »

March 31, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

The honor of your presence is requested by his Grace

The Most Rev. Robert Mary Clement, Archbishop of the American Catholic Church

at the Archbishop John Darcy Noble Center

to Celebrate the ordination of Roberta Morris to the Diaconate

Saturday, April 12, 2008 1 p.m.

Hollywood Lutheran Church 1733 N. New Hampshire Blvd., Los Angeles

Join us for Dr. Roberta Morris’ ordination and the inauguration of this LGBT-friendly ministry with the arts community in the Hollywood/ Los Feliz/Silver Lake area, across from Barnsdall Art Park.

Dr. Morris trained for this ministry, obtaining her Masters of Divinity from St. Michael’s College at the University of Toronto, and her Doctorate in Philosophy at York University. She has worked as a writer, university chaplain, instructor, director of religious education, mediator and peace activist.

As a deacon with the American Catholic Church, she will work ecumenically in a LGBT friendly environment to support the spiritual lives of artists and other members of our community.

Come celebrate the Ordination Mass with us.  Reception follows 

RSVP 323-668-0008

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January 5, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

This past week I’ve been having a little fun wearing my other hat as an amateur webmaster.

Yesterday I launched a new web site as a birthday gift to Carl, www.ijustlovemychickens.info. The phrase comes from his videography — he’s been featured on four television shows with his now-celebrity chickens. (How many chicken web sites have you seen with a videography list?) On a segment taped for “Beverly Hills Vet” for the Discovery Channel’s Animal Planet, Carl is captured saying very sincerely, “I just love my chickens!”

Doing the site was totally fun and frivolous because his hobby of raising free-range chickens brings him a lot of pleasure, and brings a smile to everyone else’s face. I hope this site will help Carl connect with a lot of people who are interested in raising chickens, and other birds, in an urban setting.

Carol, a Japanese Silkie hen, says hello to some admirers.

I’ve also included a link to our church for a good reason. Carl’s generous plan for the use of the extra eggs he receives from his hens (in good weather, he can get nearly a dozen per day) is to donate them as a fund-raiser. Eggs are “auctioned off” at Hollywood Lutheran Church in half-dozen cartons. The winners of the eggs make a cash donation to the church’s Food Pantry fund, so that the Pantry can afford to buy less-exotic necessities and fresh foods for distribution to the poor and hungry in Hollywood.

Of course, Carl is doing all the work, and paying for the food to keep the chickens producing all those extra eggs. But he would say the cost is negligible – it’s “chicken feed.” (There’s a whole page of chicken clichés and trivia, including a Bible study on the question, “Which came first …?”)

Such “chicken feed” projects remind us that generosity is not expensive. Ordinary people can do a lot to help others without costing them as much as a latte per week.

The Food Pantry is one of the Community Services we try to maintain at our church. Another one that I hope will take off as spring draws near is our Community Garden. Neighbors who sign up to till some of the soil and grow vegetables or flowers promise to share a tithe of the land’s produce with the Food Pantry. Our merciful God, and the Department of Water and Power, provide the water. Generosity does the rest.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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December 16, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

In church we had another reading this morning about John the Baptist (Matthew 11:2–11). Nine days to go until Christmas (!) but we had a passage when Jesus is a 30-something man about his cousin John in prison for condemning the adulterous and murderous “King” Herod.

By my lights, we should have been reading another passage. But the appointed reading prompted me to look at John the Baptist and his place in the prophetic tradition of Israel.

“Jesus began to speak to the crowds about John: ‘What did you go out into the wilderness to look at? A reed shaken by the wind?’”

John is described as a wild-eyed prophetic type who called a nation to repentance and baptized people in the Jordan River as a sign of their change of heart. According to the biblical evangelists, he described himself as “the voice of one crying in the wilderness.”

Church people read this stuff just so literally! We picture this wild-eyed John dressed in camel-hair clothing and eating insects out in the desert, the wilderness. We take it literally —and because we don’t particularly care about the desert or insects— we nod off.

