Created Equal: There Are No Favorite Children

When the Sword of the Spirit Becomes a Club — and How We Take It Back

“The children of God are not born into ranks—they are born into light.”
— Howard Thurman

“God shows no partiality.”
— Romans 2:11 (NRSV)

🔥 Opening the Gate

Greetings, my Radiant Rebels,

Happy Friday! You have made it through another week of chaos to the balm and safety of the tea table. In any time, that would be an achievement — but especially in an age when our government turns against its people. Whether this is your first visit or your hundredth, you are welcome here. No matter your story, you have a place to belong in the tea garden, and I am so glad you have found your way.

For many, myself included, today also marks the eve before we take to the streets in solidarity and peaceful resistance. If you are like me, there are nerves and fear, perhaps even trepidation — yet that is to face upon the morrow. Today, we rest. We reflect. We prepare, so that when dawn’s early light breaks across these United States, we meet it with steadfast resolve in the rightness of our cause.

💥 Off the Screens and Into the Streets

We Shall Have No Kings.

Now usually, when we gather at the tea table to herald in the weekend, we raise a Firebird — a hero or icon of the LGBTQ+ community whose life and story rise from the cooling ashes of history’s censorious fires to guide our path forward.

However, today we do something a bit different.

Wednesday, during tea time, we began a new series based on the seminal work Created Equal: Why Gay Rights Matter in America. (If you missed it, feel free to read Created Equal: The Pickle Paradox before today’s post.)

By popular demand — and in the hope that I send every single one of you out into the streets more prepared for tomorrow, with the tools and courage to confront the demons of Saturday and hold your heads high on Sunday — today we press forward with the next installment.

For all who wished to see a Firebird rise, fear not: a Lady always likes a little surprise. You never know where the story may go.

So my friends, pull up a chair, pour yourself a cup of courage (we’ve made plenty for all), and settle in. While Wednesday’s topic was disgust masquerading as doctrine, today we face down Sister Bertha BetterThanYou and the righteous hordes.

First, we’ll explore what the Bible actually says about homosexuality (it’s going to set Bertha’s hair on fire), and then — once you have the tools to confront any rage-baiting Christian Nationalist in a way that makes their heads spin — we’ll explain conclusively, and beyond any reasonable doubt, why none of that matters to our government. Not one whit.

If this essay were to have a thesis, it would be this:

God has no favorite children — and our government recognizes no God.

Like I said: heads on fire.
So take a sip of courage, my dear friends, know you are in a place of safety — and let us begin.

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⚔️ Table-Flipping Time

Now listen up, my brothers and sisters in Christ — it’s time to have a real, honest-to-goodness Come-to-Jesus, as only a Lady born of the South could give.

For a people told explicitly to model their lives after Christ, far too many are acting like they’ve no concept of Christ, much less of the personal walk in faith that relationship enjoins.

The Bible — the sacred text for all Christian sects — is very clear on its own self-image:

“For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” — Hebrews 4:12

Friends, swords have two edges — and lately, you’ve been swinging wildly, laying about both the world and yourselves like berserkers in a rage. There are as many self-inflicted wounds on your souls as there are marks upon the world.

I will not tell any man or woman how to live, but I will tell you this: the path you’re on only leads to sorrow.

You needn’t take my word for it either.

There are nine passages in Biblical text commonly wielded to denounce and subjugate LGBTQ+ members of the congregation. Just to put that in perspective — there are over 31,000 verses in the Bible. Those nine represent fewer than two dozen lines. By sheer content alone, homosexuality is a side character — arguably an extra without any dialogue.

Unsurprising, considering LGBTQ+ individuals are almost always the worst off when society shifts from passive non-observance to actually seeing them.

Of those nine, we can dismiss four right away.
Deuteronomy 23:17, 1 Kings 14:24, 1 Kings 22:46, and 2 Kings 23:7 all forbid male and female prostitution — not homosexual behavior.

That leaves five verses to contend with.

The most popular, for anyone who grew up in the church, are likely already forming on your lips: Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, which explicitly forbid homosexual relations.

