If there is any one message the Bible delivers, it is the message that God loves outcasts and that Jesus was born into the world an outcast to rescue and renew outcasts from religion gone bad. He was born poor and died poor, yet the legacy of love he left us, the legacy of inclusion and acceptance and understanding, will endure forever.

The Bible becomes a dead idol when we call the words between its covers inerrant, infallible, to be taken literally. This is not a dead book. It is alive. Open it carefully because the new truth that might come leaping out at you could change your life forever.

Although I claim to be a Christian, I live at a moment in time when the Christian faith is being defined by fundamentalists who have dishonored Christ and are in the process of destroying His church. I refuse to wear the 'Christian' label without redefining it.

It's beginning to feel like there is no room in America for anyone who is not a fundamentalist Christian.

Like the people of Israel who created a golden calf to represent God while Moses was away, fundamentalist Christians have built their own idols to represent God until Jesus returns. The religion of fundamentalism is idolatry.

A few years ago I switched to an entirely different kind of New Year's resolution. Instead of vowing to improve, I pledge to do a better job of accepting my bad habits - to stop worrying about failing to be the person I used to imagine I could be.

Gary Nixon and I have had a loving, committed, faithful relationship for twenty-five years (now over 30) yet we are denied more than a thousand rights and protections that go automatically with marriage.