But perhaps, like the prophet Hosea eight hundred years before, John used his life as a metaphor to make a point. Hosea literally married a prostitute as a metaphor to illustrate Israel’s unfaithfulness to God. John lived, and served, and cried out in a literal wilderness as a sign of the spiritual wilderness of his people.

Is there a sign, a metaphor, a “lesson” for us today, living as we do in a fat and lazy nation of both privilege and poverty—split by racism and prejudice, polarized (or should we say balkanized) into so-called liberal and conservative camps? Is 21^st century America a wilderness?

It is certainly easy to feel like I am not heard — that no voice standing up to the prevailing cultural values (wealth, appearances, greed, power, hubris, entertainment and pleasure) can be heard in our society. It is literally impossible now to “speak the truth to power.” Power does not hear anything but more power.

Is that cynical? Do you believe that you make all the decisions about your life? Or do you see that politics, culture and huge corporations tell us all what to do, what to spend, what to think, what to believe? There has never been a better educated era, with access to all the greatest minds of human history and the important movements of our times, yet our culture is more and more shallow by the minute. (Google “shallow society” and get 1,020,000 hits; Google “Paris Hilton” for 45,100,000 hits.) There has never been a more affluent generation, yet what we buy mentally and materially —as individuals or as a society—has never been more worthless.

As I said recently, there are no true leaders left, only “handlers” and “spin doctors.” Anything can be “sold” to the American people, including the unbelievably stupid myth that the world is “out to get us” so we need to have guns at home, bombs in every silo, and the U.S. military on every continent; we need to build thousands of miles of “Berlin wall” in order to keep out the people who are stealing minimum-wage jobs from native-born American couch potatoes who have given up looking for honest work.

In 1959 Stanley Kramer released “On the Beach” (starring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire and Anthony Perkins), about a doomed planet after someone pushed the button that started World War III in 1964. The film takes place mostly in Australia after the entire Northern Hemisphere has been wiped out, and everyone left is waiting for the inevitable end: for nuclear radiation to gradually kill everyone else. In the last desolate scene I remember, a wind-whipped banner in a deserted public square reads “There is still time.”

Is there still time?  “On the Beach” made a huge impression on me as a pre-teen. (I remember how shocked and confused my brother and I were with our Dad because he refused to dig up our back yard and install a fallout shelter!)

Is there still time? Nearly 50 year have passed, and a literal nuclear war has not taken place. But from my perspective of the wilderness out there, we are seeing the aftermath of a neutron bomb which, in popular understanding, would kill all the people and leave the buildings behind. Is the one “crying in the wilderness” the only one who sees that a spiritual neutron bomb is killing/has killed most of the sentient beings on Planet Earth and left all “the stuff” intact?

Is there still time? John the Baptist “flourished” (as biographers would say) around the year 30 c.e. Within a mere 40 years, an uprising of nationalism triggered the brutal annihilation of Judea and the wholesale destruction of Jerusalem. There was no nation left to repent.

Is there still time? The Zealots (we get the word in our language from this political faction of ancient Jews) believed that the only way for the nation to survive was to fight the foreign invaders. But perhaps John the Baptist had it right, crying alone in the wilderness: unless the people repent, the nation would be destroyed from the inside out.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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December 10, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

I’ve been thinking over and over about the issue of torture, for obvious reason that the approval of what amounts to torture by the White House won’t go away. A few weeks back I had reason to consult ancient history on the figure of St. Martin of Tour (for whom Martin Luther was named at his baptism). Catholic On Line: Saints and Angels has this about St. Martin and his relationship to civil power and torture:

Martin of Tour (315-402)

