Spirituality Matters with Rev Karla

I’m reading the piece in full and sharing parts of my story I have rarely discussed publicly, including why the SAVE America Act has become so personal for me.

If you choose to stay with me through the whole thing, thank you. Truly.

The full written piece and related resources are also available here on Substack.

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Natalie Harp, Donald Trump, and the Christian Patriarchy that Taught Us to Ignore the Red Flags

RevKarla — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 14:02:24 GMT

Christian patriarchy trains people…

to recognize rebellion faster than abuse, and that conditioning is the understory that helps explain why Natalie Harp’s relationship with Donald Trump may not trigger the outrage one might expect.

Many of us rightly conclude that there is something deeply strange about Donald Trump’s relationship with his personal assistant Natalie Harp.

People have noticed. There are rumors they are having an affair. There are people trying to psychoanalyze her relationship with Trump through the death of her father. There are people who have gone all the way down the rabbit hole and assert she must somehow be a Russian spy.

None of that is verifiable at this point, so it is all alleged. And while there is reporting that her relationship with her father was complicated, with Harp herself writing about grieving his death while simultaneously describing Trump as her “Guardian and Protector,” I am not interested in diagnosing a woman I do not know.

I do, however, think the actual story sitting right in front of us is more revealing than any of those theories.

Natalie Harp has told us, in her own words, how she sees Donald Trump. And when I read those words, I recognize something. It’s the architecture, the language and, of course, the hierarchy.
It’s what happens when a woman is taught that protection by a powerful man is safety, correction by a powerful man is care, submission to the right authority is virtue, and loyalty is proof of character.

I recognize it because I came out of evangelical Christianity, and there is no greater defender of Christian patriarchy than the Christian men who will sacrifice those who are the most loyal, the most obedient…

the most vulnerable.

I experienced it. I witnessed it too many times. And too many times I was silent for fear of the consequences that I too would suffer if I stood up and called out the abuse.

Here on the other side of deconstructing my Christian heritage and healing from Christian patriarchy, I see that the question isn’t, “What exactly is going on between Donald Trump and Natalie Harp?”

That’s a distraction.

The question for me is:

“How can I help people see that this relationship reflects the harm that Christian patriarchy causes in our societal structure?”

This isn’t a moment for gossip.
It’s a moment for reflection.

Before Natalie Harp Worked for Trump, She had Already Made Him Her Rescuer

Natalie Harp’s life has had challenges to say the least. She survived bone cancer. She no doubt suffered immense loss from her father’s suicide in 2020. She has repeatedly credited Donald Trump with saving her life because of his Right to Try legislation.

At the 2020 Republican National Convention, Natalie garnered national attention when she took center stage to tell the world that without Trump, she would have died waiting for treatment.

That story, however, has a factual problem.

The Washington Post investigated it years ago, and medical experts questioned whether Trump’s Right to Try law had anything to do with the treatment Harp actually received. The medication she described was already FDA-approved and was apparently being used off-label, something doctors could do before Trump signed the law.

Harp had even publicly talked about receiving that treatment before the law went into effect. So there are really two separate truths here. One is the factual question of whether Donald Trump actually made the treatment available to her.

The other is whether Natalie Harp appears to believe he did. It is that, or, what would be even more concerning, is that she is lying to impress Donald Trump and deceive the public.

But Natalie takes her worship of Trump to an even more disturbing level, inserting him into biblical stories to glorify him. She described him through the story of the Good Samaritan. She, the wounded person on the side of the road. He, the benevolent man who stopped and rescued her.

For those of us raised inside evangelical Christianity, this language will sound familiar. We understand what it means to be devoted and blindly loyal to Jesus and God. But oftentimes, that devotion is transferred to church authority. It’s rarely said loudly, as in “I am the reason you came to Jesus,” but it’s implied in the “work of the Lord” through “God’s house,” which will be redeemed with “stars in our crown” in heaven or when we’re “swept up into heaven” on the day of the rapture.

In other words, Christian pastors are genius manipulators for conflating salvation with our proximity to them. That mindset and manipulative behavior are bestowed on Christian men through teachings about their being “the head of the household,” “God’s chosen leaders on earth,” and “the ultimate authority and decision maker” for their family.

It’s all by design, and it has been incredibly effective in ensuring that primarily white Christian men remain in power.

I am not saying Natalie Harp thinks Donald Trump is Jesus.
But in her own words, it’s quite clear that she gave a political leader a role in her personal story that was much bigger than just President of the United States.

He became a rescuer, a father, a being with some sort of spiritual authority, and that, quite frankly, is disgusting.

Relationships built around rescue can become extraordinarily difficult to evaluate objectively. How do you challenge the man you believe saved your life? Or will Natalie ever feel the need to do so? Because based on her letters, she seems devoted to him in unhealthy ways.

Perhaps that is one reason Trump believes Natalie “will never leave me.”

Deconstructing by Rev Karla 📖

The Natalie Harp Letters

Natalie reportedly wrote Trump in 2023 and thanked him for being her “Guardian and Protector in this Life.”

What else did she write?
She also wrote: “You are all that matters to me.”
She told him she never wanted to let him down.
She told him he had the absolute right to cuss her out when she deserved it.
Why?
Because, according to Harp, no one knew her or cared about her more.
And then she wrote:
“It is I who is unworthy.”

Those are not normal words for an employee to say to a boss.

But I want to be very careful here. My point is not that evangelical Christianity caused Natalie Harp to write them. My point is that if you grew up inside certain kinds of evangelical Christian patriarchy, the underlying relational ideas are painfully familiar.

Because Christian patriarchy places extraordinary significance on male protection.

The Southern Baptist Convention still teaches that a husband has a God-given responsibility to provide for, protect, and lead his family, while his wife is expected to graciously submit to his leadership. Those teachings, and some even more insidious ones, extend far beyond the Southern Baptist denomination. Evangelical organizations have taught that God himself established male headship. Look no further than Pete Hegseth’s spiritual advisor, Doug Wilson, to see that there are Christian leaders terrifyingly close to the President who believe that women should not have the right to vote. So, even though some evangelical churches may be silent on politics or issues of women’s right to vote, their theology rests on the similar teachings and pastors silent on the suppression of human rights.

Any safeguards against a bad Christian hierarchy remain inside the hierarchy, meaning they rarely, if ever, exist. The system exists primarily to protect the white Christian man in leadership in government, the church, and the home. We were not taught to ask: “Why does this man have this much power over me?” We were taught to ask, “Am I responding correctly to his authority?”

So when Natalie Harp calls Donald Trump her Guardian and Protector, I hear language that exists within a world where male protection has already been spiritualized.

Protection means love.
Leadership means safety.
Correction means care.
Submission means trust.

This may help explain why some evangelical Christians hear those words without the same alarm bells ringing that other people hear. Because, within evangelical Christianity, there are no red flags—only trust that good will come from even the worst of situations, because it means it is all for the glory of God.

Even your abuse.

“When I fail, will you tell me?”

Many writers are analyzing Natalie Harp’s writings, but there is one line I find particularly disturbing.

Natalie asks Trump: “When I fail, will you tell me?” Then she tells him he has the absolute right to curse her out when she deserves it. Think about what is contained inside that. Natalie Harp is giving Donald Trump permission to determine when she “has failed.” He determines whether she deserves correction. She gives him authority to administer that correction, and she interprets that authority through his care for her.

I am not calling their relationship abusive, but does Natalie giving Trump permission to curse at her yet also saying “you are all that matters to me” sound like a healthy dynamic between a boss and employee?

I do not know what happens privately between these two people, but in her words alone, one could easily surmise the conversations that Natalie misses, the ones with their great “synergy,” crossing lines that would make Melania uncomfortable should she be in the room, or if she even cared.

Again, many of us will recognize what happens when correction and love get tangled together with male authority. God disciplines those he loves. A father corrects his children because he loves them. A pastor tells you hard truths because he loves you. A husband leads because he loves his wife. That isn’t to say a loving relationship with healthy boundaries and open communication can’t thrive. The data, however, would show that for far too long and too often, the abuse hiding behind living room doors and church offices has a system in place that teaches the victims to remain silent and endure the suffering, because for some sick reason, this pleases their god.

It is inarguable that Christian patriarchy teaches people how to submit to authority far more thoroughly than it teaches them how to identify when authority has become harmful.

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When the Christian Man Becomes Everything

This is also why pastoral authority matters so much to this conversation. Pastors in many evangelical churches do far more than preach sermons. They counsel marriages. They counsel teenagers. They talk to young adults about whom they should date. I have personally watched pastors inject themselves into relationships and tell young people who they should or should not be dating. They help families make decisions, even going so far as telling church members to seek pastoral counsel above all else (again, something I have personally experienced). They advise women about their husbands. They advise husbands about their wives. They discuss sex, trauma, grief, depression, abuse and family dysfunction. In some evangelical circles, biblical counseling is elevated above conventional psychological counseling.

Many of these pastors do so with little more than a degree in Bible studies. Some influential biblical counseling organizations even explicitly teach that secular psychology makes no essential contribution to Christian counseling. Think about what can happen when the same institution teaches you that your pastor has spiritual authority and also teaches you that outside psychology may not be necessary.

Get this part, and you will begin to understand how toxic Christian patriarchy is and why it has had such a negative impact on your life:

The pastor becomes counselor.
Spiritual authority.
Marriage advisor.
Family confidant.
Interpreter of Scripture.
Interpreter of God’s will.
And sometimes the person deciding whether the conduct of another powerful man constitutes sin, abuse, temptation, adultery, or merely a marriage problem.

That is an enormous concentration of personal, spiritual, and relational authority.

The more roles one man occupies, the harder it becomes to challenge him in any one of them. Because walking away may mean losing more than a pastor. It can mean losing your church, your community, your friends, your spiritual identity, and sometimes your entire family network.

Which is exactly what happened to me and millions like me who have left church.

This is why Natalie Harp telling Trump that she wanted to return to the days when they talked about “everything and nothing,” when they did not always have to discuss work, gets my attention—not because it proves a sexual relationship. But if I read those letters without context, I would be greatly concerned about their author.

When one powerful person begins occupying that many roles in someone’s life, healthy systems usually demand clearer boundaries. That would require the person being worshipped to recognize the danger, something Trump seems incapable of doing. His own survival depends on the worship from others, regardless of whether it’s real or based in reality, because he too lives in a delusional fantasy most of the time, if not always.

Evangelical Christianity Detests Boundaries

We know this because we have watched what happens when pastors cross them.

Indiana gave us one of the clearest examples imaginable.

In 2022, Pastor John Lowe II stood before New Life Christian Church & World Outreach in Warsaw, Indiana, and confessed to what he called adultery committed decades earlier.

Then, when the woman involved came to the stage, she filled in what his confession had left out. She said she had been sixteen. She described what happened as something that began when she was a teenage babysitter, and Lowe was an adult pastor. She said the relationship had continued for years. She told the congregation Lowe was “not the victim here.” One of the most powerful things she said was: “A partial truth is not true.” Lowe calling it adultery allowed the pastor to tell a redemption story about himself, something that pastors are masters at doing.

“I was tempted by a demon or a Jezebel.
I sinned.
I confess.
I repent.
You must forgive me because I’m the chosen one and God has already forgiven me.”
This was not a story about sinning. This was a story about grooming and the actions of a predator.

The video that went viral showing this moment contains an image I cannot get out of my head. People circled the pastor to pray over him, while the survivor who had just told them what happened to her was left behind, being comforted by her husband and what looked like a friend.

Not everyone in that congregation defended Lowe. Some challenged him. But that instinct to surround the powerful man is what makes this story even more sickening. Because Christian patriarchy can turn the transgression of a powerful man into another chapter of the powerful man’s ‘spiritual journey.’

And somewhere along the way, the person he abused becomes a supporting character in his redemption story instead of his victim receiving the protection and comfort of those who they most likely know as friends and family.

Christianity May Admit There Is a Pattern, but Does Little, If Anything, to Change It.

The Southern Baptist Convention’s own investigation found that survivors and advocates spent years trying to report alleged abusers while encountering resistance, stonewalling, and hostility. The investigation concluded that senior leaders were frequently more concerned about protecting the institution from liability than protecting survivors. The SBC later admitted in its own resolution that churches had sometimes sought first to protect the reputations of leaders, churches and institutions rather than care for survivors.

This is not me standing outside evangelical Christianity yelling that Christians protect abusers. The denomination itself acknowledged the problem. Research also shows just how badly congregations can fail victims. In one national study of women who reported sexual abuse by clergy, fewer than ten percent said their congregation helped and supported them after disclosure. About half reported being blamed or ignored. Those congregations undoubtedly believed sexual abuse was wrong, but you do not have to consciously believe abuse is acceptable in order to participate in a system that protects an abuser.

Sometimes all you need are more powerful competing beliefs that have been powerfully ingrained in you from the very first Sunday School lesson.

Don’t destroy the church.
Don’t gossip.
Don’t cause division.
Think about his family.
Think about his ministry.
He’s done so much good.
He’s repented.
God forgives.
Who are we to judge?
He’s just a man who was tempted.
Don’t touch God’s anointed.
Pray for him.

The same rationalizations can be made when an abuser is in the home, or in the most powerful position in our country. Once you see it, it’s impossible to unsee. Once you know, it’s impossible to unknow. We either accept that Christian patriarchy taught us to protect the white Christian man, or we continue to be a shield for their abuse.

To close out this section, it would be negligent of me if I didn’t note that abuse inside religious systems extends far beyond evangelical Christianity. Other Christian denominations, as well as the Catholic Church, are not immune.

She…got…into…the…trunk

Y’all, she ended up riding in the trunk area of an SUV so she could go with him.

Just sit with that. It doesn’t need to be diagnosed or sexualized. I don’t even know what this means, but I can simply ask, “What kind of attachment makes riding in the trunk preferable to not accompanying him?”

And again I think about patriarchal religious environments where proximity to the powerful man carries value. Being in the pastor’s inner circle signaled to everyone your proximity to power. To be in Trump’s inner circle clearly sends the same signals. Being chosen by a powerful patriarch can become a source of identity, which makes losing access to him feel like much more than losing a position.

This is where Donald Trump’s response to Natalie Harp becomes just as important as Natalie Harp’s response to Donald Trump.

“She’ll never leave me,” Trump boasted.

Donald Trump has reportedly told people that Natalie Harp loves him with an intensity comparable to his wife and children. Trump’s assessment of Natalie’s loyalty tells us exactly what Trump values in this relationship.

Think about how the cycle works. Harp believes Trump saved her. In turn, she offers extraordinary loyalty. Trump rewards that loyalty with extraordinary access. The access reinforces her importance. Her devotion reassures Trump that she is trustworthy.

Consider that the quality he praises is that she will never leave. Not that she challenges him. Not that she tells him things he doesn’t want to hear. Not that she has independent judgment.

She’ll never leave.

That line belongs beside everything we know about authoritarian leadership. Because authoritarian leaders do not merely want people who agree with them politically. They want people whose loyalty becomes personal.