Leviticus 20:13: “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, they have both committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them.”
Leviticus 18:22: “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination.”

Wow. That sounds pretty powerful. I wonder what else those passages have to say.

Leviticus 19:13: “You shall not oppress your neighbor or rob him. The wages of a hired worker shall not remain with you all night until the morning.”
Leviticus 19:33–34: “When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt.”
Leviticus 19:15: “Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly.”

Do you see it yet?

Those passages live among more than seventy-six banned things — most not even worth listing here. Among them: the wearing of clothing made from two different threads, planting two crops in the same field, or eating shellfish.

I’ve yet to see anyone stone Grandma for wearing that god-awful polyester jumpsuit to Wednesday night supper.

And remember — the word “abomination” is English, which the Bible was not written in. Jesus wasn’t white, and that famous Sunday School painting of the pale, blue-eyed Christ was based loosely on Leonardo da Vinci’s male lover.

In the original Hebrew, “to’ebah” translates more closely to “ritually unclean” or “taboo” — roughly, “yucky.”

So, Leviticus is a list of things that were yucky to them. What’s more, since the only thing the Christian Nationalists seem to take seriously from that entire list is the homosexuality bit — how about this: you refrain from what you find gross, and leave the rest of us alone to live our lives.

Trust me, we’re not out here trying to drag you pickle-lovers into bed with us. According to the news, you’re far too busy being indicted for sex crimes with minors — so I think it’s safe to say your bedrooms already have enough problems.

🌋 Sodom, Hospitality, and the Meaning of Sin

Now, right about this point, there’s always a brave soul who wants to chime in about Sodom and Gomorrah, so let me nip that squarely in the bud.

While linguistically linked to homosexuality through the word sodomy, the sin of Sodom was not homosexuality — it was inhospitality.

They greeted strangers — Lot’s guests, who happened to be angels in disguise — with violence, attempting to use them for sexual entertainment. In other words: they tried to rape their guests.

The ancient world held guest-right sacred. Someone offered shelter at your hearth was inviolable. Consider the Greek tale of King Laius of Thebes, who violated guest-right by abducting and assaulting his host’s son. The gods cursed him to die by his own son’s hand — and that son’s name was Oedipus.

Fate was not kind to King Laius, and the God of Abraham was equally swift in His wrath when it came to Sodom.

Don’t take my word for it — take Christ’s. These are the words in red:

Matthew 10:14–15: “If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, leave that home or town and shake the dust off your feet. Truly I tell you, it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.”

Notice what He didn’t say.
He didn’t warn them about “unclean acts.”
He warned them about refusing hospitality.

In fact, the only indirect mention of homosexuality in Christ’s ministry involves a Roman soldier pleading for his “treasured servant” — a phrase that, when translated from the Greek, refers to a male lover. Christ saw the purity of that love, healed him, and warned the crowd against cruelty toward the soldier.

So let’s simplify this:
God — by your own definition and sacred text — is a Parent to us all. A parent does not have favorite children. Each one is precious and beloved. Hence, the constant scriptural reminders to love your neighbor, to welcome the stranger, to serve selflessly.

Sodom, let’s not forget, was destroyed for the attempt at harm — not the act itself.

Just think what might have happened had they zip-tied those angels naked in the street, left them for eight hours without food or water, and hurled insults and abuse.

God destroyed Sodom, lock, stock, and barrel, for a terroristic threat against strangers in their land.

Tell me — how would you categorize our current treatment of immigrants by ICE?

Do you see the problem now?

Brothers and Sisters — God loves us all. He has no favorite children.

Come Sunday, when you return to your halls of worship from the Streets of Justice, remember: the sword you wield was not meant to be a club. The edge of that sword — what it is forged in and sharpened on — is love. Deny that love, and you’ve heard precisely what will happen.

At the rate the Christian Nationalists are driving this hearse to hell, we should be expecting Sodom-sized consequences any day now.

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📜 The Myth of a “Christian Nation”

Now friends, I know many of you — perhaps most of you — might not be practicing Christians at all. You might be agnostic, atheist, or simply unaligned. So why spend precious time on this?

