Merry Christmas!

Well, boys and girls, I was thinking about doing a really sappy, heartfelt Christmas post, but if you've been following along for any length of time, you know that I don't do sappy very well.

We don't make a big deal about Christmas here at Morning Wood Acres. Paul and I will spend a quiet day at home with the cats and the ducks. We'll exchange gifts and call our parents. I'll be starting on my traditional Christmas lasagna when I get home from work tonight, so it will be ready to put in the oven tomorrow.

Thank you all for your support his year. There may be blogs that bring you the news faster, that have teams of bloggers contributing to their sites, have a higher national profile, more readers and more Capital Hill contacts than I have, but here at Rev. Steve's Cyber-Pulpit, you'll find something that none of the other blogs have, Me.

Every morning I get up and read through the news feeds and try to bring my own unique perspective to the stories that I think are important to the LGBT community here in Southwestern Virginia and across the country. A lot of the stories are covered by everybody and most of those bloggers are all singing the same song. I try to see beyond the obvious and bring you my own perspective, which is sometimes the opposite of what you'll see everywhere else.

I also enjoy sharing stories about what's happening to our LGBT brothers and sisters around the world. There are great things happening in many other countries where LGBT rights are being advanced in ways that should both give us hope for what we can achieve and make us feel a little ashamed for our lack of leadership as a nation.

There are stories happening every day in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, where are queer cousins are truly oppressed, that give us reason to be thankful for the fact that we are free to fight for our rights without being tortured, imprisoned or killed just because we're different.

By sharing these stories with you, I hope to help Roanoke's LGBT community feel a little less isolated from the rest of our community. We live in a beautiful part of the country where some very ugly laws have been passed because we have not stood up for ourselves. I challenge each of you to take a more active roll in your own fate. Be the change you want to see in the world.

Merry Christmas!

Rev. Steve