And as uncomfortable as this may make some of you to make this comparison, this is the place where Christian patriarchal conditioning can cross into authoritarian movements…

the way American Christianity has morphed into Christian Nationalism.

Loyalty to authority is already deeply moralized.
The good child obeys.
The good wife respects her husband’s leadership.
The good congregant honors the pastor.
The faithful Christian remains faithful.
The person who leaves is rebellious.
The woman who challenges authority is divisive.
The whistleblower becomes the problem.
The person pushing back is accused of being “fake news,” “failing,” “quiet, piggy!”

Staying becomes proof of character.
Staying silent, even when the leader knows you disagree, is seen as being obedient, conquered—defeated.

Donald Trump says Natalie Harp will never leave him.
He, quite concerningly, may be right.

Why Isn’t There More Christian Outrage?

I hear people still asking that question. I don’t think the answer is that every Christian secretly approves of inappropriate relationships. I don’t think all Christians consciously support abuse. I don’t think every Christian woman surrenders herself to male authority in the disturbing way that Natalie Harp is displaying towards Trump.

But I do think Christian patriarchy can normalize so many individual elements of unhealthy power that when those pieces show up together, the alarm system does not always recognize them.

A Christian man in the role of protector?
Familiar and therefore determined to be safe.
Woman seeking his guidance?
Determined to be safe and therefore his wisdom is welcomed.
Christian man authority correcting a woman?
Welcomed advice assumes the Christian man can also correct her.
Woman afraid of disappointing him?
Automatic conditioned response for fear of rejection.
Woman finding meaning through service to a powerful man?
Adjusted behavior that may be counter to her well-being.
Forgiving the failures of powerful men?
Boundaries are blurred. The relationship has crossed the line into something unhealthy and detrimental to the victim.
Believing the powerful man is being unfairly attacked?
Where the phrase “there is no one more dangerous than a Christian woman protecting Christian patriarchy” originates.
Remaining loyal to him despite everything?
Even when the facts reveal the man is not worthy of the honor bestowed upon him, the doubling down of loyalty reveals the fear she has because she has invested too much to defy him now.
God using deeply flawed men for his purposes?
Practically evangelical doctrine at this point.
And then somebody gathers all of these things into one relationship and says:
Do you not see something concerning here?

And maybe the reason the alarm doesn’t fire is that every individual part has already been baptized with the Holy waters of scripture, worship music, and tears streaming down the pastor’s face as he delivers the word directly from the Lord.

That is what I mean when I say Christian patriarchy can numb people and compel them to turn away from the facts even when those facts are slapping them right across the face. That is how people who sincerely believe they oppose abuse can still participate in systems that protect abusive men.

I don’t know Natalie Harp.

I know this architecture. I cannot tell you whether she sees this relationship as unhealthy. I cannot tell you what Donald Trump says to her when they are alone. I cannot tell you whether anything sexual has ever happened between them. That is all conjecture.

But we don’t need to know.

I can read the words she chose.

Saved my life.
Good Samaritan.
Guardian.
Protector.
You are all that matters to me.
I don’t want to disappoint you.
Tell me when I fail.
You have the absolute right to cuss me out when I deserve it.
Nobody knows me or cares about me more.
I am unworthy.

And then I can hear Donald Trump say:

She’ll never leave me.

The architecture.

I too was raised inside a Christian system that taught me that submission to the white Christian men was safe.

That being protected by them was a blessing.
That being corrected by them was love.
That loyalty was righteousness.
That leaving could be rebellion.
That powerful men who failed deserved forgiveness, but we could be forgiven only through them.

And sometimes we were so busy asking whether women and children were obedient, modest, submissive, and forgiving that we forgot to ask the most important question of all:

Why does a man have so much power over another human being?

That is the question Christian patriarchy has never wanted us to become courageous enough to ask.

Because once we learn to ask it about the pastor, we might ask it about our fathers.
We might ask it about our husbands.
We might ask it about our churches.
And eventually we might ask it about the president.

Maybe that is the understory of Natalie Harp and Donald Trump.
Not an affair.
Not a Russian spy thriller.
Something more toxic.

A woman expressing extraordinary devotion to a powerful patriarch.
A patriarch openly celebrating that devotion because he believes she will never leave him.
And a Christian culture that taught generations of us to see that kind of hierarchy and call it protection, loving, godly.

Some of us finally learned other words for it.

Abusive, manipulative, toxic, and the antithesis of holy.

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Author’s note: This writing is already at capacity, but I know many of you will want resources and more information. I’ll be sharing those separately in another post.

The Derecho Doesn’t Discriminate. Indiana Does.

RevKarla — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 17:15:43 GMT

I kept pulling the string on the situation in Gary, Indiana, until I found the understory, and it’s so much worse than just more than 10 days without power for a primarily Black community.

Now, to be clear, we here in Indiana experienced a catastrophic weather event. People have lost their homes. People died. Central Indiana experienced historic flooding. Communities like Noblesville suffered enormous damage. I don’t need to minimize the suffering of almost the entire state to make a point about Gary.
I don’t need to.

What is happening in Gary is troubling enough on its own. I’m not going to repeat what others are saying about the hardship they have suffered for being without electricity for almost 2 weeks. And some, even as of today, are still without electricity.

This is a community where they are forced to live on the financial edge because Gary is overwhelmingly a Black city.

I’m not saying the utility company, NIPSCO, sat in a room and said, “Gary is Black, restore them last.” NIPSCO specifically denies that low-income or minority communities were neglected and says restoration has been determined by the location and severity of damage. But racism, particularly systemic racism, has never required somebody to announce racist intent before we’re allowed to examine unequal outcomes.

I started looking at Governor Mike Braun, a Trump-loving MAGA whose approval rating is a dismal 25% even in this very red state. Braun came to Northwest Indiana the day after the storm, but he didn’t go to Gary. He held his public storm-response event at the Hammond Central Fire Station.

Hammond, Indiana, is 22% Black.
Gary is over 76%.
Then Braun went to Cambridge City, which is 1 to 2% Black.

Later in the week, our governor personally toured flood-damaged neighborhoods in Noblesville, a city with about 5% Black people. Those communities absolutely deserved the attention. The question I’m asking is why Gary doesn’t appear to have received the governor’s physical presence, too. Because as of this writing, I have not been able to document Mike Braun visiting Gary during this disaster.

Governor Braun knew Gary was in serious trouble. He authorized the Indiana National Guard to provide additional manpower and resources specifically in Gary, Munster and Hobart. So Gary wasn’t invisible to the state emergency apparatus. The state knew the situation was serious enough to send the Guard. Yet the governor himself has been photographed touring and standing alongside leaders in other devastated Indiana communities while I cannot find him standing in Gary, Indiana.

That doesn’t prove racism. But it is absolutely fair to ask what political presence communicates about whose suffering deserves to be witnessed.

But that is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

Because Gary residents had already been fighting NIPSCO over what it costs them just to keep their lights on.

In December 2024, Gary residents packed a public hearing at the Gary Public Library to protest NIPSCO’s proposed electric rate increase. These weren’t people complaining because they didn’t want to pay a couple of extra dollars. Residents testified about bills running into the hundreds of dollars. One 75-year-old woman talked about keeping her thermostat at 65 degrees, wearing sweaters, and still paying around $300. A preschool teacher and single mother described helping pay her elderly mother’s approximately $500 utility bill.
People told regulators plainly: we cannot afford this.

NIPSCO originally sought an increase that would have added about $32 a month, or approximately 22%, to the projected bill of its average residential electric customer under the assumptions it was using. The final approved increase was smaller but still substantial: about $23 a month, or 16.75%, for an average residential customer using 672 kilowatt-hours. The new rates began being phased in during July 2025 and continued into the first quarter of 2026.

Now pay very close attention to what NIPSCO told customers they were paying for. The company said it was investing approximately $769.5 million in electric transmission and distribution system upgrades, technology, safety, and reliability. NIPSCO’s own documentation talks about replacing poles and lines, building substations, modernizing the grid, improving reliability, reducing outage time, and hardening the system against severe weather. NIPSCO says its investments have already reduced outage duration by 40%.

Those are NIPSCO’s claims, not mine.

So pause here and think about this.

Residents of Gary say, our electric bills are becoming unaffordable. NIPSCO says, in effect, we understand rates are increasing, but these investments are necessary to strengthen and modernize the system and make electricity more reliable. Regulators approve the increase. Gary residents pay it. Then a catastrophic storm arrives, and thousands upon thousands of those same people spend more than a week without electricity.

That does not mean the rate increase should have made the grid derecho-proof. I want to say that before somebody races into my comments to explain weather to me. Ninety-nine-mile-per-hour winds can destroy good infrastructure. NIPSCO says the storm damaged hundreds of utility poles and dozens of transmission poles. The scale of destruction was enormous.

My question comes after acknowledging all of that: How much of that $769.5 million in system investment actually went into the infrastructure serving Gary?

Because telling me what you invested throughout your entire Northern Indiana service territory does not tell me what you invested in Gary.

How old were Gary’s poles?
How old were its transmission lines?
Which substations were modernized?
Which circuits were hardened?
How much capital investment went into Gary compared with surrounding communities? What did the infrastructure look like on August 10, the day before this storm?

Those are questions. I don’t have those answers yet, and I am not going to pretend I do. But after residents were required to pay higher rates partly on the promise of reliability and infrastructure modernization, they are entitled to ask where those investments went.

Another layer here is especially important.

By 2026, utility affordability had become enough of a problem in Indiana that state regulators opened an investigation into energy affordability. So when people talk about families struggling to keep up with utility bills, this isn’t anecdotal whining. Energy affordability had become a regulatory issue.

This is also where I want to be careful with the shutoff numbers. I went looking for the number of Gary residents whose electricity has been disconnected for nonpayment. I cannot find reliable, publicly available city-level data, and I am not going to manufacture a statistic just to make the story more dramatic. What we can document is the broader reality that utility debt and energy insecurity are significant problems, enough so that earlier this year, NIPSCO put a moratorium on disconnections because the number of people who could not afford to pay their electric bills was staggering.

If you’re choosing between the utility bill, groceries, medicine and rent, then you can see why I started this writing with Gary residents "are forced to live on the financial edge.”

That brings me to something I keep returning to in my work about Christian patriarchy.

Christian patriarchy isn’t confined to a church sanctuary. It teaches us a way of understanding hierarchy. People, primarily here in America, white Christian men, at the top, make decisions, and people underneath are expected to live with them. Authority explains what is necessary. Ordinary people are asked to sacrifice. If the sacrifice hurts, endurance becomes a virtue. If you struggle under the burden, the conversation quickly turns toward what you should have done differently.

Think about how familiar that theology is.
Give sacrificially.
Trust the authority.
Don’t question leadership.
Be grateful for what you have.
Endure hardship faithfully.
Help your neighbor.
The community will step in.
Charity will fill the gap.

And somehow the people with the least power are continually asked to demonstrate the most resilience and the most patience with boots on their necks and greedy hands ripping dollar bills out of their pockets.

That is one reason I am increasingly suspicious of the word resilience when powerful institutions use it to describe vulnerable communities. Resilience can be beautiful when people use it to describe themselves. But in the mouths of institutions, sometimes “resilient” becomes a polite way of saying: Look how much suffering these people can absorb without us changing the conditions producing their suffering.

Gary residents are being incredibly resilient. Neighbors are helping neighbors, people are sharing food and resources, and organizations are feeding people.

That’s community.
That’s humanity.
But community care should never become an excuse for institutional failure.
Mutual aid is what people do for one another when systems fail.
It should not become the business model for allowing systems to fail.

And that is where I see one of the most dangerous bridges between Christian patriarchy and American economic and political life. Christian patriarchy has spent generations romanticizing suffering among people without power while treating wealth and authority as evidence of competence, blessing, or entitlement.

But that’s the part of systemic inequality people sometimes refuse to understand. The storm doesn’t know whether the house underneath it belongs to a Black family or a white family. But the society the storm lands on already has a history. It already has wealth disparities, infrastructure disparities, political disparities and communities with very different capacities to absorb loss.

And it already has a system that protects white Christian patriarchy that is upholding white supremacy.

I think that’s ultimately why I’m telling this story.

A predominantly Black community told regulators that electricity was becoming unaffordable. Rates went up anyway. Those rates were justified partly by promises of infrastructure modernization and greater reliability. Months after the final phase of those increases took effect, a historic storm devastated the system. Gary became one of the communities suffering the largest and longest outages. The governor visited other devastated communities while, as of this recording, I cannot document him visiting Gary.

Gary’s lights will eventually come back on.

The question I don’t want us to forget when they do is what this period in the darkness illuminated.

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Resources:

NIPSCO Power Outages and Storm Restoration

Associated Press — Gary outages and discrimination concerns

Associated Press — Gary residents and prolonged outages

NBC Chicago — Northwest Indiana outage totals

CBS Chicago — Gary and Northwest Indiana outages

Capital B Gary — Gary power outages

WNIN — Mayor Eddie Melton interview

City of Hammond — Local Disaster Emergency

Gov. Braun — Northwest Indiana storm visit

Gov. Braun — Indiana disaster response

Braun — Noblesville flood damage visit

NIPSCO — 2025 Electric Rate Case

NIPSCO — Reliability and Infrastructure Investments

Indiana OUCC — NIPSCO Electric Rate Case

Capital B Gary — NIPSCO Rate Hike Hearing

Indiana IURC — Energy Affordability Investigation

Indiana OUCC — Arrearage and Disconnection Data

NIPSCO — 2026 Disconnection Protection

U.S. EIA — Residential Utility Disconnections Report

Indiana University Energy Justice Lab — Utility Shutoffs

National Weather Service — August 2026 Indiana Flooding

City of Carmel — Hazel Dell Parkway and Quarry Emergency

Associated Press — Historic Indiana Flooding

Gary, Indiana, A Predominantly Black City, Has Thousands Without Power, Food And Water A Week After Deadly Storms

Public Policy Poling

The Paper Trail of a Woman’s Life: Resource List

RevKarla — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 15:00:46 GMT

As promised, here are the resources connected to my recent writing, The Paper Trail of a Woman’s Life, for anyone who wants to read further and learn more about the SAVE America Act.

Resource Links:

Donald Trump: Iran and Israel ‘don’t know what the fuck they’re doing‘

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The Paper Trail of a Woman’s Life

RevKarla — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 12:45:31 GMT

Author’s Note:
This is a long one. It’s about the state of our country, but to land there, I invite you on a journey as I dive into vulnerability and share about my personal life. If you can handle the twists and turns, join me here. I’d be honored if you did. Trigger warning: this writing shares stories and uses words that some may find triggering or offensive. Take care of yourself and skip this writing if that serves your well-being.

I’m going to share a story. This story will probably mean I lose followers. People have an idea of who they think you are, and when the story they have of you doesn’t match reality, they leave. Or, if they’re trolls, they concoct ways to use it against you.

I get the unfollowing part. No one owes me an explanation for unfollows. I’ve unfollowed a few creators for various reasons, too. And for the trolls? Well, they can kick rocks in flip-flops, as they say in the South.

