Over the past year we've been offering a monthly course called The Welcoming Congregation here at UUS:E. Although attendance has varied, about twenty-five people have participated. The Welcoming Congregation is a Unitarian Universalist curriculum designed to teach congregations about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender identity; about the ways in which our society oppresses gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people; about how congregations like ours can welcome gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people; and about how we can use our power as people of faith to advance the civil rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. This is the second time we've taught this course at UUS:E. The first time was about a decade ago. A few years after that course the congregation voted to become an official Unitarian Universalist "Welcoming Congregation." There is a plaque in the foyer which identifies us as such.

Our final Welcoming Congregation class is next week. I want to thank all those who've been part of our teaching team, including Michelle Driscoll, Aimee Bouchard, Donna Johnson, Pat Anderson, David Garnes, Sande Hartdagen and, most importantly, our fearless coordinator, Kate Kimmerle. Thanks to all of you. I think it's been an excellent experience. Our plan is to teach a follow-up curriculum in the near future called Living the Welcoming Congregation. I trust it does not need to be said, all are welcome.

I have not preached this year on any aspect of gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender concerns, but these concerns have certainly been a focus for my public ministry, and I think the same is true for this congregation. In particular, the struggle for marriage equality has captured the attention and the energy of many of us here at UUS:E. We've attended rallies. We've gone door-to-door canvassing people on their opinions about same-sex marriage. We've attended public hearings. We've lobbied our legislators. We were thankful when Governor Rell signed the Civil Union bill into law without a court order, even though we recognized civil unions are not equal to marriage. I have had two letters on the subject published in the Hartford Courant, one in the Journal Inquirer. I've spoken at a number of rallies. I've done presentations to civic groups on behalf of Love Makes a Family, Connecticut's grassroots gay and lesbian civil rights organization. I've lobbied. And recently I've been participating in efforts to form a new organization called Connecticut Clergy for Marriage Equality. In addition to all this, I have received not-so-friendly mail-not exactly hate mail, it's more on the order of I fear for your soul mail, you're a misguided young man mail, or most annoying, your's is not a real religion mail. Of course I've wanted to respond to all of it, but my wife expressly forbids it, and she's right. Responding to this kind of mail is a waste of precious time.

The fact that I receive this mail in response to things I've said in public forums reminds me that even in our little, progressive New England blue state the culture wars besetting our nation are alive and well. When I say "culture war," a number of struggles come to mind in addition to the struggle for gay and lesbian civil rights. We think of the historical struggle to gain full reproductive rights and the current struggle to maintain them. We think of the struggle over the separation of church and state, prayer in school, religious monuments on public grounds, and the new movement to teach Biblical Creationism in public schools using the name intelligent design. We think of the struggle over state and federal funding of stem cell research. These are the hot-button culture war issues in the United States today.

One of the most important functions of The Welcoming Congregation curriculum is its capacity to fortify congregations in the midst of these cultural struggles. We know we support gays and lesbians, but going through the curriculum helps remind us why it is so important, why it is a spiritual issue. And it makes a difference. In so many congregations one still cannot be out as a gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender person let alone even say those words in anything but derogatory tones. Yet being a welcoming congregation enables us to provide safe spaces where people can talk about the experience of living on the front lines of the culture war. Think about the sotry when heard Colleen tell earlier about her father's statement about her mother being a lesbian: a waste of a good woman. How is a child supposed to feel about her mother in light of such a statement? How is a child who knows her own sexual identity supposed to feel about herself in light of such a statement? How is this girl child or her brother supposed to feel about women in light of such a comment? How liberating is this pulpit where one can name without repercussions the experience of being a target in the culture war? How liberating is this religious movement whose first principle is the inherent worth and dignity of every person, whose second principle is the commitment to justice, equity, and compassion in human relations, and whose hymns speak of the wideness of divine mercy and love, rathe than its limits.

By the way, for those of you who are new here, and just in case the rest of you need a reminder, Unitarian Universalists tend to profess political views occupying the far left of the culture war. Our denomination is not split along the standard culture war lines like so many mainline Protestant sects seem to be. I find very little dissent among Unitarian Universalists when it comes to our support for the civil rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people, support for full reproductive rights, support for government funding of stem cell research, and a staunch, very literal reading of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution which says "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." That is, we are rigid proponents of the separation of church and state. Though theologically and spiritually we are a diverse bunch who finds much to disagree on, politically, with some exceptions, we line up on the left.

Have you noticed that when the media is reporting on virtually any aspect of the culture war, the report almost inevitably refers to religious people or values on one side and secular people or values on the other? If you've noticed that, you may also have noticed that when you hear or read what people on the religious side are saying you usually don't identify with it. Yet aren't we religious people? Public discourse on each of the culture war issues uses blatantly religious language, but not our religious language, not liberal religious language. Rather, religion in the context of the culture war is commonly understood to be conservative, traditional, fundamentalist. It is enormously frustrating for me, as it is for many of my colleagues, as it is for many of you, when the media-any media-characterizes the culture war in United States as a struggle between religious people and secular people. This characterization is very common. There are few media outlets that don't perpetuate to some degree the image of religious people struggling against secular people.