. . . . However it was this compassion and mercy that led to what he considered his greatest mistake. Bishops from Spain including a bishop named Ithacius had gone to the emperor soliciting his help in destroying a new heresy taught by a man named Priscillian. Martin agreed completely that Priscillian was teaching heresy (among other things, he rejected marriage, and said that the world was created by the devil) and that he should be excommunicated. But he was horrified that Ithacius had appealed to a secular authority for help and even more upset that Ithacius was demanding the execution of Priscillian and his followers. Martin hurried to intervene with emperor Maximus, as did Ambrose of Milan. Martin stated his case that this was a church matter and that secular authority had no power to intervene and that excommunication of the heretics was punishment enough. He left believing he had won the argument and saved the heretics but after he left Ithacius began his manipulation again and Priscillian and the other prisoners were tortured and executed. This was the first time a death sentence had been given for heresy— a horrible precedent.

The word “torture” almost slips by, along with “death sentence.” What were they thinking in the late 4^th Century? Probably the Emperor Maximus wasn’t terribly concerned about either torture or capital punishment. If religious heresy could foment great public passion and thereby de-stabilize the society, the means would justify the ends: put down the dissenters, the rebels, the heretics, swiftly and decisively. Make an example of them. (Capital punishment as a deterrent.)

Am I safe to assume that “Who Would Jesus Torture?” was not a question the Roman Emperor pondered.

But what were they thinking—Bishop Ithacius and his ilk—who thought that going to a civil authority to trounce a religious opponent is anything close to what Jesus would approve? It may not be fair for a historian to ask a rhetorical question of a Bishop 1600 years later: “Are you nuts?” But it is fair for a blogger to ask: At what point did the growing power and influence of the Christian Church first fail to notice that it was no longer following Jesus of Nazareth and had gotten into bed with evil?

Is there a lesson in this for our own times? Well, duh!!

But it is not enough to decry the adulterous relationship of one particular political party with religious conservatives in America. The separation of church and state is a huge and important issue for our own times as much as ever. But the various parties in both religion and politics come and go with every generation. Even if unchecked fundamentalism is voted out of office in the next national election, we cannot dust off our hands and sit down in complacency. The bigger issue is always before us if we are followers of Jesus. Are we really following Jesus, or simply manipulating him to conform our cultural, political and capitalist affinities?

The film “Amazing Grace” has just recently passed like a pious wave through our cinema houses. It tells the story of 18^th Century William Wilberforce who fought hard to end the practice of slavery in the British Empire and certainly had a big hand in bringing slavery down in all of civilized society.

I am interested in the film, and the figure of Wilberforce (1759–1833)—a member of Parliament, a politician, who while in his 20s had a conversion experience and became an evangelical Christian. Was he the last politician (or the last evangelical Christian) to do something noble because it was the right thing to do rather than because it was politically expedient or advantageous?

Slavery is evil. Astonishingly, it still goes on in the 21^st century, mostly in the form of involuntary sexual servitude. But it is only an example, one folly among hundreds into which Christians have allowed themselves to wander from the path of Jesus.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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December 6, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

The AIDS quilts are coming down today, after being displayed for over a week. Hundreds of people came and viewed them, read their messages, and thought about their significance. On these particular panels, some 24 people who died of AIDS are commemorated.

Our friend Paulette procured them from the Names Project Foundation in Atlanta to display over the period of World AIDS Day and our World AIDS Hollywood Vespers Concert.

The last visitors, last night, were teenagers from the Silverlake Children’s Theatre Group, who were on site for their regular rehearsals. They were very interested, and respectful of what they saw. None of them had been born when most of the individuals whose names appear on the quilts were dying of AIDS.

Alas, AIDS has become a “generational thing” in America. Too many young people have little to no experience of anyone having HIV or AIDS. It is natural for them to think it’s an old people’s disease, or a former disease, or one that will never affect them. Tragically, too many young gay people are having unprotected sex in the mistaken belief that AIDS is not their problem. Their gullibility to this falsehood is increased under the influence of crystal meth, which lowers inhibitions to sexual expression. Looking for “hookups” online is deceptively easy. And people still lie about their status. Yesterday a 365Gay.Com story reports allegations that a Roman Catholic priest and Navy chaplain has been having unprotected sex with other men without disclosing that he is HIV+.

