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‘Stamping’ Out North Carolina’s HB2 at The Wild Goose Festival

BeeNest Films teamed up with Evangelicals for Social Action to stage a “Stamp Your Cash” demonstration at the progressive faith festival, the Wild Goose Festival in Hot Springs, North Carolina in order to speak out against HB2.

The festival had been held in the same spot for the past six years, so when North Carolina passed HB2 it came as a real blow to the organizers of the festival who are morally opposed to the bill and its latent bigotry. So when I was invited to attend the festival by ESA in order to participate in a Racial Justice Institute Workshop they were hosting with the Faith Matters Network, I started thinking about how there could be some way to bring money into the state of North Carolina and make it express my opposition to HB2.

That is when I thought of where the Stamped Film Festival in my hometown of Pensacola, Florida got their name from:

Back in the 90’s, the gulf coast was a Mecca for the LGBTQ community over the Memorial Day weekend for Pride. Thousands of people would gather and celebrate on our beautiful beaches, but there were some squeaky wheels that did not like the influx of gay people coming into the area. In response to these complaints the organizers of the Pride festivities began stamping all of the cash that was generated with phrases like “Gay Money”. By the end the end of the year it was estimated that the LGBTQ community infused nearly 25 million dollars in the local economy. Interestingly enough, those squeaky wheels got a lot more quiet from that point on. 😉

Our objective was a bit different, but what we were hoping to do was give an outlet for this community of faithful people, most of whom identify as Christian, to not only speak out against HB2, but to also address the deeply troubling use of Christianity to support such a bill. Our stamps featured phrases like “Christians Against NC’s HB2” and “#WeAreNotThis”.

Chances are, if Jesus had a twitter account, he’d be hashtagging #WeAreNotThis a whole lot lately.

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Stamping cash in North Carolina in order to Speak Out Against HB2

The response was fantastic! Festival goers pulling out their wads of bills and going to town with our provided stamps – And at the end of the festival, I went around to the vendors and gave each of them a stamp to keep and continue to use and mark all their bills. It was clear that people were very excited to have an opportunity to take back the narrative in some small way.

This brings me to what I found incredibly impactful about attending the Wild Goose Festival – Reclaiming the Narrative of Faith.

I’m going to be honest, the word “christian” has been allowed to take on such a negative and destructive connotation that describing myself as one has felt like a misnomer. I know many, if not most of my friends who were raised in a christian household, have now evolved into usually only feeling comfortable with describing themselves as “Spiritual” or as “a follower of Jesus, but not necessarily ‘a christian’”.

The Wild Goose Festival allowed me to rediscover how the spirit is flourishing beyond oppressive definitions and constraints, and also within the body of the Church. It may not be the part of the body that gets the most press, or has the most lobbyists in DC, but it’s heart beats with radical love that values diversity and the oppressed. It is the part of the body that strives to embody the love of Christ in every moment and with every person, and to recognize the spirit in all things. It is the part of the body determined to self-examine and expand through the scientific exploration of this universe; to grow in understanding and appreciation of the uniqueness of others. It is the part of the body that inspires me to reclaim and celebrate my faith heritage.

If this speaks to any of you, if you have ever felt disenfranchised by your faith community, I highly recommend attending next year’s Wild Goose Festival.  Ryan and I will see you there 🙂

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RSVP

RSVP: A Different Kind of ‘Coming Out’ Story

When writing RSVP I was struck by the realization that a single patriarch or matriarch of a family can make a decision or enforce a belief that can cause immense pain for everyone else in the family. Our short film RSVP deals with the long term ramifications of a father disowning his gay son. This one decision sends lasting shock waves far beyond the character of STEPHEN. Even though he was the one cruelly cast off, he is certainly not the only one being made to suffer.

I was inspired by a real life situation that my best friend, Dean, shared with me. The man he was seeing at the time had been disowned by his father for being gay. Visions of the multifaceted pain that would come from being cut off from your family, for decades, perhaps a lifetime, began to swirl in my mind. It is hard to fathom the scars on a person’s psyche incurred by being disowned by the very people entrusted with unconditionally loving you. I began to also be affected by what the suffering of the family unit itself would be, particularly the siblings who had no control over such a decision and were then forced to live without the presence of their loved on in their life. Layers of grief and loss incited by one act of insufficient love.

This is when the family unit began to represent something larger to me. A microcosm of a congregation, a community, a religion, a society.

How many congregations have become less vibrant, less of a true representation of the fellowship Jesus chose to commune with on a daily basis, because certain people were being made to feel unwanted and unloved? How many towns lack diversity and the spectrum of personalities present in the world because those unique voices didn’t feel comfortable living and thriving there? How many religions are losing the faithful in droves because they are being told that being the way God created them is a damnable sin? How many more faithful drift away from the church because they do not feel the leadership’s interpretation of the word reflects what they understand to be God’s grace and Jesus’ unconditional love? And how has each of these individual losses coalesced to form a chain reaction that is present in our societies’ current list of moral shortcomings? These questions gnaw at my mind.

There have been huge strides made in the pursuit of equality and justice thanks to the tireless efforts of LGBTQ activists and allies, like John Pavlovitz and Believe out Loud. But those strides have been almost completely contained to the secular sector.

With the film RSVP, I wanted to plant a seed of hope for a new generation of religious leaders to truly embrace the accepting, loving, and compassionate values that Jesus himself modeled. And I believe that for such a transformation to take place, individual members of the faith community will need to bravely stand up and support the inclusion and acceptance of LGBTQ people into their congregations. My hope is that these faithful people are called to speak out in support of the sanctity of marriage being rooted in the spiritual quality of the union of two souls, and not on the sex organs of the parties involved.