Either way, my reasons for not sharing more about my personal life have little to do with fear of losing followers or what the trolls will do with that information.
It’s simply who I am.

If you have followed me for a while, I’m sure you noticed I am somewhat private. You may be surprised to hear that I have gone through things during my time on social media that almost broke me, to the point that I have come perilously close, on more than one occasion, to deleting everything and retreating to my gardens.

It is during those times that I leave here for a day or two, sometimes weeks. Self-isolation is my response to hard things. I know it’s a trauma response, and I’m putting things in place to finally, at almost 65 years old, heal that part of me.

With time, inner work, and moving through those seasons of “doing hard things,” I am feeling the pull to show up with a deeper vulnerability, allowing you in to not only see those broken parts, but to share my story, especially those things that have had a deep, meaningful impact on who I am today.

But this is NOT easy for me.

If self-isolation is my response to hard things, vulnerability feels like an enemy, violent even. It doesn’t come naturally. It feels like a trickster, waiting to blindside me as people pick apart my words and poke at the tender parts.

If that feels pathetic reading it, it sounds even more so typing it. I could easily stop here and say “Screw it. None of this is worth it. I’ve gotten by just fine all these years. What’s wrong with self-isolation and cocooning until the storm passes? It’s worked for me up until now.”

Welcome to a peek into the mind of a woman still protecting her inner child. This child learned years ago that trusting some people led to being hurt, and being hurt means the risk is too great.

That mindset has sustained me for decades. But that armor is heavy, and I am older, a little wiser, and a lot tired of holding up shields to keep truly amazing people at bay. And somewhere in the back of my mind, I hear the words of Brené Brown:

“Vulnerability is our most accurate measure of courage.”

It is, isn’t it?
And I suck at it.

Brené’s Wisdom

I read Daring Greatly years ago. I recall marking up that book, dog-earing more pages than not, then tossing the book aside, never to think of it again. But recently, I’ve been thinking about Brene’s teachings after I listened to her interview on a podcast, and she repeated what she says about vulnerability.

→ That vulnerability is not weakness but a measure of courage
→ That the willingness to stand in uncertainty, in risk, in the raw exposure of being seen takes a strength that is terrifying yet rewarding.
→ That vulnerability is the birthplace of everything tender and alive in us. This is where love, belonging, joy, and the quiet bravery of authenticity live.
→ That we wear our armor well: perfectionism, numbness, the need to control too much and reveal too little.
→ That being vulnerable doesn’t mean we spill ourselves to everyone, but to offer our unguarded heart to those who have earned the holding of it and trust one’s story will find its way to the ones who need to hear it, the ones with whom it resonates, the ones who can sit with the grief, the joy, the life lessons.

It’s all this and so much more. I know Brené is right, but until recently I have lacked the emotional maturity, the desire, or even the need to implement any of it.

Whew, I sound like a hypocrite, don’t I?

How else can I explain that I, a person with close to 1 million followers across platforms, also have a paralyzing fear of being vulnerable?

So, why now?
Why am I inviting vulnerability to the front now? Why do I want to share more about my life now? Why now do I feel it is the right time to tell you things I’ve never discussed publicly?

Why now is this the right thing to do when vulnerability feels like a trap door that I keep circling while I feel the tug of self-isolation beckoning me to retreat into its comfort and safety?

Why now?

→I’m tired…
Really tired. I’m tired of carrying the armor that I regularly hide behind. What I’ve come to understand is that the armor grew something else behind it. For some, it’s called imposter syndrome, but really it’s the same wound of trauma masking itself, setting out landmines if I get too close to achieving a goal or a dream.

This is a hard admission, but here it is—for years I have feared that the version of me people admire isn’t the true one—isn’t really who I am. That if they ever saw the me underneath everything, they’d find a fraud. Writing that takes me back to a time when a member of my family, successful in their career and personal life, said to me, “Karla, sometimes I feel like I don’t deserve the praise people give me. Do you ever feel like that?” Never have words struck me so deeply. I looked into their eyes, and I was carried back to childhood, to the place where their story collided with mine, where they, too, carried the same wounds from the same people and the same events that no child should ever endure. It scars a child deeply and creates chaos in developing minds that are trying desperately to understand how the one who says they love you is the one harming you. Eventually, loving words and actions are viewed with suspicion because they almost always come with unimaginable pain and suffering.

The end result, at least for me, has been a woman whose inner child shoots up warning flares when someone is nice, kind, caring, loving, or grateful for something I did; thankful for my teachings; or so on and on and on.

If reading this makes you uncomfortable, imagine the discomfort I’m experiencing writing it. Like many aspects of deconstructing, this is a paradox, too. Because mixed in my discomfort is relief in my acknowledging the weariness and maybe, for once, believing that I deserve the love many family, close friends, and many of you so freely give to me.

→I’m in awe…
of the courage it takes to share stories of betrayal and grief, as well as joy and peace. I’ve witnessed glow-ups and watched people thrive as they bring us along to celebrate, or mourn, or be collectively pissed off together. It’s such an honor to hold this space as women trust their voices to flow through the mystical waves of social media, and we find each other.

Even when trolls try desperately to suffocate the experience, the connection somehow rises above it all to a space where love, empathy, compassion, inspiration, sorrow, healing, and wisdom are found.

It’s beautiful, sacred, even Holy.

But that’s the trap I keep circling, and I’ve been doing it my entire life. Isolation protects me from the vulnerability that might finally disprove the fear. The only proof that I’m worthy of being known comes from being known—and that’s exactly the risk my mind has prevented me from taking. The very closeness that could heal me is the thing I’ve spent a lifetime running from.

Still, those who are doing it are giving me a roadmap. I, too, have stories to share and insights to offer. They demand a level of vulnerability that terrifies me, but I’m inspired to step into this moment because of those I see who have walked through fires worse than mine and are showing up bravely, honestly…

vulnerably.

This moment requires this level of bravery, honesty, and vulnerability from those of us who are leading the way, and that brings me to my final reason for “why now?”

→ Our democracy is at risk…
Opening up my news app feels like dodging hot coals falling from the sky. News story after news story about another lie, another corrupt scheme that benefits Trump and his family, another appointee devoted to Trump instead of U.S. citizens, soldiers jumping ship while we’re being told it’s fake news, our President hiding in a food carrier truck and being whisked away while people like Karoline Leavitt are left behind as useful decoys.

Did Karoline know that this was the plan before she boarded Air Force One? Did she willingly put her life on the line for the man she gleefully spins lies for daily? Were her newborn baby and toddler on her mind as their plane took off, without knowing if the purported shoulder-fired, surface-to-air missile would annihilate her and her fellow passengers?

I’ll ponder that in a writing soon about Karoline. And no, for those who will invariably ask, I’m not obsessed with Karoline, but she is incredibly useful when understanding the willingness of white Christian women who will defend Christian patriarchy because they are addicted to the privilege and power it affords them.

More forthcoming.

All of this chaos and, well, insanity are, as CNN’s Jake Tapper so famously said, “a hot mess inside a dumpster fire inside a train wreck.” It’s all by design—by perpetrators from Stephen Miller and Elon Musk to the Heritage Foundation to keep us confused and paralyzed.

For some people, it’s working. People don’t know where to turn, and who to trust. I began calling this out before Trump descended the golden elevator to announce his candidacy for President, so I’ve been in this space as a voice many of you have come to trust. And when I go silent, many of you reach out, reminding me the work I do is valuable, needed even. You ask me to comment on a matter, you tag me in videos to ensure I see something, and you reach out to make sure I’m okay.

Believe me, Beautiful Souls, when I tell you that it all is so meaningful. I’m touched by the love you send my way. But when the demon rises, convincing me that my voice doesn’t matter or that I’m too broken to deserve a following that trusts me, or overwhelm compels me to push back from my keyboard, I am finding it increasingly challenging to claw my way back to you.
To the light.

And there it is. The endless, exhausting loop that I was describing in point #1, yet here it is again in point #3.

Which, I guess, is the point of all of this.

The exhaustion informs my healing, and my healing lies in embracing and loving the me that you see and love.

It is indeed all interconnected, and brings me back to point #3. There is one law that Donald Trump is desperate to see passed. If it does, it will ensure that literally millions of registered U.S. voters are stripped of their constitutional right to vote. It is clearly an attempt to steal any election going forward, ensuring that only candidates endorsed by Stephen Miller, Musk and The Heritage Foundation get elected.

That would result in a further deterioration of human rights with an extremely high probability that we would become a police state run by Christian extremists with views so radical that no woman would vote, single mothers would be punished, historically marginalized people would be dehumanized, and this perverted version of Christianity would be mandated in education, business, media, and in homes.

It is deeply concerning.

Some would argue it’s terrifying. But labeling it terrifying would lead some to believe the only action is to run away from it, and I refuse to do so. I have a voice and influence and a platform large enough to make waves that will join others creating waves, becoming the tsunami for change that is needed to take down this threat to our freedom and our rights. This work requires a level of authenticity and vulnerability that I have witnessed in others but have turned away from because—well, see all the above.

But when I think of the millions of people who will lose their right to vote if The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act passes, I’m filled with a level of rage that I have rarely felt. But each time that I have felt it, I know it is because my soul recognizes an injustice so egregious, so heinous, so inarguably corrupt and unconscionable, that I must act. I have turned that rage into action, transforming situations into something good. In the past, it has compelled me to take on family members at the risk of losing them forever to stand up for those being harmed. It gave me the laser focus to put a plan in place that launched a successful non-profit, saving thousands of cats and dogs from euthanasia. It has given me the courage to be the advocate for those I love who were struggling with life-threatening challenges when the medical community wasn’t listening.

And it has given me the unique gift and clarity to see the understory in events, which I then turn into writings and teachings I offer to you, dear ones.

See? I can do those hard things with passion and conviction. That is, until I can’t. But the time has come to once and for all silence the doubter who convinces me my work doesn’t matter, the saboteur who whispers my writing must be perfect lest the grammar police attack me, and lastly, the inner child who insists I remember the risk of being hurt by tricksters is too great, and it’s time to retreat.

I can’t promise I won’t do it again, because the concept of “never” doesn’t belong on a journey to healing. But I’m laying it out here in a way that would make an editor cringe, pleading with me to shorten this because I risk boring my readers.

If that’s you and you are bored, congratulations for making it this far—you are dismissed.

For the rest who want to continue on—thank you.
You get it, and I absolutely love you for that.
This work of believing in oneself when one has spent a lifetime battling self-sabotage, imposter syndrome and self-worth is excruciatingly hard.

But I’m still here, still typing, because the SAVE America Act deserves every ounce of the rage I’m about to unleash upon it, with the laser focus, intensity, wisdom and passion I have brought to every situation where an injustice was so egregious it deserved the full weight of righteousness to annihilate it. Righteousness belongs to the people, not to the ones in control of systems they created to keep themselves in power.

If you’re reading this and concluding that I’m overreacting because 1) you need an ID to buy liquor and 2) doesn’t everyone want free and fair elections?

I’m going to say this deep from my Reverend heart, kneeling down to hold your hands and looking straight into your eyes, as I take a breath and say with passion…

fuck you.

And we’re not even to the part in this story where I believe I’ll lose followers.

You needn’t worry that I’ll make a habit of using those words. But at a time when a sitting President of the United States spews f-bombs like sprinkles on ice cream and a member of Congress says to Dr. Anthony Fauci, “Who the fuck do you think you are,” it’s time for those of us who were taught to tsk-tsk curse words as ungodly to understand that “rules for thee, but not for me” is the reason those in power believe they are above reproach while the rest of us are judged harshly.

Deconstructing by Rev Karla

What I’m really trying to say is that if you do believe that I am over-reacting, then you

→have either fallen victim to the lies and propaganda about the SAVE Act,
→are wantonly ignorant and it’s just easier to let white Christian men lead, and you’ll just blindly follow,
→you are supportive of people losing their right to vote, which, if you are a woman who has EVER changed your name for any reason, means you, too, are at risk of losing your right to vote.

To that last point, if men like Pete Hegseth and his misogynistic “spiritual advisor” Doug Wilson have anything to do with it, all women will lose their right to vote anyway. As I type that sentence, I feel my rage boiling. I literally cannot believe anyone believes that women losing their right to vote makes their god happy, but oh well.

“Be blessed,” as their favorite shirt and coffee mugs say!

I’ll forgive myself for the heavy sarcasm and cursing contained herein, but alas, we have reached the point where I am setting all armor down and stepping fully into vulnerability.

Because you see,
it is that last point,
where my name has changed,
and changed again,
and changed again…

This is where I tell you more in hopes that it brings home how gravely dangerous the SAVE America Act is. Miss this, and millions of women, adoptees, people who have changed their names for any reason will lose their right to vote.

It isn’t just about a driver’s license—that isn’t enough.
It isn’t even about REAL ID—it won’t save you.
It isn’t as simple as telling voters to get passports—it costs money that millions can’t afford.
It’s about people, like me, who did nothing more than navigate life as best they could, being punished for having that life.

People like me, and it’s just a guess, but probably some of you as well.

Real Life Teen Mom

No one is truly prepared for marriage at 17 years old, at least I wasn’t. Being pregnant at 16 years old, married at 17 while a senior in high school, and a mother before my 18th birthday wasn’t a really well-thought-out life plan.

I’ve started, deleted, scrolled social media, then restarted typing this paragraph several times. My senses are on overload, but I’m determined to finish this writing today. I’ve been working on it since July 7th, which is unheard of for a writing project to take this long, even when I need to research my topic intensely.

Still, I’m struggling with how to share my story from 16 years old to 64 in one writing without it being outrageously long and filled with irrelevancy. It would be a fair judgment to say it already is.

Somewhere between the struggle of “I’m not a victim. I’m a survivor!” and “How do I share without sounding as if my life is full of regrets?” The answer to the first question is “Damn right!” The second? Well, how can there be regrets that brought me the greatest blessings of my life? My children. They would no doubt say they would have been better off without a teen mom, and they would be absolutely correct.

And more importantly, they would have been better off if I had understood how much trauma I carried from an absent father and abusive family members, as well as a “friend” of the family.

Yes. It’s plural. Family members. That will shock some of you who know my story and those who have paid attention to the clues I’ve offered in other writings. I feel no need to tell more at this point, if ever. Still, I share a little here because it has relevancy to how deep some of these scars are. Holding onto victimhood isn’t my end goal. Living free from the bondage of childhood trauma so that I can love myself as deeply as I deserve is.

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Failed Marriage(s)

There are few who would disagree with the statement that teen pregnancy and/or marriage isn’t the best idea. If you are one of the rare ones who married as a teenager and are still thriving in that marriage, my best to you—truly. The merits of teen marriage aren’t what this writing is about. Solid data, along with the lived experiences of millions of teen brides, would confirm that waiting would be wiser. Some would argue, and do so with conviction, that the growing trend of women choosing to remain single is a better option.