AIDS is still killing people by the thousands, although we do not see it as much in America. America can (just barely) afford the miracle drugs that have kept tens of thousands of people alive during the last 15 years. We know individuals who have been living with AIDS for more than twenty years, so AIDS is no longer an automatic death sentence.

I remember our friend Andy, who came to Lutherans Concerned events in the 1980s. Young, cute, blond, buff, pleasant, Andy was a UCLA student. He was, however, not out to his parents. And he was not aware of how easily he could contract HIV. In those days there were no miracle drugs. Andy got sick, very sick, and was diagnosed with the virus. In a matter of days, his parents learned the awful truth: that he was gay, that he was infected, and that he was dying. Andy was dead before most of his friends even knew he had been sick.

But because his death occurred twenty years ago, today’s youth just have no connection with it nor with the hundreds of thousands of people who died in their youth.

After years and years of activism, from “Play Safely” ads in gay magazines to total abstinence programs which Republigelicals have been pushing so hard, too many people have little understanding of AIDS or why it must be stopped globally. “Stop AIDS: Keep the Promise.”

One would think that visualizing AIDS as an enemy to be defeated would inspire a new generation of activists. But I’m not seeing that yet. And I don’t think it’s because people are that complacent about the disease, but they seem to be complacent about life itself.

Americans are the worst of human beings when it comes to denial. We are certainly the epicenter of death-denial and death defiance.. Evel Knievel just died November 30, incidentally, after a 40 year career of doing imaginative, stupid things to get attention. A man in Omaha Wednesday killed eight other people in an Omaha shopping mall before killing himself. He apparently left several suicide notes, including one that said, “Now I will be famous.”

And we are in a state of pathological denial about the causes of death, and will eat, drink, race, have sex, and blow off every form of danger, commit murder and suicide, as if our lives do not matter.

Perhaps our lives do not. There is the thinnest of lines between carelessness and callousness about life. But life is what you make of it. Reverence for life is not inherited, it must be learned, adopted, believed. To honor those whom we have lost —such as we did Sunday with the lighting of candles and reading of the names of 250 people— is to love life itself as a gift of God, and to respect ourselves and our finite existence even more. What is “the meaning of life”? The meaning you give to it, beginning with self-respect.

Remember the dead. Thank God for life. Stop AIDS. Keep the promise.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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November 30, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

I think we are all suffering from “compassion fatigue.” People don’t care as intensely, or consistently, as we did a few years go, at the height of the AIDS epidemic in this country.

But our “suffering” is slight compared to those living with, and fighting against HIV/AIDS. The suffering of this country is slight, now, compared to the struggle being endured in developing countries. Dr. Peter Piot, Executive Director of UNAIDS, says that the epidemic has globalized and feminized. (Read his statement here.) The face of AIDS today is that of a heterosexual African woman of color. UNAIDS estimates that 95% of those living with HIV/AIDS are in developing nations, where all resources are scarce and costly.

There are countless world-wide and national organizations trying to help, but they too are often short on financial resources. The miracle drugs and “cocktails” which have made the continuation of life possible for thousands of Americans living with HIV/AIDS, are prohibitive elsewhere in the world, where even basic sanitation is spotty and difficult to maintain. Your compassionate response makes a difference.

Originally launched by the World Health Organization, tomorrow is the twentieth annual World AIDS Day, December 1.

This Sunday the Hollywood community will respond with an ecumenical Vespers/Concert in observance of World AIDS Day at Hollywood Lutheran Church, 1733 N. New Hampshire Avenue 90039. “World AIDS Hollywood” is an event to remember, pray and bring light. [Full details can be found at www.worldAIDSHollywood.org. Or call (323) 667-1212].

