Rev. Malcolm Boyd

My most intimate experience with the underground church came in the summer of 1965. Four young black men of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and I were volunteers to assist local African Americans in Mississippi defeat a campaign to deny their legal rights in voter registration.

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Has a dog or cat been a genuine part of your life? Both have been companions of mine as body mates and soul mates. God knows, they've waited patiently for me, forgiven my endless shortcomings, cheered me up when I was low, and cut me down to a healthier dimension...

Writing in the New York Times, Maureen Dowd took note of Hillary Clinton's being photographed by Time magazine on a C-17 flight from Malta to Tripoli. "I don't think she was meaning to be cool, " the photographer said. "She just reached in her bag to get some glasses to...

Legendary gay leader Harry Hay is in a season of high honor in three major U.S. cities. Hay, who died at age 92 in 2002, would have celebrated his 100th birthday this spring. Exhibitions highlighting his life are on display in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York. In addition,...

In Christian art, including Michelangelo and Hollywood biblical films, the maleness of God has long been highlighted. Seldom has there been a depiction of deity or spiritual strength that remotely suggested a woman like Eleanor Roosevelt or Marian Anderson, Helen Keller or Barbara Jordan.

However, extraordinary change...

It got started as a kind of obligatory thing or even a human error. A prominent Anglican cleric, Rowan Williams, had come from Wales to Los Angeles to be the speaker at a clergy conference. The night when it was over there was to be a small dinner as an...

"The Red-Hot 100: One Hundred of the Most Important Young Men and Women in the U.S." was published by Life magazine in 1962. No one on the list was older than 40. Author John Updike was 30; playwright Edward Albee, 34; soprano Leontyne Price, 35; theologian Jaroslav Pelikan, 38; the...

As a theologian and an Episcopal priest, I look at the Oscars from a particular point of view. I want really deep human meaning as well as entertainment. Cinema is not only a money machine; it's an art form. Oscar has a huge problem right now but doesn't seem aware...

When I embraced the tests and turmoil of civil rights in the '60s, often I went to jail with Jews who were fellow activists. Sometimes we faced the threat of death together on moonlit stretches of lonely country roads in the Deep South. Our mutual cause was justice for African...

When developing gay life in America starts to surface in books about the era, gay spirituality will emerge as one of the more fascinating subjects. A significant new book that deals with the subject has just appeared. It is "The Fire In Moonlight: Stories from the Radical Faeries," edited by...

Imagine my crisis and surprise when, a few years ago, I discovered I was slowly but surely losing my sense of taste. What, if anything, could I do? Soon I learned I had to find a substitute for taste as I'd defined it. This was not a time for panic....

When TV's "60 Minutes" visited the legendary Greek monastic island Mount Athos the other night I watched with rapt interest because I found myself so personally involved. Fifty-five years ago as a young Episcopalian deacon I spent an unforgettable month on the island prior to my ordination to the priesthood.What...

After my mother Beatrice died at 99, I sat down one rainy day to read a file of letters she had left behind. I was startled to turn back the clock many, many years. Here was a letter written by my grandmother Ruth on July 30, 1938. Grandma had just...

There are so many different images of Martin Luther King Jr. One is the classic view of him in the '60s addressing thousands of people in the Washington, D.C. national mall. Probably that sums up his popular image throughout the world. Now we've just observed his birthday once again in...

As a kid I attended Sunday School as a matter of course. But it never connected with me. Teachers seemed to talk down to us, treating us as, well, children. I couldn't take them seriously. During those years I guess that I prayed by rote.

There...

Why does a 49-year-old gay writer in Los Angeles pull up stakes and plan a big move to Buenos Aires next month? Is it a "midlife crisis" or does it cut deeper?

The writer is Trebor Healey. He's a novelist ("Through It Came Bright Colors"). He's a poet (Sweet...

A young Israeli woman in panty hose and miniskirt passes an Arab woman whose face is covered by heavy black cloth that also encases her full body. Red poppies dot a hillside sheltering an avant-garde Christian church adjoining 70,000 Jewish graves that can be traced back as far as 2,500...

On World AIDS Day, December 1, there were profoundly reflective gatherings to remember 30 years of the global epidemic and honor those who survived or died. For example, the ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives and Library at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles is coordinating memorabilia in...

The sheer proliferation of tents was staggering on the landscape near City Hall at L.A. Tent City. Small groups engaged in political conversation like a scene at Brown or Yale. A young man and woman snuggled, stretched out on the ground. Through an open tent flap I noticed someone sitting...

A genuine shock on my recent 88th birthday was the reaction of several friends in their forties and fifties. One seemed to speak for the others when he said "You've had a great life. Soon you'll die and get out of here before the bubble bursts. Everything is going to...