Minister
@middlechurch
. Author of CRY, BABY. Queer + building church that reflects God’s own queerness. Christian nationalism makes Jesus weep. he/they
Want to hear something amazing about crying?
Emotional tears have higher protein concentration than irritant tears, which makes them fall down your cheeks more slowly—increasing the chance they’ll be seen and solicit care.
In literal ways, your body is built for community.
The cost of riot gear for one officer is $9,000.
NYC Teachers get a $250 stipend for teaching supplies.
Budgets reveal moral priorities, and ours are invested in death.
Someone told me we should shut down public libraries so churches could run them.
I asked, “What about people who don’t want to go in a church to read?” He told me it was a great opportunity for them to learn about Jesus.
The violence of taking away a public good for evangelism.
Never feel bad for not being "productive" when you read about 500,000 people dying.
Soul anguish is what happens when grieving rituals are replaced by normalcy rituals. Don't "power through" the heart of your humanity.
When I hear someone yell about how gender affirmation is child abuse, I think about when I was working retail and a father yelled at his child for wanting pink sneakers.
He bought his son gray shoes, instead, while he sobbed.
“We can’t sit around and use the high school history version of Dr. King.
King’s life did not end because he said ‘I have a dream.’ It ended because he was dangerous to the core injustices of this nation...
If we want to honor him, we have to be dangerous too.” -
@AOC
#MLKDay
NYPD overtime pay for extra officers in the subway went from $4 million in 2022 to $155 million this year, according to city records obtained by Gothamist.
The folks yelling, “he had a gun in the car!” are the same who cheered the Supreme Court enshrining a right to near-limitless firearm possession.
This is by design: It’s a call to build a world where only guns bring safety, and only white people can carry guns.
Apparently disrupting Kavanaugh’s dinner is a constitutional crisis, but we should shrug off an assassination attempt against the Speaker of the House.
Crying over gay people’s ability to marry is a reminder that tears aren’t always an expression of vulnerability. Sometimes, they’re meant to wield power.
Obviously, you can want pink shoes and still be a boy. But the ferocity with which people police children’s gender does so much damage.
And the utter banality of examples like this highlight exactly how much this crisis is about parents’ fear, not children’s well-being.
This is where the hatred leads. Always.
We have told you, again and again. There is no “casual homophobia.” There is no “gender critical” movement.
There is bigotry that ends in death. Queer people deserve abundant living.
A real estate company backed by Jeff Bezos is entering the housing market.
The new platform lets people purchase shares of single-family rental properties.
Yahoo News says the "startup will allow you to become a landlord in just 10 minutes and you only need $100."
When I was in Tijuana a man asked me to bless the mass of bullet wounds on his stomach.
A couple I married told me how they were forced to flee Honduras before their wedding.
A 6-year-old described how her family had to walk thousands of miles after her father was murdered.
But it’s also the underlying reason so many people prefer charity to just policy: Because it gives power to the people who do the giving.
So you can make people sit through a sermon for a meal or place to sleep.
Or “help folks meet Jesus” for a book.
Do not deny anyone communion. Ever.
Communion is not a reward. It is not a privilege for the righteous. It is an invitation to step towards God's table where everyone has enough and everyone a place.
Remember: Jesus fed Judas.
Anyhow, if you think this is a beautiful as I do, I have a book all about crying coming out in May!
But you can preorder it now (and be a huge help to a first time author trying to push a queer and tender little book into the world.)
And it’s why theologies of evangelism that override other people’s agency will always embrace shifting public services from the state to churches—because it deepens the power differential that has *always* been at the heart of “conversion.”
1. Last night, I found out I may have been exposed to the coronavirus through a friend I had dinner with on Tuesday.
I'm a minister: I work with old people, babies, immunocompromised folks, people who lack insurance. I can’t risk their health.
So, today I tried to get tested.
“When I came out as trans to my Dad, he asked, ‘Do you have a black suit and a blue suit?’
I said, ‘I have a black suit.’
He said, ‘Well I need to buy you a blue one then, because every man needs both.’
It was the greatest gift he could give—space for me to bloom.” - Tiq Milan
Since some folks need it more clearly:
I’m *not* saying the boy was trans because he wanted pink shoes.
I *am* saying how we police gender (affirming care bans are an extreme example) harms all children. And that love looks like self-determination—for trans and cis kids alike.
What I wouldn't give for the opportunity to howl in a physical space with hundreds of other people. The bandwidth of our virtual platforms isn't wide enough for the enormity of our pain.
My love for libraries goes back to the days when I took refuge in them, and wonderful adults told me I could write my own books.
My first is coming out in May—Cry, Baby: Why Our Tears Matter 😭
You can pre-order a signed copy from
@strandbookstore
below:
I tell this story and more in my book that's out next month. Also lots of exploration about crying and gender, the shame we instill in far too many children, and how we can work to overcome it.
Pre-order a signed copy and I'll be grateful forever:
“We must lift the coffin lids of the 250,000 people who die from poverty and stop lying that ‘God called them home.’
God may welcome them home; but this is policy murder. They died because a legislator put a clock on their lives.” -
@RevDrBarber
#PCCMoralCongress
Funny how it’s always “take the Bible literally” until it comes to wealth redistribution.
