National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day 10th Anniversary, February 7th

I am writing to ask you to hold National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day in your prayers and consider ways you can support the efforts of local organizations and individuals making a difference near you.

For current information on local activities, please visit http://www.blackaidsday.org.

This year is particularly noteworthy as it celebrates the 10th anniversary of this vital work.

Leaders will be promoting the life-affirming 2010 theme of “HIV/AIDS Prevention – A Choice and a Lifestyle!”

National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, February 7th of every year, is a national HIV testing and treatment community mobilization initiative targeted at Blacks in the United States and the Diaspora.

There are four specific focal points:
• Education
• Testing
• Involvement
• Treatment

To support these goals leaders in National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day movement have created an outstanding resource kit, which can help you speak out and take action with the incredible work already being offered locally.

Please forward this information to your lists and check out the powerful work being done to bring an end to the overwhelming impact of HIV and AIDS on Black communities.

Blessings,

Joshua L. Love
Director
Metropolitan Community Churches Global HIV/AIDS Ministry
Metropolitan Community Churches Drug Literacy Program
Uncommon Hope, author
JoshuaLove@MCCchurch.net
213-321-3975
www.MCCGHAM.org
www.UncommonHope.Org
www.DeconstructingMeth.com
www.facebook.com/JoshuaLLove

RELIGIOUS LEADERS ANNOUNCE THE AMERICAN PRAYER HOUR - Statement of The Rev. Elder Darlene Garner

RELIGIOUS LEADERS ANNOUNCE THE AMERICAN PRAYER HOUR
Statement of The Rev. Elder Darlene Garner
from Metropolitan Community Churches

2 February 2010


My name is Darlene Garner. I am among the spiritual leaders of Metropolitan Community Churches and provide ecclesial care and oversight for our ministries in the Southwest and Mid-Atlantic areas of the United States, Mexico, Central America, South America, and portions of the Caribbean. Metropolitan Community Churches is an international Christian denomination with churches in 28 nations. We are also a global human rights movement with a particular concern for sexual minorities, women, children, and people living with HIV and AIDS around the world.

The sexual minority community in Uganda recently emerged with dignity and hope to claim their human rights. Unfortunately, among the very first-responders to their pleas for legal protection from violence were right-wing religious fundamentalists from the United States. They went into Uganda preaching a blatant lie that God had somehow cursed sexual minorities and condemned people living with HIV. By exporting their own brand of hatred to Uganda, those religious extremists from the U.S. intentionally manipulated the Ugandan leaders, fanned the cultural flames of homophobia among the people, and set the stage for yet another round of civil unrest and genocide in Africa. Aided and abetted by American religious fundamentalists, many Ugandans are now prepared to destroy their own families – to kill their own sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, neighbors and friends – for the sake of an agenda that is not even their own.

What is happening today in Uganda is and has been going on within the United States, in Africa, in parts of Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Indeed, the issue of human rights abuses transcends national boundaries.

In 2006, in response to well-documented patterns of abuse, a distinguished group of international human rights experts met in Yogyakarta, Indonesia to outline a set of international principles relating to sexual orientation and gender identity. The result was the Yogyakarta Principles: a universal guide to human rights which affirm binding international legal standards with which all States must comply. The Principles have been adopted by judges, academics, a former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, UN Special Procedures, members of treaty bodies, non-governmental organizations and others. They promise a different future where all people born free and equal in dignity and rights can fulfill that precious birthright.

Indeed, the laws of a nation should protect our lives, not seek to take them. Yet, in spite of the Yogyakarta Principles, the real life experience of millions of sexual minorities around the world is that wherever religious fundamentalism prevails, the lives of sexual minorities are at great risk.

• Lives are still at risk in Moldova where fundamentalist religion causes the police to stand silently on the sidelines doing nothing as an angry mob surrounds a bus filled with a dozen or so young spiritual sexual minority activists, pelts the bus with rocks, and tries to overturn it .

