I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.

I find the above quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to be quite condemning of the people who claim to be the heirs and followers of his ethos.

If anything, today’s political environment judges people more by the color of their skin than the content of their character than ever before. If you are black and you don’t vote democratic, you are a traitor to other blacks, for example. No independence of thought is allowed by anyone within any of the different minority definitions.

LGBTQ+ members are even more vulnerable to this than people of the traditional minority definitions. To take the position that what I am on the LGBTQ spectrum is my own personal business and should make no difference to you — judge me by my character — instantly gets you judged as anti LGBTQ and negative of character — one must either accept that or be forced to “come out”.

The alternative — to be part of a ‘reconciling congregation”, for example, in the United Methodist church, instantly gets you judged by your affiliation, not your character, and makes you either one of the jailed or jailers. For a reconciling congregation doesn’t allow you to be free but locks you into an expected form of conduct, and either puts your on display so others can talk about how much they help and support you, or puts you in the position of gaining your own reconciling creds by ensuring that those LGBTQ members get displayed properly to the congregation. And to ensure that those reconciled members don’t do anything to be individuals, but are more the slaves of their inclusion than they ever were outside the congregation.

Because if they ever disagree, exile is theirs, and an assurance that no other place will accept them, now that they know who they really are.