It would have been for me after my first marriage failed seven years in. I recall someone saying, “Seven years is a long time. At least you showed you tried.” At 24, single with two kids and making $7.25/hour, it felt like an immense failure. So it’s probably not surprising that desperation and inner child wounds convinced me that a quick rebound marriage would be an excellent idea.

Not surprisingly, it wasn’t. Five years later, with me and my children now carrying more wounds, I left. The love of my third child, whom we adopted during that marriage, transcends the regrets of those years.

That was all so so long ago—decades even.

With each proverbial turn of the page of my life’s story, a new chapter came with a new name. I knew two divorces would stigmatize me. Welcome to Christian patriarchy, where men are celebrated for their conquests, and women are slut-shamed for having a past that doesn’t match June Cleaver’s. I recall being contacted some time after my 2nd divorce by a high-school classmate. She was looking for the contact information for one of our other classmates, so she could send information about our upcoming class reunion. She said our classmate’s name slowly and sarcastically, first her first name, then her three surnames.

Slowly.
Methodically.
I could literally hear her smiling through the phone as she said, “Marissa Braxton, then Jenkins, then McNally, now Priestley.” (obviously not her real name)
I remember thinking, “Oh, yea. I forgot what a bitch this person is I’m talking to.”
I lied and told her I didn’t know her contact information.
I didn’t attend our class reunion.

Years later, thinking about that experience, I can see it for what it is—a tiny, irrelevant human, miserable with her own life who found great pleasure in other people’s discomfort. I’m sharing it here because it affirmed what I already knew about myself…

People actually were looking down at me, and I was right to be ashamed. As I sit here and think about feeling the judgment I laid on myself for being 16 and pregnant that then cascaded into some not-so-great decisions, I wonder why it never occurred to me to forgive myself and see myself deserving of grace and love. That feels like a good journaling prompt for the soulwork I still have to do.

Getting it Right, But Not Perfect

Somewhere between then and there, I got it right—not perfect, but right enough to have just celebrated 32 years together and eight grandchildren from our blended family of six children. Anybody who has been married this long knows you don’t do it without work—really hard, soul-wrenching, soul-searching, life-changing work. Our story deserves so much more than a couple of sentences, but remember, the vulnerable part I’m sharing today is lovingly embracing who I am by sharing my story.

All the parts of me.

The broken, the silly, the insightful, the overly responsible, the problem solver, the rescuer, the silent sufferer, the irresponsible, the wise, the painfully introverted, AKA the INFJ or if you’re into the Clifford Strengths, I have absolutely zero desire to woo anyone (if you know you know).

And so, in case you lost count, that’s two.
Two divorces.
Three marriages.
Four surnames, the last one being Kamstra.
I think I’ll keep it.
So, there it is, but that is only a part of this story.

According to Google Docs, it took nine pages to tell you, Beautiful Soul, that I am twice divorced and thrice married. To tell you that some wounds from my past have remained open for far too long. They have kept me from loving myself and believing I deserve to be loved. I have much work to do, and it would be an honor to take you on this journey with me, understanding that you need to prioritize your own self-care when necessary.

So stay tuned….

If you’ve been paying attention…

to what I have written here, you will see that my why now? for this story is partly answered. This part is the final one—our democracy is at risk.

Those who are willfully and wantonly ignorant about the SAVE Act believe that this act is about reducing voter fraud.

That is a lie.

As many critics of the SAVE Act have said: this act fixes a problem that doesn’t exist.

Brookings Institute analyzed data from the organization that brought us Project 2025, The Heritage Foundation, a conservative right-wing propaganda machine for Christian Nationalism: “the percentage of fraudulent votes [in Arizona] was a minuscule .0000845%, and no election outcome was altered by ballot fraud throughout that time period.”

If election fraud is rare and non-citizen voting is even rarer, then what’s the real reason for the SAVE Act?

It’s about voter intimidation and disenfranchisement.

This intimidation goes far beyond putting ICE agents at polling stations to intimidate Black and Brown voters legally registered and eligible to vote.

This is about making the hoops this act would force people to jump through to prove citizenship impossible, inconvenient, and expensive.

What you need to know about REAL ID

Many people assume the SAVE Act simply requires voters to prove their identity through a REAL ID. That assumption is not only wrong, but it’s also dangerous. For those who don’t know, the REAL ID is a federally compliant state-issued driver’s license or identification card featuring a star marking at the top. That ID is now required to board domestic flights and enter federal buildings that require a higher level of security clearance. The REAL ID was a direct response to a suggestion by the 9/11 commission due to the terrorists using fake ID’s and inconsistent identification procedures among state regulations.

The roll-out of the REAL ID law was slow to give states time to comply with its requirements, and in 2025, TSA enforcement took effect. That means that, to fly commercially within the United States, passengers had to present a driver’s license or state-issued identification card featuring the REAL ID star indicating that the passenger had verified their identity.

But here is where this gets complicated, because of the language in the SAVE Act...

A REAL ID is offered in every state, but it is not a mandatory requirement to have a REAL ID. Many people opt out of REAL ID’s because they don’t need one.

This is where it gets even more complicated, because only FIVE states offer an enhanced driver’s licenses that validates the citizen is a legal citizen of the United States. Those states are Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Vermont, and Washington. Notice that these five states border Canada, making it more convenient for those who likely travel to and from Canada for employment, family, etc.
To be clear, unless you live in one of the five states listed above and opted for an enhanced driver’s license, your REAL ID does not serve as proof of citizenship.

A REAL ID proves your identity, your date of birth, your Social Security number, your state residency, and your lawful status. This means that the REAL ID can be issued by people who are legally here, including green card and visa holders.

Neither green card holders nor visa holders are eligible to vote in U.S. elections, but they are eligible for REAL IDs to travel on commercial airlines.

Now that we have the context on what the REAL ID is…

let’s look at the exact language of the SAVE Act when it specifies how a voter can prove their citizenship in order to be deemed eligible to vote:

“(1) A form of identification issued consistent with the requirements of the REAL ID Act of 2005 that indicates the applicant is a citizen of the United States.”

I added bold lettering to emphasize this part of the requirement, which the Trump administration is intentionally downplaying and which is the most dangerous part of this Act.

In other words, should the SAVE Act pass, do not think that you will simply show up at your designated precinct on election day with your REAL ID in hand and assume you are going to vote. Most of us do not have proof of citizenship indicated on our REAL ID cards. And if you think it’s as easy as bringing your birth certificate to prove citizenship, think again. Because if you are like millions of Americans whose names have changed over the course of their lifetime, documentation supporting those name changes may be a requirement (although the House version of this Act currently says an affidavit explaining the name changes will suffice, I’m understandably suspicious).

Pause here and consider how the SAVE Act will be implemented. Because what isn’t clear is how states will be required to prove citizenship. Imagine the bottleneck of chaos this creates surrounding elections, or is that the goal? You might think this is a gross exaggeration of the pandemonium it will cause, but consider anything this administration has attempted to implement—it’s always, and I mean always, a complete and absolute mess.

Then tell me where I’m wrong, because what isn’t clear is how the SAVE Act will be enforced. What is clear, however, is that Trump wants it in place before the mid-terms in November—now just weeks away, leading many of us to conclude that this is about creating chaos and ensuring that people will either be exasperated because they can’t find the documents they need and give up, or Trump loyalists will deny eligible voters their right to vote because of the confusion surrounding the REAL ID and how to prove citizenships.

A Word About Passports

For those who will say people just need to get their passports to prove their citizenship, I will say you have either forgotten what it means to struggle financially, or you never have. Passports take time, money, and resources to track down documentation. If the goal is to “secure U.S. elections” and the right to vote is protected under the Constitution of the United States, then obtaining a passport should also be a right citizens should be able to expect assistance with.

Instead, in some cases, it’s virtually impossible. Even for me, a woman with the resources and time available to chase down all the documentation I needed to prove who I was for my REAL ID and passport.

Because of my name changes from years ago, the first challenge was that my records were archived and existed in different counties. Although I was fortunate that most of my records were in Indiana (except my birth certificate), there is a huge difference in how counties keep records. There is also a major difference in how staff treat requests. Some staff were very helpful and accommodating. Others were the kind of government employees who shouldn’t be working as government employees who serve the public. They literally look for ways to sabotage your request instead of being helpful. In one case, after repeatedly calling and being told that my request for records in the 80s was “unreasonable and time-consuming,” I drove 2 hours to the courthouse and stood in line for hours to finally get copies of my records.

Consider someone you know who is struggling to make ends meet. Applying for a passport would be unimaginable if it were between that and not missing work so food is on the table. Finding a way to track down needed documentation could also prove impossible.

Not to mention that the current version of the SAVE Act would allow states to require citizenship to be verified all over again if a U.S. citizen who has already proven they are a citizen changes address.

All of this for the right to vote—just to solve a problem that doesn’t exist.

You must see it now.

Regardless of what you think of me, my past, and my struggle with vulnerability.

In the bigger picture, none of that matters. I have a passport, and you’re damn right I will vote in the midterm elections.

But what about the millions who do not?

Are we really okay with suffocating the voices of millions of Americans because Trump is spewing a lie about our elections, and his extremist Christian loyalists are happy to go along with it?

Are we really okay with this being the beginning of the end for women and other people who are at risk of losing their right to vote?

Tell me once again that I’m overreacting, and I’ll remind you that:

→Pastor Doug Wilson, the one Pete Hegseth calls his spiritual advisor and believes that women are only to be seen as birthing vessels and nothing more, is hell-bent on women losing their right to vote.
→Fox News platformed Dr. Marc Seigel, who lamented that the decline in teen pregnancy is a problem because not enough babies are being born.
→This side of Christianity wants women to leave the workforce, become submissive to their husbands, be punished for being single, and push out babies—lots of babies.

I wish I could end this on a hopeful note.

But I can’t.
Not today.
I’m angry.
No.
I’m outraged.

Not only because the SAVE Act will mean millions will be denied their constitutional right to vote.

I’m angry because of what the world is saying about us.
In her daily writing, Heather Delaney Reese shared what Martin Bella posted on his Instagram. His words:

“To the people of the United States of America: you realize that you are being seen by the rest of the world as no better than Russia, no better than China? You’ve threatened Canada, threatened Greenland, invaded Venezuela, and starved Cuba. You’ve caused untold pain around the world. The Strait of Hormuz and the blocking of oil supplies has brought countries to their knees. Now your president is saying that he’s going to make the Strait of Hormuz American territory? Have you people lost touch with reality? While he sits in that chair, the American people are responsible. Go a little further and have a look at the way you are allowing him to treat your sailors: The disrespect he showed the bodies of your servicemen that came back. The way American citizens are being treated on the street. You are allowing it. The people of Iran rose up, and thousands of them were killed. You sit back and watch this man prey on the rest of the world. Disgraceful.”

…no better than Russia and China, y’all.

Now, it is we, even those of us who didn’t vote for this madness, who are being looked upon as disgraceful and have “lost touch with reality.”

In the words of the young man sitting in a dying lake bed, who stood up and screamed,

“What the fuck are we doing?!”

What the fuck are we doing, America?

Whatever it is, it should be more than what we are doing in this moment.

Some are calling for revolution, and they are not wrong.
As soldiers jump from aircraft carriers because life is unbearable on board.
As children go to school hungry because a trillionaire decided their breakfast should be labeled as “waste, fraud and abuse.”
As women lay in emergency rooms bleeding out as they miscarry because the staff cannot perform a lifesaving abortion for fear of being charged with murder.
As Trump and his family become richer and citizens continue to struggle to put food on the table.
And as human rights are being stripped from the very people whose ancestors fought courageously and valiantly because they believed that good would prevail.

A fundamental right for U.S. citizens to vote for those who would protect those rights is now at risk.

Still, I have hope.
Because Hungary did it in a voting wave so massive that it was indisputable that the people were done with the inhumanity of their leader, Viktor Orbán.

America—we too can do this.

Voter fraud is rare within the checks-and-balances systems already in place that ensure U.S. citizens eligible to vote are the ones voting.
This is about Christian patriarchy and white supremacy, who will stop at nothing to remain in power.

Unfollow me if you must.
I wish you only the best.
But for the sake of humanity and all that is Holy, do everything in your power to ensure the SAVE Act does not pass.

Then vote as if your life depends on it.
Because it does.

Leave a comment

Author’s note: This writing is already at capacity, but I know many of you will want resources and more information about the SAVE America Act. I’ll be sharing those separately in another post.

Why Christian Patriarchy Always Needs an Enemy

RevKarla — Sat, 08 Aug 2026 18:01:50 GMT

Why is invoking the Fifth Amendment treated as a constitutional right for some and evidence of guilt for others?

A Senate committee voted along party lines to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress. His crime? He invoked his Fifth Amendment right—the same right written into the same Constitution these men swear they revere.

The same right Donald Trump invoked more than 440 times during a 2022 deposition when the New York Attorney General was investigating him.

The man at the top pleads the Fifth hundreds of times, and it is spun as his right. A wise use of his constitutional protections.

Fauci pleads the Fifth, and suddenly the Fifth is a crime. A confession.

Rules for thee. Grace for me.

This is Christian patriarchy.

There is one set of rules for those in power and another for everyone they see as less important, less valuable, less than.

Whether it comes from the pulpit, the podium, or your own dinner table, many of us were taught not to ask the man in charge a single hard question. We were taught to save our suspicion for whoever he pointed at.

So look at where his finger is pointing.

Then look at what he’s making you look away from.

Foreclosures are climbing. Children are going hungry. Veterans’ services are being gutted, especially mental health programs. Families are struggling with rent, groceries, and utility bills.

But the headline they want is Fauci.

Christian patriarchy depends on that enemy. It needs someone for you to fear, someone for you to blame, someone to keep your attention away from the people who actually hold the power.

Don’t look where they’re pointing.
Look at what they don’t want you to see.

Leave a comment

Resources:

Senate committee votes to hold Fauci in contempt for refusing to answer COVID questions
GOP senators vote to hold Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress for invoking the Fifth during tense hearing
Trump invokes Fifth Amendment nearly 450 times in N.Y. AG’s civil probe of his business practices
Congressional Bill H.R. 4405 Signed into Law
Khanna, Massie, Leger Fernández, Merkley, Luján Introduce the “Epstein Files Transparency Act II”
Here’s How Many Times Trump Is Mentioned in New Epstein Files
Trump gets Covid vaccine and flu shot during second checkup of the year
Senate Homeland Security committee votes to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress

The White Christian Man is Never Guilty

RevKarla — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 16:03:28 GMT

87

That’s how many days until mid-term elections.

261

That’s how many days since the Epstein Files Transparency Act was signed into law. And besides the court of public opinion that has demanded accountability (resulting in a few resignations), not one person named in those files has been charged.

Not one.

And despite being mentioned over 38,000 times in those files, more than Jesus is mentioned in the Bible, Donald Trump acts as if he has nothing to fear, because with MAGA focusing on Fauci, the House focusing on daylight savings time legislation, and Mike Johnson acting like he is too busy to stay on top of the news, he probably doesn’t.