You already know what I'm going to say. This characterization is simply wrong. Religious people line up on both sides of the culture war. We know it because we see it causing great divides within other denominations. We know it because our experience as religious people is consistent with the affirmation of same-sex marriage. Think about it: same-sex couples already get married in Unitarian Universalist congregations. Same-sex couples already get married in the Metropolitan Community Church. Same-sex couples already get married in the American Catholic Church in the United States, in the United Church of Christ, in Episcopalian Churches, in Methodist Churches, in Presbyterian Churches, in American Baptist Churches, in Reform Jewish Synagogues, in Quaker Meeting Houses, in Wiccan communities. And these same religious people show up to work on behalf of civil rights for gay and lesbian people inspired by their religious convictions. The same is true when it comes to the other hot-button culture war issues. There are many religious people who support state and federal funding for stem cell research, who support a woman's right to choose to terminate a pregnancy, who support the separation of church and state and understand that support as an act of patriotism necessary to insure the integrity of the United States Constitution. These are struggles among people of faith. Religious expression characterizes both sides. These are not the struggles of an embattled religious minority besieged and persecuted, as it likes to claim, by the infidel secularists of the liberal establishment.

As much as the media-even the liberal media-may fail to notice liberal religious voices in the culture war, I'm not here to blame the media. Liberal religious leaders all over our country have been recognizing for some time how the religious right has organized its way to political prominence and, to a large degree, the media is simply reporting the story. The religious left has not done enough to stake out the same level of prominence, and many leaders are saying it's time for those of us on the religious left to start proclaiming ourselves loudly and proudly as religious people in the public square, at work, at play, when and wherever the opportunity may arise. That needs to happen and each of us can find ways to proclaim ourselves more loudly and proudly.

But I still don't think that's enough. I don't just want the religious left to be louder. I want a message that will transform the religious right while we're at it. Maybe that sounds naive or possibly even arrogant, but that's how I feel. I challenge us and I challenge the religious right to re-assess the whole idea of culture war. The conflict we're experiencing may look like culture war, but at its core I believe it is something else. I think in the end it is a conflict over how we define and use violence. When I hear Colleen speak, I am struck that as a teenager she was exposed to violence because of who she was. She speaks of enduring gay-bashing and harassment. She talks about the threat of losing your job or your housing because of your sexual identity. When somebody wields that kind of power over you, your experience of the world is one of violence or potential violence. Yes, we've come some distance in twenty-five years, but I guarantee if you ask any gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender youth if there is still a threat of violence in their lives because of whom they are, they will tell you yes there is.

Conservative colleagues have called on me as a liberal and as a Unitarian Universalist to account for what they call moral relativism, for our human arrogance for believing truth is as much within us as it is within God, for interpreting the scripture of our Christian heritage as the works of flawed human beings rather than as the eternal word of the eternal God, for our audacity to tamper with tradition. Account, they demand. On what ground do you stand? And though I have many answers to these challenges, this morning hear me, I do not need the God of scripture to love my neighbor as myself. And with every action I take in this so-called culture war, I strive to love my neighbor as myself. And for me that means, fundamentally-and I use that word intentionally-no more violence. And when we deny any group of people their civil rights because of the color of their skin or who they choose to love or how old they are or what sex they were born with, we do violence to them. When someone can take away your job or you home based on some human characteristic over which you have no control, you live then under threat of violence.

And to my colleagues on the religious right I say that when you demand that your religious world-view, your interpretation of scripture, your moral system, your view of history is the only truth, and when you contend your God is angry and wants to punish the world and its sinners because they don't live up to standards you've designed, and when you identify whole groups of people who are responsible for God's anger, even if you never call your followers to violence, you do great violence. You do violence to the principle of religious freedom and the reality of religious pluralism; you do violence to the capacity of diverse religious communities to maintain cohesion and peace; and you sanction tacitly the physically violent and abusive actions of those who are simply waiting for an excuse to cause harm.

I walked over to the anti-gay rally that took place back in April at the state capital. A few thousand people had gathered to express their anger at the passage of the civil union law. The leaders told their audience how much they loved gay and lesbian people, but even so, little children in the audience spoke of faggots and homos. Culture of life indeed. Love they neighbor indeed. Hatred and violence boils beneath these false claims of love.

I call on all of us, right, left, conservative, liberal together to account for violence in this society. That is the real war we face: let us account for violence in the streets of Hartford and Manchester, for violence within the intimacy of our homes, for violence fabricated in television and movies and video games, for violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, for violence against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people, for violence in the treatment of our prisoners, for the violence of racism and sexism and homophobia, for the violence of poverty, for the violence of religious extremism. Same-sex marriages are not the issue-they do violence to nobody. Embryonic stem cells are not the issue. Reproductive rights are not the issue. Teaching evolution is not the issue. Displays of the Ten Commandments at the local court house are not the issue. Violence and the sources of violence are the issue. If we are going to use the language of war to describe the state of our society, let us dispense with this ridiculous and short-sighted religious war over culture, and let us commence together making war on violence. Amen and Blessed Be.