People are starving themselves over dollars other folks wouldn’t even notice went missing.
While that may be true in small cases, I think it’s more common that people are fully aware that trans and gender-variant folks exist, but don’t believe they should have to know or encounter them—and that they are certainly not owed basic respect and decency.
My mom is reading a book on identity-conscious education (bless her), and it’s talking about how one of the barriers to gender-conscious education is people’s belief that trans and gender-variant people don’t actually exist.
If you want to organize against Christian fascism, the Freedom Rising conference in NYC next weekend is gonna be incredible. Bonkers speaker list + amazing grassroots orgs.
More info:
(Queer, poor and/or non-white folks DM me, I have a few free tickets.)
I really don't have words. The gall of a man who was inherited millions of dollars—and repeatedly engaged in massive fraud to enlarge his fortune—calling refugees' pleas for safety "a big fat con job" is beyond morally repugnant. It's evil.
Perhaps the worst part are the cheers.
So much transphobia is rooted in gender anxiety.
When people confront the truth that trans and non-binary people exist, it unsettles the lie that gender is fixed, neat and tidy.
Acknowledging someone’s freedom provokes questions: “Am I living in a cage?”
Russia vows to shoot down any and all missiles fired at Syria. Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice and new and “smart!” You shouldn’t be partners with a Gas Killing Animal who kills his people and enjoys it!
3. But that's precisely the problem: You can carry coronavirus and still be asymptomatic! Particularly for folks like myself who are young with strong immune systems.
If we only test people who exhibiting symptoms, we ignore a significant means through which diseases spread.
The folks who say "stop talking politics in the wake of a tragedy," don't want to talk about grief, either.
The only prayer they're truly offering is "let's move on."
5. If I was working a job where I might be fired if I didn't come in—like millions of Americans—I might have no choice but to show up and hope I wasn't infectious. And there would be no way for me to find out.
This. Is. How. A. Pandemic. Spreads.
@riverside_luke
Christian fascists shutting down libraries and folks “helpfully” saying, “We’ll just open church libraries!” are different sides of the same coin.
Sing off-key. Make bad art. Knit something with holes and gaps.
You were created to revel in the joy of self-expression, not to wall yourself in excellence.
7. The federal governments disastrous response, and inability to provide free and rapid public testing, is putting lives at risk. Full stop.
The President's incompetence is as big a threat as the virus itself.
“There is nothing holy about turning someone away from a hospital. There is nothing holy about rejecting a child from a family. There is nothing holy about writing discrimination into the law.
I’m tired of faith being weaponized.” -
@AOC
, preaching the gospel
“It is part of my faith that all people are holy and all people are sacred. Unconditionally.”
@AOC
just delivered a sermon to Congress about the dignity of LGBTQ people.
6. China has tested 320,000 people. South Korea has tested 200,000--with a population 1/7th the size of ours.
The US has tested 1,700 people. Yesterday, the CDC completed eight tests. EIGHT TESTS!!
Things don’t become cheaper when they’re privatized and deregulated—their costs are just passed on to the folks least able to pay them.
This is criminal. We need public utilities now.
I have a queer friend who, when folks say something offensive, simply replies, “Wow, that’s so boring.”
I love it.
Don’t dignify hate by letting people believe they’re saying something new, worthy of serious consideration, or—laughably—countercultural.
Just, “Wow, so boring.”
12. And until we implement free public testing for anyone who seeks it, we are forcing people to gamble with the possibility of infecting their community.
Oh, and just a general note about supporting authors, if you don’t have the funds to pre-order, don’t sweat! There are tons of other ways to help.
One great, free way is to visit your library and request that they order a copy! Thanks for helping spread the word ❤️
10. Until we guarantee sick leave, we force people to choose between the risk of infecting others and paying their rent or providing food for their families.
I want to mark my forehead
but last year’s ashes won’t rub off
The sun stayed set on Easter
a sign on the rock at the tomb:
Back in 15 minutes
But it’s been a year
still no young man dressed in white
and I’m so tired of wilderness
God is a trans woman fired from her job.
God is a gay man who can't bring his partner to the office for fear of losing his.
God is a bi woman denied employment because she's not a "culture fit."
And God weeps when humans twist bigotry into law.
#RiseUpOct8
Last night, Missouri killed Raheem Taylor, despite eyewitness accounts that place him 2,000 miles away from the murder.
A harrowing reminder: In a fallible and unjust system, some of the people executed will be innocent.
Ban the death penalty now.
Wild how many Christians worship a God who crosses between divinity and humanity, but treat gender as an immutable law.
“Created in God’s image” means imbued with the same agency to follow love over any threshold.
I have a whole chapter devoted to deceptive tears in my upcoming book. It's precisely my deep respect for crying that makes me so furious watching it used to undermine people's rights.
Vulnerability as a cover for violence.
Last night, kids called out from a stoop to offer candy. I said “no,”—not wanting to be a bother—and one began crying: “no one wants our candy.”
I looped back for a Twix and a reminder: Sometimes we assume accepting a gift is an imposition, when it’s really someone reaching out.