The event will feature the premier of “The Celestial Veil”, a new musical composition by Christopher A. Flores and Adrian Ravarour; music from Vox Femina and the Hollywood Wind Ensemble and other guest artists. Three 12×12 blocks of the National AIDS Memorial Quilt are on display. A bell will be rung and a votive candle lit for hundreds of names of those whom we have lost in our community. Please join us!

It is my prayer that our compassion fatigue has ended, and that the Hollywood community especially will be awakened again to the urgency of our compassionate response.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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November 18, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

All human beings are unique. Every body is different. Each of us has a unique life experience which results from what we have been given from birth onward (both our genes and our birth-family environment, etc.). Some are born to privilege, others in dire circumstances, some with physical challenges, others with extraordinary physical “good luck” — no genetic time bombs, etc.

The variety of human beings is endless. The stuff of literature, however, is fairly finite, and one of the recurring themes used by writers (whether novelists, essayists, or those who craft screen plays) is the story of someone who overcomes great difficulties or obstacles. For example, the heroic figure who rose out of poverty, or broke free of slavery, or overcame ignorance, racism, disease, handicaps, physical hardships — you name it.

In films, this “overcoming obstacles” is one of that limited number of story ideas. I had some fun with this in my earlier blog, “Everybody knows there are only five basic plots.”

It set me thinking whether we are so conditioned by popular literature and especially the movies that we have trouble with people who accept the circumstances they are in, rather than struggling against them and overcoming them. And I think of St. Paul’s advice, in 1 Corinthians 7, that “each of you lead the life that the Lord assigned, to which God called you.” He begins by talking about marriage, singleness and virginity, but when he comes to these verses (17–24) he also includes circumcision and slavery. Slaves, he counseled, should be willing to accept their enslaved condition, knowing that they are “free in the Lord.”

This is of course one of those passages that gets St. Paul in trouble with modernists, feminists, liberations, etc. But I have thought of this passage as it might be understood by lesbian and gay people — or for that matter, but transgender persons. Are we asked to accept the condition or circumstance in which we find ourselves, make the best of it, and just try to be spiritually free in the Lord even if we feel trapped in what life has dealt to us?

The story of transgender individuals tests this interpretation. Individuals who are born with a male body but perceive themselves to rightfully be female, or the other way around, suffer from gender dysphoria. There is a lot of debate right now about whether this or another label even belongs in the diagnostic manuals of mental health. But if we try to apply St. Paul’s advice — on a parallel track with being single or being married or being a slave, we would have to counsel a transgender person not to seek to change genders, through hormonal treatment or gender reassignment surgery. “Let each of you lead the life the Lord has assigned.”

But then what of the situation for those who discern themselves to be lesbian or gay? Shouldn’t we just accept the fact that we are homosexual, accept our sexual orientation as a given, as part of what life has dealt us?

The rub comes not within ourselves but from others, who weigh in with strong opinions about what it means to “accept.” Conservatives and fundamentalists quickly counsel a transgender person not to change genders but to accept their birth gender and to live (present themselves) as that gender, but take the opposite point of view on homosexuality. They do not believe that we should accept ourselves as gay or lesbian, and live the life “assigned” to us. The conservative would argue that being gay or lesbian was not “assigned” by the accidents or vagaries of human diversity, but chosen as a willful act of human disobedience and sin.

It makes for a fine, coherent systematic view for conservatives. The only problem is, it’s not particularly truthful. Most of us cannot remember choosing to be heterosexual or homosexual, and we don’t discern our sexual responsiveness (arousal, emotional attraction, and even love) as willful acts. We can suppress and stifle our true humanity and human experience—with enough social pressure and internalized shame brought about by the disapproval of others—but that is far from accepting our “condition” and claiming our “freedom in the Lord.” In fact, it’s quite telling that in the very same discussion in 1 Corinthians 7, St. Paul also advises those who are single “It is better to marry than to be aflame with passion.”