Because there seems to be a presiding belief — among both Christians and non-Christians alike — that this nation was founded as a Christian nation.

While that might make my fellow siblings in Christ happy (and the Christian Nationalists downright giddy), nothing could be further from the truth.

Let me set the stage.

A quiet, puritanical village. The land harsh, the winters harsher. The year: 1692. Between now and the next year, two hundred people across the Massachusetts colony will be accused of witchcraft; over thirty found guilty; nineteen hanged.

A town of roughly 151 souls — more than half accused, and others soon to follow.

Though “courts of law” presided, they bore little resemblance to justice. The judges — all pastors and “learned men” — took the word of children as “spectral evidence.”

If you suddenly feel compelled to shout, “I saw Goody Proctor speaking with the devil!” — you’re not alone.

Those girls saw it too, or claimed to — and they watched as their words hanged innocent men and women. The trials continued until church leaders finally thought, perhaps we shouldn’t hang people on the testimony of a nine-year-old describing an old woman turning into a bird.

But by the time common sense returned, dozens lay dead and the blood of innocents stained the hands of the supposedly pure — all because a child said she saw a monster in the dark.

I’m speaking, of course, of the Salem Witch Trials — one of the last times theology was given the full weight of law in these United States.

While Salem did not burn witches, preferring to hang them or crush them slowly beneath stones, their complicity was every bit as vile as the licking flames of Europe’s pyres.

I spent the first part of this essay building a framework you should now recognize — a stark wooden mast raised against the sky, a platform of kindling surrounding. That cloying scent in the garden? Oil for the base.

While you were reading, we’ve been stacking every dry argument — both for and against — into this little witch’s funeral pyre.

It was a sentence my ancestors once escaped — death by cleansing fire at the hands of supposedly holy men. Some did not escape.

Yet tonight, I like to think I can hear them cackle. Because on this, their sacred month, we strike a match to the very ideals once used to consume and silence them — and let something truer rise from the ashes.

Feel those flames, friends? The warmth against your face while the cool autumn evening nips at your heels? As you watch them burn, may the light flicker and dance hope into your heart.

For once this pyre was lit to drive fear into the hearts of those who believed, worshiped, looked, or loved differently.

Now, we gather around it and dance — celebrating the division our Founders enshrined.

The Salem Witch Trials were within living memory when our Founders framed this government. They knew fundamental religious doctrine — while capable of uniting — was also incapable of compromise. Centuries of European conflict had written that story in blood.

Protestant versus Catholic versus Muslim versus Jew — each change of ruler brought a purge of the last.

Just ask Bloody Mary — not the ghost, but Mary Tudor. She knew the sight of burning innocents well. It was usually her word that put them there.

Our Founders remembered that. They wrote it down.

Repeatedly.

Not only did they enshrine it in the Bill of Rights, but to his dying day, Jefferson was proudest of just three things — the ones carved on his tombstone, which he designed himself:

Thomas Jefferson
Author of the American Declaration of Independence
of the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom
& Father of the University of Virginia

That statute — still one of the most powerful legal documents in our history — declares that religious belief is a private matter between the individual and God. No government has the right to interfere. No person can be forced to support or participate in any religion against their will.

Civil rights do not depend on religious opinions.

If you want to be particularly theological about it, even the central tenet of Christianity — belief in the divine Trinity — finds no reflection in Jefferson’s writings. He never spoke of Jesus’ divinity. Jefferson was a universalist, a believer in a Creator, and wise enough never to put his private theology to paper for posterity.

Perhaps even Jefferson feared a pyre.

And yet, all too often today, I read legal opinions that sound more like sermons from the mount. Whether the majority worships Christ or the Great Pickle, our laws define the individual as the arbiter of right and wrong, moral and immoral.

Faith belongs to the person. The government’s sacred duty is not to promote it — but to protect every citizen’s right to hold their own.