• Lives are still at risk in Jamaica where fundamentalist religious belief is that sexual minorities peacefully gathering for worship deserve to have their worship space surrounded by police bearing guns and neighbors with machetes, police and neighbors alike all threatening the worshipers with eternal damnation and immediate death0.

• Lives are still at risk in the Middle East where fundamentalist religion teaches that sexual minorities should be killed for supposedly bringing shame on their family just by virtue of their mere existence.

• Lives are still at risk in South Africa where as many as one in four lesbians in townships has been brutally raped because fundamentalist religion teaches that rape is a cure for their homosexuality.

• Lives are still at risk in the United States where fundamentalist religion makes it possible for sexual minorities to be forced to participate in so-called reparative therapy that kills their natural spirit or where sexual minorities can be strung up on a fence and left to die.

For over 40 years now, Metropolitan Community Churches has witnessed to and spoken out against neo-colonialist right-wing religious fundamentalism as it wreaks havoc with human rights around the globe. It is time for the abuse to stop.

The world cannot remain silent as Uganda’s Parliament once again prepares to legalize murder. The United States cannot be silent as hate-mongers from this nation continue to export violence and abuse. People of faith cannot be silent as right-wing religious extremists distort the sacred texts and holy scripture for their own twisted and hateful purposes.

Now is the time to speak and to pray! U.S. religious extremism must be expelled from Uganda. Indeed, U.S. right-wing fundamentalism must release its hold on all nations, including the United States. Now is the time for all of us to tear down the walls that divide and oppress us and to build up hope for the day when all people can enjoy full human rights and equality under the laws of our nations.

Video from event

Who Am I as an MCC PAD?" by Rev. Dr. William Knight

The power of definition lies in its ability to prescribe and describe
parameters that are identifiable and understandable. The danger of
definition lies in limitation and restriction. Any attempt to define
carries with it the implicit assumption that the definition tells the
whole story. Of course, this is an impossibility. There are an
infinite number of definitions that apply to the infinite number of
individuals being defined. Since the question was asked of me, I can
only respond from the reality of my experience and my understanding.

My reality is shaped and given expression by my faith in God and also
by the human vessel that has discovered and embraced that faith. The
facts of my maleness and my Blackness are both central to my being and
non-negotiable. My identity, however, must recognize, honor, include
and then transcend those descriptions.

While I have had the experience of growing up in a nation that has
historically imposed unreasonable, unloving and unhealthy restrictions
upon those of African descent, especially those who express as males, I
cannot and must not allow myself to be defined by anything less than
the Word of God.

The Word of God says that I am and all of my brothers and sisters are
made in the image and after the likeness of God. This is the core of
who I am as a member of MCC. This absolute foundation of oneness with
all of God's children demands that I celebrate the God presence within
the incredible variety and complexity of God's people. It demands that
I acknowledge the indisputable truth that while there are diverse and
vastly different paths that lead to God, there is but one God.

That God, for me, is Omnipresence - Everywhere, evenly, equally
present: Omnipotence - All of the power in the Universe: Omniscience
- All of the knowledge, wisdom and understanding including that which
is yet to be discovered and/or revealed in the future. This is the God
of Christ Jesus who gave us the Great Commandment that we must love God
with all of our hearts, minds and strength and the second that we must
love our neighbor as ourselves.

As an MCC PAD I cannot and must not give in to the temptation to engage
in exclusion or exclusivity based on my personal experience or my
personal comfort zone. If I am to be known as a disciple of Christ
Jesus I am required to love all of God's children without exception.
This love cannot flow from an external demand but from an understanding
heart that is filled to overflowing with gratitude for all that God has
given each of us. This love has been called "radically inclusive"
because it represents a call for change - change in the way that we
think about ourselves and others; change in the way that we speak about
ourselves and others; change in the way that we feel about ourselves
and others; change in the way that we act and react both internally
and in the world.


As an MCC PAD I am called to model, demonstrate and teach a practical
approach to God that embraces and celebrates all those seeking to know,
understand and experience God's radically inclusive love.

Rev. Dr. William Knight
whk1245@aol.com