The More Light team at First Presbyterian Church of Palo Alto (California) broke new ground today by hosting what was apparently the first More Light table ever set up at a meeting of the Presbytery of San Jose. In conjunction with the presbytery's annual Mission Fair event, at which numerous PCUSA-related mission and service organizations set up information tables during the presbytery meeting's lunch hour, the More Light team worked with MLP's field organizer Michael Adee to acquire the print resources needed to stock the information table.


Photo: First Palo Alto More Light team members Grant Sontag, Becks Salentes, Fritzie Pagpaguitan, and Bruce Hahne staff the More Light table. The laptop at the left side of the table is showing one of the MLP Hearts & Minds DVDs. (Click the photo to see a larger version. )

Initial requests by the More Light team for a table reservation revealed some reluctance by presbytery staff to even permit the existence of a More Light table at the mission fair.

However, because First Palo Alto was the host church for this presbytery meeting, and because More Light Presbyterians is one of the mission fund recipients of First Palo Alto, the table was allowed with the caveat that it post a sign clarifying that it wasn't a presbytery mission. Had today's presbytery meeting taken place at any other church in the presbytery, LGBT people and MLP literally wouldn't have been allowed a place at the table.

The politics involved simply in getting permission to set up a More Light information table at a presbytery meeting point directly to the PCUSA's ongoing hypocrisy: at the same time as the denomination and several decades' worth of commissions and task forces continue to issue calls to "study and dialogue" about LGBT concerns, many presbyteries won't even allow LGBT people to staff an information table at meetings. The result is that Presbyterians end up talking about LGBT people instead of with them.

Our thanks go out to the More Light team at First Palo Alto for its work to bring the message of LGBT equality to the Presbytery of San Jose!

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Ref: http://www.mlp.org/article.php/200509171819168