The Department of Justice is stonewalling investigations and still withholding millions of unredacted pages from the Epstein files. Other countries have looked at their own connections to that case and demanded investigations and resignations.
But that’s in other countries. Here, in good ol’ America, we have decided the urgent business at this time is Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Yesterday a Senate committee voted along party lines to hold him in contempt of Congress. His crime? He invoked his Fifth Amendment right—the same right written into the same Constitution these men swear they revere. The same right Donald Trump invoked more than 440 times in a 2022 deposition, when the New York Attorney General was investigating him for inflating his net worth by billions to cheat banks and cheat the system.

The same man whose charitable foundation was dissolved after a court found he had used it as a personal checkbook.

And I know you get tired of me saying this, but it has to be said lest we fall prey to its tactics. Many of us were obedient to those demanding we look the other way and not hold the real perpetrators accountable.

This is Christian patriarchy draped in a flag and carrying a Bible.

It’s the oldest move in the playbook of white Christian men: there is one set of rules for them and another set for everyone they see as less important, less valuable, less than. The man at the top pleads the Fifth four hundred times, which is spun as his right, a wise use of his God-given rights; a persecuted king defending his household.

The public servant pleads the Fifth, and suddenly the Fifth is a crime. A confession. Rules for thee. Grace for me.

The white Christian man is never guilty.
The white Christian man is only ever wronged.

Accountability flows only one way. Whether it’s from the pulpit, the podium, or from your own dinner table, you are taught not to ask the man in charge a single hard question. You’re taught to save all your suspicion for whoever he points at. So look at where his finger is pointing, and then look at what he’s making you look away from.

Because while we’re staging charges aimed at a man whose work has saved millions of lives:

Foreclosures are climbing, and hitting veterans hardest.
Children are going hungry.
Veterans’ services are being gutted, especially mental health programs.
But the headline they want is Fauci.
In contempt.
For doing what powerful men do every single day and get praised for.

Why?

Because those in power have no plan.

Not one plan to lower the thing that’s actually breaking you—the rent, the grocery bill, the utilities bills.

They cannot govern, so they must give you an enemy.

Because they have taught you who to hate.

And now, 87 days out, they need that hatred resurging again.
The masterful trick of Christian patriarchy on full display once again.

The white Christian man is never wrong. He only has enemies who are working to take him down for being the righteous one, the chosen one.

Only a small number of his most loyal Christian supporters remain to give in to that hatred. Still, he remains hopeful that more remember their obedience to Christian patriarchy and believe the lies they are spewing, and will be distracted by the dust they are desperately tossing in the air.

Don’t look where they’re pointing.
Look at what they don’t want you to see, because that is where you will find those who are suffering.

87 days.

P.S. President Donald Trump received a booster of his COVID-19 vaccination in the fall of 2025, ensuring he is up-to-date on this vaccination.

Leave a comment

Resources:

Senate committee votes to hold Fauci in contempt for refusing to answer COVID questions

GOP senators vote to hold Anthony Fauci in contempt of Congress for invoking the Fifth during tense hearing

Trump invokes Fifth Amendment nearly 450 times in N.Y. AG’s civil probe of his business practices

Congressional Bill H.R. 4405 Signed into Law

Khanna, Massie, Leger Fernández, Merkley, Luján Introduce the “Epstein Files Transparency Act II”

Here’s How Many Times Trump Is Mentioned in New Epstein Files

Trump gets Covid vaccine and flu shot during second checkup of the year

Senate Homeland Security committee votes to hold Fauci in contempt of Congress

Christian Patriarchy Fears Competency

RevKarla — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 16:02:26 GMT

Jerry Falwell famously called it a punishment from God for not only the LGBTQIA+ community but for those who supported them. Those people who supported them didn’t see them as an abomination like the Christians who believed Jerry Falwell was chosen by God to lead a movement called the Moral Majority.

“The right side of Christianity,” they’d call themselves.

No one understood, and everybody feared it. Everyone wanted to dismiss it as the “gay man’s disease.” Serves them right, because remember this is ‘Merika, and before we care about anything, it must be filtered through the narrative of Christian patriarchy.

And for this disease, Jerry Falwell grabbed the spotlight, leading many people to decide that a few lives lost was worth it, as long as it stayed “over there” in that community. Many Americans believed that and shunned the LGBTQIA+ community even more.

But one person did something different. He paused long enough to listen to the activists saying “we need help.” And once he did that, Anthony Fauci pioneered our nation’s response to AIDS, including requesting more funding for research and treatment that eventually led to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).

Anthony Fauci’s research has impacted disease control and treatment worldwide. The lives improved or even saved because of the work of Anthony Fauci are in the millions.

All that will be missed or downplayed by those demanding that the obedient turn away from the facts and demand they reignite their anger from years ago about a bold-faced, unsubstantiated lie.

Deconstructing by Rev Karla 📖

In the world of Christian patriarchy, Anthony Fauci, deserving of all the awards and accolades owed to him for his life-saving work, cannot be labeled the hero. Why? Because the white Christian men in charge need a distraction—in fact, many distractions. Big ones. Conflated. Exaggerated. Inconceivable. Outrageous. Even hypocritical.

As people continue to suffer because of the actions of Donald Trump and those in power who openly support him or are complicit in the face of those suffering, they now are faced with the very real threat of being dethroned just as their 50+ year Christian Nationalist/fascist plan is coming to fruition.

But they’ve seen the polls, revealing a downward spiral of approval ratings, the likes of which haven’t been seen since George W. Bush’s dismal approval ratings during the nation’s financial crisis.

They look toward the future, and it looks dire. Their proverbial winter is coming in the form of mid-term elections that will most certainly mean their demise.

At least we hope.

But until then, they are doing their absolute best to remind those still obedient to Christian patriarchy not to be distracted by pesky facts that the scientific consensus favors natural spillover at the market in China, and the lab-leak theory that’s driving this obsession to attack Anthony Fauci has never been substantiated by evidence.

Never.

Still, men like Rand Paul want you to hate Anthony Fauci.

Even in the face of the hypocrisy that they know exists. Donald Trump commended Anthony Fauci for his contributions to “Operation Warp Speed” during Covid 19 on his last day in office in his first term. Or that, oh I don’t know, things like Fox News having vaccine requirements and requirements to self-report their vaccine status or face daily testing for Covid.

They won’t talk about that, will they?

None of this is about Anthony Fauci, or Covid.
It’s about those approval ratings that reflect the job of the leader they worship and do his bidding. They’re going to take the fall for it, and they know it.

Because if they cared…really cared.

Rand Paul and his Christian Republican colleagues could be doing some real investigative work that would be about justice.

How?
There are files.
Real ones.
Millions of pages.
Photographs.
Names.

Images that don’t leave your thoughts.
A dental chair in a room built for what?
A trap door under the bedroom that dumps into the ocean.
Passports of trafficked women.
Powerful men, documented, in the orbit of a predator.

Real victims.
Real harm.
Justice that is actually available to anyone with the will to pursue it.

Imagine if you channeled that obsession toward the survivors, towards real justice.

But that outrage never comes, does it?
It gets pointed somewhere safer.

Because none of this is about getting to the truth about a virus.
None of this is about Anthony Fauci.

This is theater.
A rehearsed anger, staged again, to keep an old wound open.
To keep the gullible furious about the pandemic so you don’t look at the polls, the files…

the truth.

That is the oldest trick in the playbook of Christian patriarchy.

Manufacture a villain.
Some days, it’s abortion.
Others, it’s accusing people of being communist because, God forbid, we want universal healthcare for everyone and children fed.
And on this day, it was Anthony Fauci, an 85-year-old man whose contributions to infectious disease no doubt touched our lives in ways we may never fully know or understand.

All because Christian patriarchy cannot survive if people awaken and start asking questions like:

“How will dragging Anthony Fauci in to testify lessen my food bill?”
“Where is the healthcare plan that Republicans have promised for years?”
“What did Mike Johnson mean when he said that Social Security and Medicare have ‘to be adjusted and fixed’ in order to address the national debt?”
“When will the Iran war end?”
“How will my family afford to live if the cost of living doesn’t come down?”
“What happened to all the victims in the Epstein files?”
“Why hasn’t anyone been brought to justice?”
“What in God’s name happened in that dental chair?”

I’ll leave you with one final question.

The next time a white Christian man tells you to turn away and join them in their performative outrage, ask who benefits from you looking that way.

Because…somewhere…
there is a hungry child and an abuse survivor begging you to keep your eyes on them.

Leave a comment

Resources:

Letters from an American by Heather Cox Richardson: July 29th, 2026

Anthony Fauci

Fauci expressed disillusionment with ‘rambling, crazy’ Trump in journal

Anthony Fauci invokes Fifth Amendment at tense Senate hearing

Anthony Fauci invokes Fifth Amendment right not to answer questions at GOP-led Covid hearing, calls Rand Paul ‘unhinged’

White House, Falwell Consultation Ignores Americans’ Desire for Consensus

How the Manosphere Grift is an Old Story Retold

RevKarla — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 22:01:00 GMT

Basically I'm saying Laura wore it best.

Have You No Sense of Decency

RevKarla — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 16:01:29 GMT

“You’ve done enough”

We’re at the point where someone needs to say, “Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness.… You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

Now, if you know history, you know that quote. But there’s more to the story that is relevant to the time we are in, so let’s talk about it.

Army chief counsel Joseph Welch said that to Senator Joseph McCarthy during the hearings in 1954, when they had finally had enough of McCarthy’s outrageous lies.
But in what we’re seeing today, it wouldn’t matter.
Trump has no decency.
He lacks empathy, morality, conscience, compassion, and, of course, coherence.
Last night, listening to his address to the nation, I found myself saying, over and over, this is pure lunacy.

These are the actions of a man desperate to hold onto power. He’s throwing lies at the wall in hopes something will stick. Now I won’t say he’s crazy or mad, but he is indeed scared. And that’s something Trump knows well, because Trump has never truly felt in charge of anything in his whole life. Deep down, he knows he’s had to lie, cheat, and deceive to stand on stages where he never belonged.

But there were so many moments in that speech when he handed us the roadmap of what was about to happen. And if we do not heed these warnings, we will lose our right to vote.

That was his plan all along.

A lot of people have compared Trump’s words to those of 1954. That’s when Joseph McCarthy spent four years terrorizing the country with a “list.” He would wave a paper and claim 205 communists in the State Department. Then it was 57. Then something else.

He never produced the list because there wasn’t one.

Joseph McCarthy was running a play, and it’ll sound familiar.

Accusation by fear
Innuendos
Guilt by association
No due process
No presumption of innocence
You couldn’t disprove it if you were one of the accused, which was the point of the play
An unfalsifiable charge is a perfect weapon.

Lives were destroyed, and people lost their jobs because of McCarthy’s lies and accusations. But here is where history should inspire us and inform our actions.

Joseph McCarthy was a Senator, first elected in 1946. He began making his “everyone is a communist” accusations in 1950, and was re-elected in 1952, meaning his fear-based rhetoric appealed to his base, and they re-elected to continue working his scheme.

Sound familiar?

Fear is a powerful motivator for those who have been indoctrinated to believe that white Christian men should be in power, that they never lie, and that God is pleased with their leadership.

If someone spoke up against McCarthy, they risked being labeled a communist and having the public opinion turned against them. He was known as the bully in Washington, with his fellow Republicans enabling his tactics because his primary accusations targeted President Truman’s Democratic administration rather than their own.

Again…sound familiar?

McCarthy may have been more successful long-term with his bullying and fear-based tactics, but he got greedy, a little drunk on his power, and, not surprisingly, scared that the fear of communists inside United States politics was waning.

That all led to him getting sloppy when he made the mistake of charging that the U.S. Army was “soft” on communism. As Chairman of the Senate Government Operations Committee, McCarthy opened hearings into the Army.

The faux power structure that relied on fear, lies, and his supporters’ compliance came crashing down spectacularly, and here, once again, history inspires and informs us.

The so-called “McCarthy hearings” were held in the spring of 1954, and when Army counsel John Welch said his infamous “Have you no decency?” response to McCarthy’s outrageous lies on live television, it was as if the spell broke across those who had been entrenched in the fear that had gripped them based on those lies.*

We simply don’t pay enough attention to the McCarthy hearings and the outcome of holding people accountable for their lies and leadership failures, but here is what we are missing that informs this moment in time.

Those hearings ended with no decision.
Nothing.
No action whatsoever.
But what shifted was public perception and outrage.

Whatever spell McCarthy had on U.S. citizens, and many people in Congress, was broken. It was as if they awoke from the nonsense of what baseless fear had done to them. This speaks to the power of fear-based indoctrination that is prevalent in societies built on Christian patriarchy and why the moment we are in is another version of history repeating itself.

It would be another six months before the Senate officially voted to censure McCarthy by a vote of 67-22. The mechanism of his fall was simple: people stopped being afraid. But don’t overlook the importance of timing and the vote tally. It took months after the McCarthy hearings for the Senate to finally act, and even in the face of the ridiculousness of McCarthy’s lies, he still had supporters willing to have their votes forever linked to supporting him.

People who benefit from Christian patriarchal power structures will remain loyal to it to the very end, even when it harms the people they are sworn to work in their best interests.

Does…this…sound…familiar?
Last night, Trump waved the list again.

Trump announced the “immediate declassification” of “shocking” intelligence and sent you to whitehouse.gov. But the “documents” were gathered by his own White House task force and “confirmed authentic” by his own appointed intelligence chiefs.

I’m not going to waste my time going over every lie he told. There are plenty of experts doing that, but I will point to one declassified federal intelligence report from March 2021 that concluded, quote, “We have no indications that any foreign actor attempted to alter any technical aspect of the voting process in the 2020 US elections, including voter registration, casting ballots, vote tabulation, or reporting results.”

That report was given to Trump himself on Jan. 7, 2021.

So his China/voting-machine claims aren’t just unverified. His own government’s intelligence community had already assessed the opposite, and he was informed.

Look, the man who was rescued by his father, enabled by his wives and the women in his life, and spews lies when he knows the truth, is using the same playbook that Joseph McCarthy did. He’s even greedier, more desperate, and more afraid than McCarthy because Trump has more to lose.

So I’ll close this with the way I started it. That speech was lunacy.

And we need to awaken from this spell because he’s coming for our right to vote, because he knows he can’t get elected on anything he stands for.

This moment requires sacred activism, and sacred activism is holy because we are the ones working for the good of the whole.

Call your representatives—today, tomorrow, this week. Your House member. Both senators. One sentence: Vote NO on the SAVE America Act.
Protect your state’s voting data. Call your Secretary of State and county election office. Ask what they’re doing to safeguard the voter file and reject federally forced purges. Make them say it on the record.
Check your own registration this week: before any purge does it for you. Confirm it. Screenshot it.
Watch for the words “proof of citizenship” and “roll maintenance.” That’s what a purge is called when it wants to sound responsible.

McCarthy didn’t fall because he ran out of lies.
He fell because people stopped being afraid when one man, on live television, asked if he had any decency left.
He didn’t.
Neither does Trump.

