“Is it a boy or a girl?” is the most common question asked of parents-to-be. The answer to the question makes us think we can imagine the child’s life and the experiences the parents will have raising them. We are taught that knowing this will determine what presents to buy, what color to paint the nursery, and what yarn to choose for the baby blanket. In places like the United States since colonization, people have had two gender categories in which to place the people they met: boy or girl, male or female, woman or man. Every day, many of us define people according to a whole host of binaries: If we are male or female; If we are white or a Person of Color; If we are able-bodied or disabled; If we are cisgender or transgender and on and on.

Over the last two weeks, five Black churches in St. Louis County, Missouri have been attacked in incidents of arson. Luckily no one has been physically hurt but these terrifying and violent instances of backlash affirm the urgent need to show up and take action for racial justice today. UU Ministers have written the following letter to the members and friends of the impacted congregations. Click here to add your name and your own message of solidarity. If you would prefer to send your message via US Postal Service, you can send it to Rev. Julie Taylor PO Box 440091, St. Louis, MO 63144 who will deliver your note. The Standing on the Side of Love Campaign is in touch with UU ministers in the St. Louis area and will keep you updated with additional ways to support.

As I lay awake at 3:30am last Friday morning grasping that I am now the closest Unitarian Universalist minister to the headquarters of the National Rifle Association, I realized I would need to revise my sermon on my congregation’s theme “letting go” and write something completely different.  I decided this because of my absolute and total frustration with our country’s obsession with guns and our unbelievable inability to do anything about it. You can listen to the full sermon here.

Dear friends,

After the latest mass shooting in Oregon, I was unable to sleep, wondering like so many others, how many people have to die, how many school shootings have to happen in order for us to let go of this endless stalemate on gun safety.  

You may have experienced this fun feeling: Watching the news, or looking at a news article online about an important justice event, and, wham!-- there it is, another yellow shirt sighting! Doesn’t it feel great to see our community represented so vibrantly all across the country, and even internationally?

We know that how we show up in the world, as Evangelists for Love, as people committed to a radical love ethic, as Standing on the Side of Love (SSL) Activists, is one of the most important things we do. Whether it’s in person or online, our iconic imagery helps identify us to each other, and to our larger faith and justice communities.

It is with a whole mix of bittersweet emotions that I am writing to let you know that as of the end of October, I will be leaving my position as Campaign Manager of Standing on the Side of Love. In my nearly three years here, there is so much that we can be proud of in our work together. From our support of the #100Women100Miles Pilgrimage with our partners at the We Belong Together coalition to celebrating the SCOTUS Marriage Equality win at General Assembly, both in the past few months, to the emergence of the UU support across the country for the Black Lives Matter movement, it has been a busy three years harnessing the power of love to stop oppression!

Family obligations called me to California to start a new life with my new husband, and the hardest part has been realizing that I would have to leave the campaign. While I might be moving on from a leadership position with Standing on the Side of Love, there will always be a huge part of this campaign in my heart. I have been inspired, challenged, encouraged, and educated by all of you over the past several years, and I will be eternally grateful for the chance to have worked alongside so many people of faith working together to build a new way.

Our commitment to living the values of our faith is being tested.  We are standing in the storm of reaction against the Black Lives Matter movement.  Now is the time when we must ask ourselves, “do we become even more out and proud for racial justice or do we shrink down in retreat?”  

With FOX news leading a media frenzy denouncing the Black Lives Matter movement as a hate group, as terrorists, as anti-white, some of us are retreating from wearing Black Lives Matter buttons and some of us are questioning whether or not to take down the Black Lives Matter banners from our churches.

It would be easy for me to say all of the white UUs who are faltering are just falling back into their white privilege, are sinking back into their liberal white racism.  It would be easy for me to distance myself and feel superior.  It is much harder for me to say, that I too, as a white Unitarian Universalist, have been scared.  After months of wearing my Black Lives Matter button, I found myself second-guessing whether to wear it.  What if I am challenged at the grocery store or walking in the park with my son.   It was much easier to wear my button after the latest police murder of an unarmed Black person.  Filled with anger and a desire to “do something”, I wore my button with defiance to racism and a commitment to racial justice.