Taken as a whole, Paul’s advice is quite mixed. He strongly counsels those who are unmarried to remain unmarried and to accept their circumstances. He counsels the slave to remain content in his “condition” of enslavement. Yet he suggests that it is not a sin for the single person to marry after all, rather than to be aflame with passion. And he stops short of advising the slave that it’s not a sin to seek freedom rather than to be aflame with anger and resentment.

What rule would Paul give to a person who is lesbian or gay? Are we to be content with being lesbian or gay, and so go ahead and “lead the life that the Lord has assigned, to which God called you”? Or to attempt to remain celibate and abstinent, even if constantly aflame with passion? Or aflame with bitterness, loneliness and resentment?

Or as the conservative Christians insist, can a lesbian or gay man overcome the sexual orientation she or he has discerned, through great heroics and with great triumph. Conservatives want to believe the latter, because they have a whole “ex-gay”industry riding on it which they seek to protect from the ridicule of both the LGBT community and of health professionals.

I don’t think I’m through with this one, at all. I’ll get back to this.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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November 13, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

This past Sunday, we attended the 10^th annual Hollywood Interfaith Choral Festival. I was proud of our choir and its musical tornado director, Eldon Turner, for their hard work. It was also a chance to hear the Harmonies Girls Choir under the direction of the very gifted Jose Antonio Espinal, both alone and singing with Hollywood Lutheran Church’s choir in a new work by Eldon M. Turner III.  This year’s concert benefited the Harmony Project.

The Harmonies Girls Choir is comprised of girls ages 8 to 18. Although started only five years ago, the choir has already made a third concert tour to Europe.  These young girls may be seen as coming from “underprivileged” settings, and are seeing a better world open for them through music. Of course, these girls, with disciplined and coordinated voices, and matching outfits, regularly perform for “the privileged.”

Many “privileged” people like to see “the underprivileged” being showcased.  Somehow it makes us feel better about our position – we who can afford concert tickets, nice clothes to go out in public, and a roof over our heads (where there is a comfortable bed and a computer to write blogs on.)  If young people are somehow making progress from “underprivileged” places in society, it seems to ease our own consciences about the positions we have and the places we live in.

But contrast these underprivileged children with the “unprivileged” – those who are homeless children in Los Angeles, in California (over 100,000) and across the nation: Estimates are that one million youth are homeless in America.

This November has been designated the first-ever “National Homeless Youth Awareness Month” by resolutions of Congress. Virgin Mobile has launched “The RE*Generation” project to help, and to seek other corporate sponsors.  Other organizations are connecting the dots of their efforts, including Fannie Mae Foundation’s Help the Homeless Program. It is impressive that Virgin Mobile’s efforts have already raised $3 million, but that’s only 3 bucks per kid – not even enough to eat one meal.

According to the National Runaway Switchboard, somewhere between 1.6 and 2.8 million youth run away from home each year. http://www.1800runaway.org/.  The reasons are complex, painful and tragic.  Kids on the street are more subject to sexual abuse and prostitution, drugs and substance abuse, despair and other forces which contribute to suicidality.

Our parish has been involved with youth homelessness by directly supporting the work of the Jeff Griffith Youth Center residential program, which keeps 24 youth off the streets of Hollywood, teaches them skills, helps them finish their GED and helps them find employment to build a future. I’m proud of what we’ve done these past three years, and hope our small community will keep its prior commitment to help LGBT youth.

Youth homelessness is an issue we must own in the LGBT community.  Many young people who do flee their childhood homes, or are ruthlessly expelled from them, are sexual minorities and misfits.  I wrote about Jeremy in Denver in the Lutherans Concerned/Los Angeles Light of Christ newsletter five years ago, and will try to re-post that article soon.

Your homework assignment starts here:

• Virgin Mobile’s introduction to the issue: http://www.virginmobileusa.com/regeneration/. It also has a column of relevant web sites here.
• Good Magazine’s presentation of the Virgin Mobile project
• The Trevor Project, which operates the nation’s only 24-hour youth suicide prevention hotline.
• Also see: Home Walk L.A. - this coming Saturday November 17.

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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