🔥 A Firebird Saves Sodom

“Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.” — Amos 5:24

In the ashes of every great fire, for those who know, there is also waiting rebirth. Sodom was spared until the one faithful citizen was safe. If we as a nation who treat strangers in our land this way and still call ourselves a “Christian Nation” have not yet me the fate of Sodom, perhaps it is because there are yet those among us who understand what it means to truly follow Christ’s teachings. Those like the Firebird whose song we can just now start to hear coming from the remains of our puritanical purging.

Bishop Marianne Edgar Budde is no stranger to having her expression of faith place her on a Witches Pyre. When the Bible was raised like a shield in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church in 2020, she did what prophets have always done in the face of desecration: she spoke.
Calm, clear, unflinching—

“I am outraged. The Bible is not to be used as a photo op.”

In that moment she became the Lot among the citizens of Sodom, standing at the threshold, pleading that sacred hospitality not be defiled by spectacle.
And like Lot, she refused to hand over the vulnerable to the mob of power.

Her courage did not flicker when the cameras dimmed.
She kept the lamp trimmed—defending the immigrant and the refugee, reminding the faithful that Christ was once a child carried across a border by desperate parents.
When leaders sought to close the gates, she opened the church doors wider.

Long before that, she had already carried another candle through the wind: the long vigil for Matthew Shepard, the young man whose crucifixion on a Wyoming fence exposed the nation’s failure of mercy.
Bishop Budde preached, marched, and prayed until that fence became an altar, and the altar became a promise: Never again in silence.

It would take almost 20 years but thanks to her efforts Matthew who was taken too early by hate fueled by religious fervor and was never interred due to fear he would be unable to rest, was finally put at peace.
When Matthew’s remains were interred at the Washington National Cathedral, she stood sentinel, declaring that every soul—every queer, searching, wondrous soul—deserves safety within God’s house.

That is the ministry of a Firebird:
to fly through smoke and come out singing.
To hold scripture in one hand and the suffering world in the other, refusing to let either be forgotten.

Budde reminds us that the Gospel’s hardest command is not belief but hospitality—to love the stranger, the sinner, the scared.
She shows us that faith untested by compassion is just choreography.
And so long as she keeps standing before the citadel with her lantern raised, there is hope that Sodom might yet remember what welcome feels like.

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🌩 Sodom’s Shadow and the Consequences of Forgetting

Let us tell the truth as the prophets did.
Sodom’s sin was not love between men.
It was the death of kindness.

“This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.” — Ezekiel 16:49

The flames that consumed the city were not heaven’s hatred but humanity’s harvest—
a people so certain of their own virtue they had forgotten how to open a door.

Today, when preachers wield scripture like a torch and call it light, the same peril smolders.
Every law written in fear, every pulpit that mocks compassion, is a spark in dry grass.

What’s more, as the most famous author of our Declaration and subsequent bill of rights himself championed—we were never meant to be a nation of Christ but a nation where everyone could find the Creator according to their own faith and beliefs. God has no favorite children friends, and the Government can have no favored Gods, not if we wish to keep our nation intact without raising the bloody specter of Histories religious wars of fundamentalism.

To my Christian readers:
The question is not whether God will punish another Sodom.
The question is whether we will recognize our reflection in the smoke.

Because Sodom burns whenever hospitality dies—
whenever the hungry are scorned, the migrant caged, the queer child driven from home, the prophet silenced by applause for empire.

Yet even in the ashes, grace glows.
It glows in the hands that rebuild, in the bishop who still opens her church to the stranger, in every believer brave enough to whisper: I will love them anyway.

If we remember that, the fire becomes light again.
If we practice mercy, the jar of virtue breathes.
And if we keep the faith that feeds rather than fears, Sodom’s lesson will not be destruction but deliverance.

Until our Next Bold Move,
~Lady LiberTea ✨🫖

🌟 Call to Action — Stand, Be Counted, Resist

Tomorrow, we take to the streets. No kings. No crowns. No silenced voices.

Join us in the No Kings protest — let your feet, your voice, your body bear witness that we will not accept tyranny cloaked as leadership. Come. Stand. Be counted. Because when justice is threatened, silence becomes complicity.

Find your local rally, gather with neighbors, bring your courage — and let them see that the power belongs to the people.

~L.L ✨🫖