We can’t wait to be rescued by those whose conscience might compel them to change their minds because they have none.
Sacred activism.

Today.

*I’m not downplaying Senator Margaret Chase Smith’s famous speech condemning the tactics of Senator Joseph McCarthy titled the “Declaration of Conscience.” I have written about Smith in the past and will do so in the future.

Leave a comment

Resources:

The Censure Case of Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin (1954)

“Have you no sense of decency?” Sen. Joseph McCarthy is asked in hearing

In primetime speech, Trump doesn’t provide evidence for illegal voting

The Eulogy Lindsey Graham Didn't Want

RevKarla — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 23:00:47 GMT

Both things aren’t just valid. They are true. A family can grieve, and the people harmed by someone’s actions have every right to speak.

Grief for the family and truth for the harmed can live in the same room, no matter how much Christian patriarchy insists otherwise.

From my writing: The Eulogy Christian Patriarchy Does Not Want You to Hear

Resources:

Lindsey Graham dies at 71 after ‘brief and sudden illness,’ his office says

Lindsey Graham died of aortic dissection, preliminary medical report says

Lindsey Graham, longtime GOP senator and Trump ally, dies at 71 after sudden illness

Lindsey Graham’s Faustian bargain

Lindsey Graham In 2016: Trump’s A “Kook.” Lindsey Graham In 2017: Why Is The Media Is Labeling Trump A “Kook.”

Lindsey Graham pretty much admits his Trump alignment is ‘to be relevant’

‘Thank You for Your Servitude’ casts harsh light on GOP’s shift and its motives

Lindsey Graham: “Count me out. Enough is enough”

GLAAD - Lindsey Graham | U.S. Senator from South Carolina

Senate Passes Marriage Equality Bill (Lindsey Graham Voted No)

Lindsey Graham introduces bill to extend detention of migrant children from 20 to 100 days

Senate Judiciary Democrats Press Graham to Move on John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act

Like Other ACA Repeal Bills, Cassidy-Graham Would Cap and Deeply Cut Medicaid

State-by-State Estimates of Changes in Federal Spending on Health Care Under the Graham-Cassidy Bill

Leave a comment

The Eulogy Christian Patriarchy Does Not Want You to Hear

RevKarla — Sun, 12 Jul 2026 15:36:55 GMT

“We don’t do that anymore.”

When somebody notable dies, somebody invariably—and let’s be honest about who that someone usually is. It’s almost always a non-melanated person. They come from both sides of the political aisle. They will get online, clutch their chest, and say we need to respect the family’s wishes.

Honor their privacy.
Honor their grief.

And when it happens, I stand up to remind you: we don’t do that anymore.

We are not playing by the rules that Christian patriarchy laid down for so long. The rules that mandated the silence of everyone who was harmed, so the rest of us would bow our heads and admire the carefully crafted bio of the very person who harmed them.

So let me say this clearly.
Both things aren’t just valid.
They are true.
A family can grieve.
And there is no way on this earth we are silencing the anger, or the celebration, of the people who knew the other side of this man’s vitriol and his floating morals.

This is the man who once called Donald Trump a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot.” This is the man who said, and I quote, “You know how to make America great again? Tell Donald Trump to go to hell.” Who called him a kook. Who was so sure of himself that he wouldn’t even cast a vote for him.

And then Trump won.

Then Graham played a little golf with him, and suddenly there was “a method to the madness,” as Graham said after meeting with Trump. When a reporter asked him, “How do you go from ‘go to hell’ to ‘yes sir,’” Graham said he was trying to “be relevant.”

Be relevant.

What’s clear is that Graham did not have a change of heart. Graham cosplayed morals until those morals no longer served him to remain powerful, influential, and, according to his own words, “relevant.”

Morals that only point toward power are no morals. They are a strategy, and that reflects Lindsey Graham’s legacy better than anything.

We saw it one more time, clear as day, on January 6th. When the Capitol was under attack and it looked, for one night, like it was finally over, Lindsey Graham stood up and said, “Count me out. Enough is enough.” For a hot minute, you could believe him. He seemed sincere that he had finally had enough.

Yet within weeks, he was back at Mar-a-Lago, hat in hand.
Because the power came back, so did Graham, once again removing the facade of morals he hid behind when those morals threatened to distance him from power.

So no.
Don’t tell us he was a man of conviction; he had none.

It wasn’t marriage.
It wasn’t the unborn.
It wasn’t the border.

It was relevance.
It was proximity to power.
Everything else was negotiable, and the bill for that negotiation was always, always paid by somebody with less power than him.

For those saying, “Now is not the time.”

They never tell you when the time is, because they not only do not know. They do not care. They really can’t even explain why they take offense at those celebrating the expiration of a person who chose to use his power to obliterate the rights of others. And when I said earlier about “both sides of the political aisle,” I mean I have lost followers who labeled themselves progressives, moderates, and liberals because they are aghast at what they call “offensive behavior” when someone expresses joy at the passing of another human being.

What they don’t realize is that what they’re saying is that the powerful should be mourned in full, and the people they stepped on should stay quiet a little longer. If they would only pause and reflect on their own indoctrination, they would see how Christian patriarchy deeply influences this belief. It taught us that submission and silence are reverence for the system that must be upheld for the good of the whole.

What they refuse to see is that this is the system that exists to perpetuate the power of the white Christian man, and they are a useful tool in their protection of it.

It’s a perfect example of why I say the power of Christian patriarchy extends far beyond churched systems. It literally is the foundation of our institutions and the reason so many are willing to defend it, even when they can’t explain why other than “It’s the right thing to do.”

Let me hold your hand while I say this: “If the ‘right thing to do’ requires the silence of a marginalized group of people, then it isn’t the ‘right thing to do.’ It’s the thing that Christian patriarchy is demanding of them to keep the system in place that protects the rich, the powerful…the white Christian man.”

Just like Lindsey Graham.

Let me hold your hand a little longer and say, “It’s always the same people who suffer, who have been forced to swallow their pain to keep everybody else comfortable.”

And why I say, “We don’t do that anymore.”

No one is denying that somebody loved Lindsey Graham.

Their grief is real.
Somebody loved that man.
Somebody is hurting right now, and I am not here to spit on that.

But grief for the family and truth for the harmed can live in the same room.

Whether you accept it or not, that type of honesty is not cruelty.
Honesty is a form of love.
It’s also spiritual because in this moment, it’s activism.
And that makes it Holy.

Holiness does not require you to be the comforter to those grieving when the departed harmed you. We do not honor the Christian patriarchal structure that says their sorrow means you must be silent.

So let me be very clear about whom I’m speaking to.

Lindsey Graham was a man who never had to fight for his own human rights, and he chose to spend decades fighting to deny them to everyone else.

For the LGBTQIA+ community, I’m sorry that Lindsey Graham chose to co-write the Defense of Marriage Act. He voted to try to write a ban on same-sex marriage into the Constitution itself. When the Supreme Court finally said you had the right to marry the person you love, he called himself a “proud defender of traditional marriage.” And in 2022, when there was a chance to protect that right in law, he voted no.
For immigrant families, I’m sorry that Lindsey Graham stood in front of a camera after visiting a detention facility and said, “I don’t care if they have to stay in these facilities for 400 days.” He wrote a bill to hold migrant children longer.
For women, I’m sorry that Lindsey Graham authored a national abortion ban, over and over, after telling everyone the issue should be left to the states. It was left to the states right up until a federal ban served him better.
For Black Americans, I’m sorry that Lindsey Graham stood up and praised John Lewis when he passed. And then, as the chairman with the actual power to move the Voting Rights Act named after John Lewis, the man he publicly praised, Lindsey Graham refused to even hold a hearing.
For poor folks, the disabled, for anybody just trying to keep their insurance, I’m sorry that Lindsey Graham put his own name on a bill that independent analysts said would strip coverage from tens of millions and gut Medicaid for seniors, for children, for pregnant women, by more than a trillion dollars.

So if you felt any guilt at all for feeling relieved at the news of Graham’s passing…

I want to assure you that guilt is not yours to carry. Release that toxic Christian patriarchal burden from your life. You are not wrong for feeling it. You, who have spent your whole life being told your anger is ugly, your relief is sinful, your honesty is disrespectful.

Hear me: your anger is not a sin. Your anger is a receipt. It’s the record of something that was done to you. You are allowed to feel it. You are allowed to say it out loud. And if what you feel today is closer to relief, the loosening in your chest of a weight that was never yours to carry, you are allowed to feel that too.

You do not owe a single soul an apology for it.

The people who were harmed do not have a duty to mourn the one who harmed them.
That is not a rule of spirituality.
That is a rule Christian patriarchy wrote to protect itself.

So here’s where I’ll leave us.

I’m not asking you to hate.

I’m asking you to tell the truth and to let the truth make room for you.
The way Lindsey Graham never made room for you when he was alive.

Let the family grieve.
That’s theirs.

And let the hurting speak.
That’s yours.

Both are true.

And in this space, right here, we are going to hold all of it.
The anger.
The relief.
The celebration.
The receipts of his actions.

The space for those that Lindsey Graham harmed and never once looked back to take accountability for that harm.

You are not bitter.
You are not broken.
Your pain and your joy are valid.

And your testimony is welcome here.

I’m relieved for your loss

Coming Back to Life

RevKarla — Sun, 05 Jul 2026 17:02:12 GMT

“I knew the moment had arrived
For killing the past and coming back to life”
‘Coming Back to Life’ by Pink Floyd

We’ll get to those lyrics…I promise. But first, a little journey to share where I’ve been since my last post on June 21st.

As a newbie gardener, I listen to the wisdom keepers who have years of experience in gardening in my zone 6b. To say that these days have been a hot mess for gardeners is putting it mildly. Many of us experienced the brutal heat wave and have stories to tell. The scars it left on parched earth, wilted plants, not to mention the toll on animals whose bodies simply couldn’t endure the heat and succumbed to it.

My beginning chicken group told stories of much heartbreak, as one post after another conveyed the pain of losing flocks of birds that, for some, had become like family. That’s no judgment if they don’t become that for you. I spent long summer days on a dairy farm where my favorite calf was here one minute and gone the next. No matter how much crying I did, it wouldn’t bring her back. But the work of the farm continued on by a grandpa who had seen enough of farming to know the fragility and unpredictability of who thrives and who fails to do so, and as much as he tried to warn me of that fragility, I still fell in love with them.

I had joined that chicken group months ago in preparation for baby chicks that would soon be joining our little but growing hobby farm. To be honest, I’ve joined several groups, purchased books, followed chicken experts on social media, taken notes, and overplanned and overprepared. Some might say obsessed, but if you knew the 5-year-old Karla who worried if baby squirrels were safe in their nests during storms, you’d understand. It’s a lifelong connection to nature that eventually led me to start a non-profit spay/neuter clinic, which is a story for another day.

Today it’s about the baby chicks and overgrown cucumbers and lyrics by Pink Floyd, because, like I often say, I’m building a bridge where they all will connect.

The zone 6b gardening expert said, “Don’t fertilize, don’t prune, don’t harvest—just water, water, water.” I did just that, paying particular attention to the plants that looked stressed. Watering at dusk didn’t stop the sweat from pouring down my body as I watered the plants. Besides shading a few of the more fragile plants, there was little more I could do, except say a little prayer for their survival as the sun began to peek over the horizon each day.

It was in the middle of that wave that I received notification that my chicks were available at the hatchery. I’m not gonna lie, I almost declined the order of baby chicks. Because it’s not the overgrown cucumbers or the heat that kept me away from writing or showing up for all of you who follow me.

It was the urgency of tending to family needs that, over the past two years, has led me to press pause in order to be present when the situation demands it.

I know no other way to do it—this pressing pause to focus on that ‘one thing.’ I’m in awe of creators who share their struggles and life stories, but I simply cannot. For one, that ‘one thing’ isn’t my story to tell. I’m a witness to it, one with an important role of guarding the rails to ensure progress continues forward and loved ones feel seen and supported. It’s a vital role, but I simply lack the ability to do anything other than see what’s on the horizon and, using my intuition, experience, and knowledge of the situation, help prepare so we not only survive the incoming waves but also thrive in spite of them.

I re-read that paragraph, and I see it—it’s vague, ambiguous and nebulous.

But Beautiful Soul, it’s all I have.
It’s who I am.

I invite followers into this space to help deconstruct and heal from Christian patriarchy. It’s a lifelong journey, one that I, too, am on with you. Showing up with more vulnerability is something I desire. For now, this is what vulnerability looks like to me. That is a recurring theme in my life, and one that we will revisit, together, as time goes on.

Back to the baby chicks.

I didn’t reject the order. I drove to the hatchery and collected my chicks. I had carefully selected the breeds weeks earlier, and now I drove them home to a brooder that had been waiting for their arrival. I wasn’t sure how I would add their care to a full plate, but something told me the time was right to bring them home.

It turned out to be the right time, indeed, and exactly what we needed, especially for a grandson who, like his grandmother, feels deeply towards animals and needed the distraction and delight that would come with their care.

There will be more stories to tell as they grow. But just as 5-year-old Karla learned that baby calves often pass without warning, so do baby chicks. It’s been heartbreaking to witness my grandson’s grief as the one who willingly jumped into his outstretched hand didn’t survive beyond 4 days. That even our most valiant efforts, our frantically googling and racing to Tractor Supply for emergency meds, could save her.

Her name is Cosmo.
She was here and she mattered.
She’s buried by our coop where her brooder-mates will go one day when they’re old enough.

A humbling reminder that no amount of planning can predict the unpredictable and stop what is unstoppable.

There’s still sadness here, but also joy as some of the babies’ antics distract us from the work we are doing to plan and prepare for a future as family leaves our home and they transition into a home of their own.

You see? It’s a good pause, but also a huge one. A massive life-changing event as my husband and I once again, very soon, will be empty nesters with just a dog and soon-to-be teen chicks that will (hopefully) be filling a coop that is waiting their arrival.
Whew. Writing it feels cathartic, cleansing, and dare I say, vulnerable? Yes, that’s the word.

Be patient with me, Beautiful Souls.
My pressing pause doesn’t mean I don’t care.
It means I care too much.

My heart hurts when I think about these past two years, but I can’t live there. I mustn’t. Because something good, magical and healing is happening. Lives have been restored, and hope has been renewed.

So, all the watering I did, physically in gardens and metaphorically in lives, I am now reaping the fruits of that labor. A few things were here for a moment, like Cosmo, but blessed us immensely. Her sisters are growing rapidly and seem unscathed by her absence. And while the heat barreled down on us, a cucumber became something unrecognizable and inedible, but the plant that birthed it remains vital and strong, unscathed. The cucumber will continue the cycle of life by decomposing in the compost pile.

And me?

Well, somewhere between a tiny grave for a baby chick, a garden returning to life as the heat wave finally leaves us, a new home being prepared and becoming alive for loved ones on a new adventure, and our home being reset for a life after the waves that came crashing in the form of crisis, of heat, of things ending and new beginnings…

I’m coming back to life.

Grief and gratitude may be chaotic soulmates, but it’s what I have today.

