(Note: due to time constraints on speeches at the conference, I was not able to deliver the entire speech. The bold text at the end was not delivered to the conference.)

I’m sure some of you are frustrated by the fact that this issue will not die. You may think that this is because popular culture has embraced the gay community, but that’s not the main reason. Some of you might think it is because liberal theologians have taken over the church, but whether that claim is true or not, it is certainly not the reason this issue keeps coming up. No, in order to figure out why we haven’t put this behind us, we have to look inside. We have to look at ourselves.
I thought about asking everyone who is gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender, or who has a GLBT family member to stand. I’m not going to do that, but what if I did? What if I asked you to stand if you have a GLBT parent or child, grandparent or grandchild, brother, sister, niece or nephew? How many people do you think would be standing? How many more would stand if no one was in denial about the issue, or if their GLBT kids weren’t still in the closet? Would anyone still be seated?
Once you get a picture in your mind of this whole congregation standing, you begin to understand why this issue will not go away until the church’s position changes. We haven’t found a way to stop having gay kids. We embrace our kids when they are born and we love them into the church as we ought to do. But for some of them—for some of them, when they start to discover who they are we tell them they are not enough. We tell them they are defective because they don’t love the right way. Some of you will argue that I’m overstating the message we send. But you must think of how the message is heard, and not how it is sent. When we tell a kid who wants nothing more in life than to serve the church that she must choose between her sexuality and the priesthood, the message she hears is that she is defective. When we tell a committed couple that their love is no good in our church, what they hear is that God doesn’t have a place for them. These are our children. We can continue pushing our children away, but we cannot push this issue away, because with each year’s baby blessings we know at least some of them will eventually have to face the question “Why not me? Why is there not room in the church for me?”