Today at our congregation we had something of a town hall meet the delegates, where we had a mock plenary session on the Phoenix debate and a non-binding straw vote. I was actually pretty shocked at how the straw vote ended up – 4 in favor of boycott, 9 against the boycott. I was expecting to be in the minority in voting against the amendment and boycott.
Something I’ve both seen on the Internet about this issue and that was brought up at our town hall was fear. People might very well be afraid of coming to GA if it’s held in Phoenix, out of fear of safety from the sheriff’s office. I do understand where this is coming from, although I also do think it’s being played up a bit – I’d like to see specific instances where the sheriff in Phoenix has arrested and detained people there for conventions.
But, as someone on the Pro-boycott side brought up, it’s easy to say we stand behind the side of love when it’s not affecting us negatively, financially. (He brought this up in reference to how we should not care about the cost of the cancelled contracts.) I took this a slightly different way.
It is easy to stand on the side of love when we aren’t being affected. It’s easy when we are just going down a couple of blocks to protest in front of some government building, then heading back home afterwards. I’ve only felt fear while protesting once, and it took a lot of courage for me to go despite no guarantees of safety (indeed, I had come up with back up plans on what to do if I got arrested, who to call for bail money, etc.) It takes courage to stand up for something right in the face of outright hostility.
It would be the easier decision to boycott Phoenix because some are afraid of going.
It would be tougher to go to Phoenix despite feeling fear of what might happen to us or our fellow congregants. But, standing on the side of love is not always going to be an easy thing. Something that we can conveniently do in the comfort of our own bubble. That difference will be limited to our bubble, often that which doesn’t need to be changed. We have to go outside the bubble into the unfamiliar, unsafe world in order to make a difference.
It takes a lot of courage to stand on the side of love when you’re afraid.
But…isn’t that what we ought to do?
I am leaning towards voting against moving the GA out of Phoenix. But, by no means is my mind made up.
I’m leaning one way or the other on how to vote on pretty much everything at this point, but I refuse to set myself in stone before hearing other arguments at GA. I feel like this is the approach everyone should be taking going into GA.
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