But soon there’ll be more, because I’ve seen the news, I’ve heard the speeches, and I can see clearly through their words to the understories that you need to hear that will help you deconstruct from the toxicity they spew.

But that’s for another day.
Today…
A grandson and I are tending the baby chicks and healing our broken hearts.
I’ll see you soon.

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Let Them Go: A Summer Solstice Meditation

RevKarla — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 15:10:55 GMT

The image is me smiling as I look at my cilantro that bolted a few weeks ago. For those who aren’t familiar with bolting, it’s “the premature production of a flowering stem on a crop—like lettuce, spinach, or cilantro—before harvest.” I felt like a failure as I watched my beautiful cilantro start to send shoots toward the sky. I hadn’t harvested nearly enough, just a few handfuls for salads. My first reaction was to pluck it all out of the garden bed so I wouldn’t have to witness its transformation into something bitter and inedible, a reminder that my attempts at gardening had failed this plant miserably.

I never got around to pulling the cilantro from the bed, and I’m so grateful I didn’t. Little did I know that in just a few days’ time, her evolution from something recognizable into a stalk of magnificent flowers that fed pollinators would offer me a life lesson that I now offer you on this Summer Solstice.

The Planting Bolting Mystery

As my gardening knowledge expands, I’ve learned more about bolting. Not every plant from the same species, planted in the same row, drinking the same rain, basking in the same sun, will bolt. Some surge toward seed while their neighbors stay quietly in leaf. I witnessed this in my own garden, and then I discovered a YouTube gardener in Florida who explained bolting by showing her collard green plants at various stages of production, including a few that had bolted. Her gentleness with her plants and her understanding of the bolting process gave me the grace I needed to forgive myself for my cilantro’s bolting.

She gently reached down to touch the tips of the bolted collard greens and said, “When they start to show signs of bolt, I just let them. Something else is going on, and I am not going to interfere with this process.”

That sentence carries in it a life lesson that I felt instantly, a moment to capture and reflect on how much I can control versus working with nature’s wisdom.

The bolting plant is not broken. It has heard something the rest of the garden has not yet heard. It is answering a call. To let go of the tender, the edible, the pleasing, and give everything to what comes next. Perhaps that’s why what once was tender and delicious becomes bitter and tough. The plant’s hardest part of its life cycle is coming, the part that requires all of its energy to produce the flower that sustains the heartbeat that we cannot hear but can only witness.

I recalled how many pollinators I’ve seen come to this garden bed and rest on this one plant’s flower, drinking its nectar. I thought about those rare times when social media does something right by secretly plotting to keep my eyes on my tiny screen and feeding me more information about bolting and the ultimate end of the cycle—the tiny seeds now sitting daintily at the end of some of the stems where the flowers used to be.

Then I think of how delicious her fruits were that garnished my salads, then how she grew beyond my expectations, answering a call that only she could hear, and how she now offers her seeds to be stored, then reseeded…
and elements of her continue to be reborn again, and again, and again.

I think of a picture I took with my seminary classmates, where we came together for an event outside of seminary. New friendships were forming, new pathways were being forged, yet I had not shared any of this new path with friends and family. I feared their judgment, and more honestly, their rejection if they knew this pathway would lead to my transformation, embracing a spirituality that looked nothing like my Christian heritage.

With shaking hands, I posted the image on Facebook and introduced my new “friends,” saying I may not be posting as much because I needed to go do “this thing.” A few years later, I would post a picture of me in my ordination robe, with flowers ordaining my stole, each flower representing someone sacred in my life.

Never in my wildest dreams would I see myself on this Summer Solstice, discovering so much inspiration from a cilantro plant bolting. But in her story, I see mine. Perhaps you do, too. When people say, “You’ve changed,” intending it to be a critique or something harsh, perhaps it’s the affirmation you need to keep going. Perhaps boundaries taste bitter, and the word “no” sounds harsh after a lifetime of saying “yes” to someone else’s narrative of you. Perhaps they’ll try to control you, as I tried by protecting the cilantro plant from the harsh sun and extreme temperature changes.

What if I had forced myself to stop questioning my faith?
What if I had believed them when they said my “spirit of offense” was keeping me from hearing God?
What if I had not cut the ties that Christian patriarchy had placed on me that kept me small and voiceless?
What if I had never had the courage to leave church and explore what spirituality meant outside of Christianity?
What if I had ignored this longing to be free from the constraints of Christian patriarchy so I could grow…I could bolt into something magical and mystical—something that I was always supposed to be?

I no longer want to live in the “perhaps” and “what ifs.” I want to live reaching for the sun, answering a call some call God, but I now call Divine and Holy.

Beautiful Soul…

On this Summer Solstice, wherever this reading finds you, know this…

Just as we move around the sun, there are seasons in a life that cannot be managed, only witnessed. A grief that will not be scheduled. A calling that will not be suppressed. A relationship that has gone to seed despite our best tending.

The Summer Solstice asks us: Can you stand in the garden and watch without grabbing?
Can you let the turning turn
A plant that is bolting is not giving up. It is giving forward.

Today, for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, the sun reaches its peak and then—imperceptibly, inevitably—begins its retreat. We cannot stop this. We were not meant to. We are meant to lift our faces to it, feel its fullness, and let it turn.

The wise gardener does not weep over the bolt.
She reaches for her paper bag, gathers the seeds, trusts the process, and honors the inner knowing.

For it is in us all.
For She is in us all.
May your “perhaps” and “what ifs” point you to a life that is magically turning and mystically bolting.

Happy Summer Solstice.

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Why I'm Done Recommending Churches | Welcoming vs Affirming

RevKarla — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 14:30:27 GMT

For years, I’ve been asked some version of the same question:

“How do I find an LGBTQIA+ affirming church?”

I’ve answered that question more times than I can count. I’ve written guides, recommended resources, recorded videos, and spent countless hours helping people navigate the difference between churches that welcome LGBTQIA+ people and churches that truly affirm them.

I’m drawing a boundary.

Not because I don’t want people to find a spiritual community that feels like home—I do—but because I’ve seen far too many people invest their trust, time, labor, and belonging into churches that presented themselves one way and revealed themselves to be something else entirely.

The difference between welcoming and affirming matters.

Transparency matters because people deserve clear answers before entrusting a spiritual community with their well-being.

I am no longer willing to do the work churches should be doing themselves. If churches want trust, they should be willing to earn it.

A Note about Church Clarity:

I am aware that Church Clarity has recently undergone a significant reorganization—new nonprofit status, a formalized board of directors, new leadership, and repairs to the database infrastructure that had gone dormant.

I acknowledge that work and I respect that someone cared enough to rebuild rather than walk away.

Their re-org looks promising—when I checked my former church, it is “undisclosed” on their LGBTQIA+ policies. However, it still is listing two segments of a cherry-picked sermon that would seem to indicate this church is an affirming church, when it is not. There is also an appeal button that can be used to dispute any designations for churches on this site, but that appeal submission seems to be directed at churches desiring to be included or “verified” on Church Clarity’s website.

Until I see what their reorganization brings in the way of accountability, transparency and ways to dispute churches listed on this site, I will not recommend them as a reliable source. That’s the standard any resource asking for our trust should have to meet.

I’ll remove any comment or recommendation directing people to Church Clarity until such time I feel comfortable recommending them. If you feel strongly about recommending them, feel free to recommend them on your own platform to your own followers.

From my writing: They’ll Take Your Tithe, But Not Your Truth

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They'll Take Your Tithe, But Not Your Truth

RevKarla — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 17:30:17 GMT

“How do I find a LGBTQ friendly church?”

Over the years, I’ve received some form of that question hundreds, maybe thousands of times. I’ve written resource guides where I lay out a thoughtful approach to finding a church that not only welcomes the LGBTQIA+ community but also affirms them (I’ll expand on those terms later). I’ve recorded numerous videos on this topic, cautioning church-goers about the toxic theology that the carefully packaged branding of modern American Christianity hides. I’ve repeatedly discussed this in livestreams and podcasts.

Still, the question comes.

The question above came on a video I posted just last week. People are justifiably confused and cautious; no doubt they have either heard the stories of how LGBTQIA+ people have been treated in churches or they may have experienced it themselves. It is heartbreaking, especially when all a person wants is a spiritual community that will love, fully embrace, and accept them for who they are.

Instead, they discover that the place where they thought they had found family and belonging has been a ruse, a dehumanizing trick with insufferable consequences. I knew it was a problem based on my personal experience of awakening to the weaponization of scripture in order to preach about the “chosen lifestyle” of gay people, as so many mega pastors put it.

But today’s writing won’t be about assuring you that being gay isn’t a sin. For the record, it isn’t.
Hear me again.
It is not a sin.
Point blank.
End of discussion.
Ten toes down.
Full stop.

The ones preaching that garbage are doing so because they have an agenda. That agenda is to hold onto the narrative that Christian patriarchy created generations ago. To deviate from it would be an admission that scripture is cherry-picked, fluid, and conveniently contorted to highlight the verses that control and dehumanize. It protects the power of the white Christian man, who doesn’t make “mistakes,” he falls into sin because he is “tempted by the Devil”—a convenient excuse for every action, whether immoral, perverted, or illegal, that he is caught doing.

I’ll put this nonsense to rest by including here something I said in a video a few years ago:

Because the toxic theology that is being spoon-fed to you every Sunday is so full of hate and fear and you’ve been convinced that this somehow makes you pleasing to your God.
But tell me Zac, what do you say to Christians who lay rubber getting out of that church parking lot on Sunday to head to Cracker Barrel and pile enough bacon on their plate to feed 6 people.
What do you say to them, Zac? (Leviticus 11:7-8)
Do you tell them that they are an abomination?
Or how about that Red Lobster Feast (Lev 11:9-12)
I see your kind mowing down that surf and turf like tomorrow’s the rapture
Although I think if you’re caught with that shrimp in your mouth, Zac you’re gonna miss it.
And did you mix fabrics today, Zac? (Lev 19:19)
Because if you did, you’re gonna have a problem getting into heaven
Now here’s a real disturbing part of Leviticus. In Lev 21 it talks about the physical standards of priests, disqualifying them for service if they have physical disabilities. Can you imagine that type of discrimination today, Zac? Do you or someone you love have a blemish in their eye, or a challenge with their physical body? And you’re okay with that level of discrimination because thousands of years ago people didn’t understand human rights and thought that discrimination was okay?
There are verses that allow us to sell our children (exodus 21:7), to unalive people for working on the sabbath (exodus 35:2)
When people use specific passages from the Bible, such as those in Leviticus, to justify homophobia or other exclusionary practices, this is an example of wanton ignorance. This term refers to a deliberate disregard for broader context, selective interpretation, and an inflexible adherence to texts that promote discriminatory views.
Here’s what you’re doing to justify your homophobia:
You’re cherry picking scripture

Zac didn’t stick around to answer any of this. And for those who want to bring Pauline theology into the mix, just don’t. Watch 1946 the movie, read Reverend Brandan Robertson’s book Queer & Christian, and stop worshipping Paul as your Lord and Savior.

Okay, I’m done with that.

What you will find interesting about what I am saying is that I can see that there are Christians who are advocating for and affirming the rights of the LGBTQIA+ community. That is exactly what I did above when I recommend 1946 the movie and Reverend Brandan’s book—all Christians and either queer or allies of the queer community. As good as the work those people are doing, they do not represent the entirety of modern American Christianity. In fact, they only represent a tiny sliver of it. And for too long, I have been asked to “trust me bro” that churches that say they are “loving, welcoming and affirming” are actually that.

When they absolutely are not.

Deconstructing by Rev Karla

What is a Welcoming Versus an Affirming Church?

Several years ago, I wrote a resource guide called “Welcoming versus an Affirming Church: Finding a church that truly welcomes the LGBTQIA+ community.” In that resource guide, I explained what the difference is between a welcoming church and an affirming church:

It’s important to understand that there is a significant difference between a welcoming and affirming church. They are not one and the same. True affirming churches know this and will be vocal in their support for and respect of the LGBTQIA+ community.
Phrases such as “we welcome everyone,” “we love everyone,” “God loves all,” “love covers all,” etc. have little relevance to their actual beliefs.
Nebulous signs like “God loves all” could mean that they’re comfortable with LGBTQIA+ people sitting in their pews but still consider being gay a sin. As such, anyone LGBTQIA+ would be limited in how they participate in leadership, worship, baptism, sacraments and other church activities. They will not officiate same-sex weddings or weddings for transgender people.
An affirming church will publicly declare that you’re not only welcomed but invited to experience fully the life and ministry of the church, including membership, leadership, employment and all sacraments. They’ll often go out of their way to offer hospitality, connect to the LGBTQIA+ community, take active roles in social justice issues, have officiated weddings and reiterate their willingness to do so.
Affirming churches will also have LGBTQIA+ leaders.

Let me take this a step further so that I am clear—modern American Christianity, with rock bands on stage and pastors in jeans, does not equate to an affirming church. In fact, this is where the most homophobic, transphobic church-goers and leaders are typically found. I say typically because homophobia inside Christianity is not a monolith specific to just one denomination. I have seen it in progressive churches, and many have shared their stories about being forced out of leadership roles, even out of the church, when they came out to their church community.

There is a significant difference between a welcoming church and an affirming church, and conflating the two is costing people their spiritual well-being. A rainbow flag on the door, a pastor in jeans, and a rock band on Sunday morning do not mean a church is affirming. It means they’ve done the branding. And branding is not theology.

This is exactly what Hillsong Church exposed when the church’s NYC campus appeared to be moving toward affirming, and the global leadership, at the time under its founder Brian Houston, issued a swift, unambiguous statement: they do not support same-sex marriage. The rainbow-adjacent aesthetic was never a doctrinal position. It was optics they used to appear to be something they are not.

To someone walking through those doors hungry for belonging and acceptance, those optics can appear to be a safe harbor. Instead, they are weaponizing spirituality in hopes of converting the LGBTQIA+ community to their brand of Christianity that forces them to “turn away from their chosen lifestyle.”

It’s what I call passive conversion therapy—it’s more subtle but just as deadly and toxic. When a person must deny who they are in order to be accepted into any community, there aren’t enough “welcome” signs that can be planted on the outside to hide the truth that they are nothing more than homophobic Christians pretending to be something they are not.

What about Churchclarity.org?

Many people will suggest that the LGBTQIA+ community and allies to use churchclarity.org to find churches that welcome the LGBTQIA+ community. According to its own website, Church Clarity is:

Church Clarity is a crowd-sourced, volunteer-verified website database that scores Christian churches’ websites based on how easy it is to find a church’s actively enforced policies for LGBTQ+ people and women in stewardship.

I’m going to be honest here. I have no doubt that Church Clarity’s intentions are pure and honorable. But when I discovered that a church that I formerly attended and was a leader in is listed on this website, it was an immediate “no” for me. It was evident by the sermon that was cherry-picked as a testament to this church being a safe church did not clearly represent what this church stands for and what it believes. I know personally because I sat across from those church leaders and explained my concern that we appeared to be deceiving the queer community by not admitting that we believed being gay was a sin and pretending to be something we clearly were not. By the end of that meeting, I had become painfully aware of the “bait and switch” style of marketing that is prevalent inside this Christianity: get them in the pews, take their tithes and their free labor, then entice them with ways to get over the fence to salvation that requires they denounce their “sinful lifestyle” to be the Christian God wants them to be.

