Newsletter Thoughts November 8th, 2025

Dear Friends,

I hope that you are all have a nice weekend. Mine will be busy, with some fun activities,

a memorial service for a friend, a vet visit with my dog, and a Sunday night football

game. It is one of these weekends when just thinking about it makes me tired! Do you

ever experience this?

I subscribe to a legal news reporter named Chris Geidner (Law Dork). For context Chris

is gay. He wrote about an event this week that reminded me of the importance of

integrity in our beliefs, especially if those closest to us do not agree. The event is the

death of Dick Cheney. Now, you all know that I am progressive in my politics, so I have

rarely found myself in agreement with Cheney.

Chris Geidner doesn’t have much in common with Cheney either. But he chose to write

about the vice-presidential debate between Dick Cheney and Joe Leiberman. This was

in 2000, so try and remember that rights for our LGBTQ siblings were mostly non-

existent. The two men were asked a question about marriage equality. Leiberman

hemmed and hawed and said that is a tough question.

This is what Dick Cheney said:

The fact of the matter is we live in a free society, and freedom means freedom for

everybody. We don’t get to choose, and we shouldn’t be able to choose and say

you get to live free and you don’t. That means people should be free to enter into

any kind of relationship they want to enter into. It’s no one’s business in terms of

regulating behavior in that regard.

If you don’t know, Mr. Cheney had a lesbian daughter. So this is an example of love of a

family member influencing one’s beliefs. But we all know that not all parents, especially

25 years ago, were accepting of their children. There were many conservatives who

were unhappy with this answer. Yet, Cheney did not cave to pressure.

I share this because it is a good example of the integrity that is exhibited when we are

firm in our convictions. Now some may say, “yeah but he was so wrong on…” Yes we

can disagree. But we can also recognize that everyone, whether we agree with them or

not, is multi-dimensional. And in recognizing this, my hope is that we can take steps

across the divides that we have.

Chris ended his article with a few words about our current Supreme Court agreeing to

hear a case that seeks to take away rights for LGBTQ people. these words:

But, it is 2025 and this Supreme Court has gone where many said it wouldn’t in

other cases, so many people have spilled significant virtual ink on the

request from Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver on behalf of Kim Davis to “revisit and

reverse“ Obergefell.

In that light and in this moment, maybe the former vice president’s 25-year-old

comments are themselves worth revisiting today. They do not fundamentally change Dick Cheney’s legacy, and they don’t even particularly change my view of him, but — in that 2000 debate — he made a statement that made a difference. And that should not be forgotten in this moment when speaking out and standing up is more important than ever.

I wonder what might our world be like if we all remembered the importance of “speaking

out and standing up.” For us, we have many things that our faith teaches us about

dignity and justice and care for the world. We also get to struggle with the difficulty of

loving our enemies, as Jesus instructs us. It is not always easy, but we can speak up.

This is a lot! I would love to hear from you. How do you navigate these polarized times?

Peace,

Pastor Nancy

PS: Here is a link to the whole article in case you want to read it.

https://open.substack.com/pub/chrisgeidner/p/dick-cheney-who-died-monday-was-

an?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email