That experience led me to write in my resource guide on welcoming vs. affirming church:

The saddest part that came crashing in on me was that I had been duped because I wanted to be duped. Suddenly, I realized that the pastors said all the right things to appease me, but offered no substantive actions or ways that the LGBTQIA+ was welcomed as those who were heterosexual and cisgender.
I did not want to leave my spiritual community, and so I hadn’t asked hard enough questions, lest I be faced with the hard truths that I somehow knew…
My church was homophobic and by proximity to that church, so was I.
At least that was the perception that this student had, and they had every right. From their perspective, I was selling the church on nothing but good vibes and nice people—something that the historically oppressed understand all too well. It’s so easy to say we are allies, but proving it is another story.
That incident, along with the countless other things that were occurring in my life, was a huge catalyst for me to finally face the harm Christianity was doing to the LGBTQIA+ community.

Where does that leave the LGBTQIA+ community seeking to connect with a church?

Beautiful Soul, I get it.

I truly do. For years after leaving church, I searched for another where my awakening would be welcomed, nurtured even. It never came. Time after time, I found myself sitting in a pew, listening to scriptures that were manipulated to protect Christian patriarchy. It wasn’t until I finally started looking within and healing did I realize that I no longer needed a spiritual community that reminded me of my Christian heritage.

That’s my story—not yours. I understand and respect those who seek a place that feels like home.

But here’s the truth: for far too long, I have been doing the heavy lifting of helping people find their way back to church, and that isn’t mine to carry. As much as I want to be that for you, I simply cannot. While I can fully acknowledge the good work that many Christians are doing on the inside, I am seeing far too often the homophobia many churches tolerate for the sake of the budget and tradition of families who have been affiliated with a church, and those relationships suffocate the healing work the church leaders should be doing to eradicate bigotry from their pews.
I cannot be the one doing that work from the outside when they refuse to do it within.

What I can say is you have every right to expect transparency and full disclosure for what a church believes without a song and dance that ends with a pastor in too-tight jeans, plaid shirt, bald head, shadow beard who has shortened his name to some acronym to sound hip and cool (sorry but not sorry because I know the type), that leans forward to tell you in his best whisper-like voice, “I love everyone because Jesus loves everyone!”

That doesn’t answer whether they believe that being gay is a sin.

It doesn’t answer if that church has ever marched in a Pride parade or hosted an event at their church.

It doesn’t answer whether they will officiate your trans daughter’s wedding to her fiancé who happens to be a woman.

It doesn’t answer if they will baptize your gay nephew.

It doesn’t answer if they will ordain your lesbian sister.

It doesn’t answer if you, as a member of the LGBTQIA+ community who is openly queer, will be invited on the worship team.

It doesn’t answer if they support conversion therapy, or if they believe in “praying the gay away.” (which by the way: my former church, which made the list on churchclarity.org? Their senior pastor literally preached a sermon on “praying the gay away” with a former colleague. So yes, I have a right to be suspicious of the churches making that list.)

It doesn’t answer what that pastor believes a gay person must do to be fully accepted into church membership as other hetero, cisgender church-goers are.

Those are the questions you deserve answers to, and sadly, only you can ask them. Any answer from a church leader that doesn’t indisputably acknowledge and affirm a queer person’s right to exist and be celebrated for who they are is a church leader utilizing passive conversion therapy tactics to fill the church pews and offering plates to appear to be something they are not.

I want to close….

With one final word of caution. A disturbing trend that we are seeing inside primarily evangelical/fundamentalist churches is the creation of “support groups” for the LGBTQIA+ community. These support groups are often led by someone from the LGBTQIA+ community who has denounced their “sinful desires” to live according to Christ. These are not support groups—this is yet another tactic of the church to practice underhanded conversion therapy on unsuspecting queer people who desire to be accepted. If the support group is not run by either a fully out and proud queer person or an affirming ally who is experienced and credentialed in working with the LGBTQIA+ community and some form of counseling, then it is not a safe place for anyone in the queer community.

A real support group inside an affirming church would focus on helping people heal from religious trauma and recognize their sexual or gender authenticity as fully whole, neither a sin or a mistake, and a reason to celebrate them for who they are.

Lastly….

And I say this with all the love in my heart.

This is a week for boundaries, and this is another loving one that I offer as I move forward to help those who have deconstructed and find themselves unchurched and happy to be so.

As I said above, I’ve done the work on behalf of Christians to help people find a gentle landing back in church long enough. I’m tired, but more importantly, and I say this is love, it’s not my responsibility.

Churches should be figuring out how to market this, scream loud and proud. It isn’t enough that queer clergy are front and center. It’s an incredible start, but demonstrate how people are celebrated, protected, nurtured, and honored within your spiritual community.

Til then, my response to those asking me to help them find an LGBTQIA+ affirming church will be this writing.
It isn’t that I don’t want you to find a church—believe me, I do.
I simply cannot handle yet another story when it goes wrong. Far too often, it does.
You have every right to expect to be safe and celebrated.

I have every right to expect that churches deliver on their promises to be safe and celebratory of the queer community so that I am confident in my recommendations.

It is now up to the churches to find tangible, concrete ways to be that safe space that celebrates the queer community and then get creative and loud in communicating it.

Until then, I’ll stay in my lane, helping those heal when church hurts them.

It’s what I do best.

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A note from Rev Karla:

I acknowledge that work and I respect that someone cared enough to rebuild rather than walk away.

Resources:

Hillsong’s Brian Houston on Gay Marriage: ‘I Believe the Writings of Paul Are Clear on This Subject’

Silence Is Not Neutral. It's a Theology.

RevKarla — Wed, 17 Jun 2026 15:01:46 GMT

One of the most powerful lessons Christian patriarchy teaches is not what to believe.

It’s what to ignore.

Over time, many of us learned to take our cues from church leaders. If they were talking about something, it mattered. If they weren’t, it probably didn’t.

The silence itself became a form of instruction. Perhaps most importantly, we learned which things could be safely overlooked.

That is one of the reasons deconstruction can feel so disorienting.

You begin noticing things that were always there and you start seeing the gaps.

Suddenly, what once looked like neutrality begins looking a lot like permission.

I don’t think most people recognize how much silence shapes them until they begin stepping outside the system that taught them what was worthy of attention in the first place.

Which is why naming things matters. We cannot challenge what we refuse to acknowledge and we cannot heal from what we have been taught to ignore.

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Silence Is Not Holy

RevKarla — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 17:31:27 GMT

The following is a pushback written as a loving boundary. I hope it is taken in the context in which it is offered—an opportunity to peek into the mind of a person who is honored to shepherd people as they untangle and heal from Christian patriarchy. May this perspective help you understand why I refuse to stay silent and the importance of naming what bigotry looks like when it is linked to faith.

“Stop talking about Trump. You’re just giving him the attention he craves!”

It isn’t uncommon for me to receive a comment like this when I speak about something Trump has said or done, something that has happened within the Trump regime, or something said by someone in Trump’s circle.

There are a few reasons that people give for their request/demand that I stop speaking about Trump. A few examples:

→ where we focus our time gets amplified: By giving time to Trump, we’re inviting more of the same into our lives
→ it further hurts those he has harmed: They are forced to repeatedly hear the things he has said or the actions he has taken that hurt them
→ it’s exhausting to hear his name: Focusing on the good in the world will help people live in peace
→ focus on the strategy: Educate people on actionable steps to take rather than amplifying yet another horrific thing Trump says

There are other reasons, but you get the idea. And mind you, I do, too. I get it that this gets old. Really old. Like, “that one second after you wake up and things feel a little normal, before you remember you’re living in a country spiraling toward fascism at breakneck speed” old.

I’m absolutely sick of it.

Which is why I chose to stay completely away from the UFC Freedom 250 fight that Trump branded as an honor to America’s 250th birthday. It was really about Trump draining the swamp into the Rose Garden, then the reflecting pool so the algae could symbolically flourish, then the East Wing, and ultimately the South Lawn of the White House. I purposefully stayed off social media and didn’t listen to any news.

I chose to honor Trump’s 80th birthday by ignoring it, and it was delightful. I cooked. I gardened. I read. I did everything but give him a minute of my time.
It wasn’t until I awoke Monday morning to the news that I heard the first thing about the UFC Freedom 250 event. It came in a video about a fighter I had never heard of using a slur against Michelle Obama.
I was enraged, and I knew that I needed to turn that outrage into a teaching moment.

Why? Because this is what I do best—turn what others meant for harm into something that helps people deconstruct another layer of their Christian indoctrination.

So let’s talk about it.

I posted a quick video on my social media platforms and wrote a note here on Substack. The comments are predictable with many thanking me for sharing my insight, and, not surprisingly, toxic comments defending the fighter.

The videos have reached a point where managing the comments is not sustainable. Most of the most toxic are most likely from the bot farms that are so prevalent on social media right now. Even if they are humans, pause for a moment of gratitude that you are no longer beholden to a system that praises racism and lays it at Jesus’ feet as they pay homage to the homophobic, racist God they have created in their image.

Then there were a few that said some version of “Don’t post about this.”

When I saw those arrive, I knew it was time for that loving boundary and a lesson on why silence is not Holy.

At least it isn’t for someone teaching people how to deconstruct and heal from Christian patriarchy.

Especially the non-melanated ones who grew up in Christian patriarchy, like me. We not only handed over our spirituality to church leaders, we also handed over our moral compass, including our moral outrage. We were trained to look to church leaders, those white Christian men supposedly ordained by God. That meant what they said was as God-breathed as the Bible, so if they said something was good or sinful, holy or unrighteous, sacred or sacrilegious, we believed them. We didn’t have to think for ourselves. And over time that developed a “check your brain at the door because it’s not needed in church” type of mentality that put spirituality on lather/rinse/repeat.

Don’t think.
Just tithe, obey, submit and shut up.

One of the most powerful tools that this side of Christianity uses is silence. If church leaders are silent on a matter, then it isn’t important enough to be addressed. It’s just a problem that belongs “out there,” in the world where we aren’t supposed to be a part of anyway.

In the world, not of it?

That verse is incredibly subjective, and therefore powerful. It creates a floating morality that is decided by church leaders. It’s how they get away with hypocritical decisions that punish one pregnant unmarried teenage girl, while the pregnant unmarried daughter of the pastor gets celebrated and honored with a church-wide baby shower. That’s just one example, and it’s true. Watch how someone in the comments will no doubt share their own story of abuse from church leaders, because this example will trigger a memory from a deconstructing Christian on why they are now reading my writings instead of looking to those church leaders who taught them that silence is a sacred response to suffering if the suffering is out there in the world.

It isn’t.

It’s weaponized empathy, a gross emotional and spiritual manipulation that is useful in the hands of the powerful, and deadly to the ones being harmed, being marginalized, being dehumanized.

And make no mistake about it.

That is exactly what Josh Hokit did when he stood on the White House lawn and yelled into the camera that Michelle Obama is a man.

Let me be very clear here—I am not speaking on behalf of Black and Brown people who are saying they refuse to name this harm. I respect their decision and am honoring their right to do so. But I am also listening to the many Black creators, many of whom are my mutuals and mentors, who are screaming at the top of their lungs for white people to call this out—to name the harm, to show up in this moment as a testament to our desire to be a helpful advocate or ally.

This moment isn’t either/or; it’s yes/and. Both can be true, and it’s my responsibility to push back on the toxicity of a white supremacy culture that Christian patriarchy has been protecting.

Why? Because I may have been harmed by it, but I also benefited from it.

Christian patriarchy taught me that white Christian men were ordained by God to lead, to be warriors of the family, and defenders of the faith. It was our responsibility to uphold that system, even when Christian patriarchy invited a bigot to the pulpit, or placed him in a fighter’s ring on the lawn of the White House.

I’m not going to draw this out any longer than it has to be, so let me close with this:
Silence is not a neutral act—it is itself a theology.

Other creators may be able to avoid this moment because their audience is not the same as a deconstructing Christian audience.

They don’t need that deconstructing Christianity lens to process what happened.

My audience is different.

Many of you are still inside Christian spaces, or actively making your way out of them. And many of you are still watching—watching how Christians respond—to figure out how you’re supposed to respond. You need someone who can say: this is what this theology produces.

This is why.
And here is how you hold that truth while you are still deconstructing.

I am not doing political commentary.

I am helping people wake up to the myriad of ways that Christian patriarchy still impacts their lives. That role specifically demands that bigotry and white supremacy get called out, because guess what? It’s been front and center inside Christian patriarchy since long before the Civil War.

When a teacher in the deconstructing Christian space opts out of a pivotal moment like this, people are left with no framework for integrating what they just watched into a mindset that is still influenced by white Christian men who want the world to believe that they are the keeper of knowledge, truth and God’s will for this country.

That is toxic, bigoted theology.
We are deconstructing from it.
We do so by calling out hatred, especially when Christianity wraps it in a flag and pretends that it’s ‘Merika.
My job is to make sure you don’t forget.
I said it, and I meant it—we mustn’t forget.

But you cannot memorialize what you will not name.
You cannot resist what you are not allowing yourself to clearly see.

So I am naming it.
I am keeping it in frame.
And I will not apologize for that.
That’s my loving boundary.

Activism is not passive.
And silence is not Holy.
Being an agent for good trouble and change is Holy.

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Be Ms. Rachel

RevKarla — Sun, 14 Jun 2026 19:31:01 GMT

I didn’t intend to write about Adam Grant.

In fact, after I commented, “In a world of Adam Grants, be Ms. Rachel,” I unfollowed him and moved on with my day.

What became clear as I read through the comments was that this wasn’t just about Adam Grant.

Many of us have spent years watching people explain their silence while others carry the weight of speaking up.

To be clear, I don’t believe everyone needs to comment on every issue. I certainly can’t. There aren’t enough hours in the day to research every topic thoroughly or advocate for every cause that deserves attention.

But I do think there is a difference between thoughtful restraint and insulated comfort.

What struck me about Ms. Rachel is that she wasn’t acting outside of her values when she spoke up for children. She was acting from them. Caring for children isn’t separate from who she is or what she has built. It is the very foundation of it.

That distinction matters.

You don’t need to be an activist to show compassion. You don’t need to be an expert to recognize suffering, and you don’t need a large platform to decide what kind of person you want to be when remaining silent would be easier.

I do think it’s worth asking ourselves what our silence protects and what our values require of us when the answer isn’t convenient.

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From my writing: In a World of Adam Grants, Be a Ms. Rachel
https://revkarla.substack.com/p/in-a-world-of-adam-grants-be-ms-rachel?r=27vkro

Resources:

Adam Grant IG Post

Antisemite of the Year’: Pro-Israel group targets kids’ YouTuber Ms. Rachel