Jeff Jordan had never seen a gay pride parade before. While enjoying a day off in Center City Philadelphia in June 1993, Jordan looked out his window and saw "rainbows, drag queens and lots of leather."
Jordan was not looking for a parade, or a church. It was only a couple years since he had been outed by the AME Church where he served as pastor in West Virginia after being spotted leaving a gay bar. There were no such parades in West Virginia at that time. He was subsequently fired from his job working with at-risk youth at West Virginia University Extension Services.
"I had the idea I was going to lose religion altogether," says Jordan, 48, of his mindset after leaving West Virginia for the Philadelphia area. "Then this seedy-looking group walked by in the parade, with signs on paper with magic-marker writing and costumes that didn’t match. But they were proclaiming the simple message that God loves you.
"I sat on the sidewalk and cried."
On that day, Jordan found both a parade and a church. As it turned out, that rag-tag collective of love and acceptance needed a co-pastor to help engage its congregation, and by the following summer, Jordan became co-pastor (and later pastor) of
Metropolitan Community Church of Philadelphia, the region’s most prominent Christian church devoted to the LGBT community.
Located at 36th and Chestnut Sts. in University City, MCC is where Jordan and his partner of 17 years David Pickett spend much of their time, feeding the hungry from around the neighborhood and collecting donations for HIV-infected orphans in Africa. Some nights it’s deacon training or overseeing the church’s drama department.
Those are only some of the couple’s ministries. Jordan and Pickett are also neighborhood leaders near their home on 44th Street, a short walk from Lancaster Ave. in the rough-and-tumble, close-knit area where Belmont meets Mill Creek. Pickett is a block captain: "They voted for the white boy," he says, and notes that while his primary duty is keeping the block clean and tidy, drug dealing is rampant. The cops, he says, aren’t around nearly as much as they used to be, even though the 16th District headquarters on only about seven blocks away on Lancaster.
A Neighborhood Campaign
Despite the danger that lurks, Jordan and Pickett chose this block for its affordability and also because neighbors, most of whom are older, own their homes and keep any lifestyle judgments they might have to themselves. Jordan and Pickett bought their completely remodeled home for $45,000 in 2004. When the couple goes on vacation, neighbors look after their house. People are pretty good like that around here.
"There have been shootings and helicopters fly around here every once in a while," says Pickett, the son of a minister who grew up in rural Eastern PA and South Jersey and was a recovering drug addict when he started dating Jordan in 1995. "But I think the spirit of the people is one of the most positive things about living here. People try to keep their property clean. It’s neighborly for the most part."
The couple also serves as Volunteer Neighborhood Team Leaders for the Obama campaign, representing the 6th Ward. Just last week they were out at 40th and Lancaster registering voters and working the phones for Obama. They are mostly focused on bringing campaign efforts, like phone banking and door-to-door canvassing, north and deeper into areas of Mantua, Belmont and Mill Creek where few campaigns dare to venture. Much of that focus is squarely on ensuring residents, especially the elderly or disabled, have proper identification to comply with the new voter ID law that takes effect for the November election.
If Obama is going to carry Philadelphia and Pennsylvania like he did in 2008, it will be because of the work of people like Jordan and Pickett in neighborhoods like Mantua, Mill Creek, and Belmont.
"The photo ID law is not the ideal law to pass with the hopes of encouraging people to vote," says Jordan. "However, I have taken on a personal mission of educating those who may be negatively affected by the law, especially the elderly. We want to encourage all people to not let a photo ID law take away a right which we fought to gain through the 15th amendment."
Marching for Equality
MCC once had about 150 members, but has since dipped to about 50 even since moving to a larger space inside the University Lutheran Church of the Incarnation in 2009. The reason, Jordan explains, is many other Christian congregations are "welcoming and affirming," although he believes that is not enough. His church recently chartered a bus bound for Hershey, where the Milton Hershey School has refused admission to a 13 year-old boy who is HIV-positive,
to protest. In 2010, MCC members took to the airport – wearing "Proud of Who I Am" t-shirts and sharing stories of their own journeys -- when members of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality held a meeting at the Renaissance Philadelphia Hotel.
"The difference between us and a welcoming congregation is we don’t tolerate -- we celebrate and advocate," Jordan says.
This city’s
2012 PrideDay Parade and Festival is set for Sunday (June 10). While Jordan delights in hoping to meet talk show host and radio personality Wendy Williams, the festival’s headliner, this year’s parade will be special for other reasons. MCC has previously won the festival’s Fruit Bowl for best overall float, and the church’s float this year is dedicated to
Bayard Rustin, the Chester County-bred gay civil rights activist who was integral in coordinating the March on Washington in 1963 with Martin Luther King. This year marks the 100th anniversary of his birth.
Members of the MCC congregation will sing music from the civil rights era and other freedom songs, dance and invite
parade-goers to join.
Says Jordan: "We never just march."
JOE PETRUCCI is managing editor of Flying Kite. Send feedback here.
Photographs 1-2 by MICHAEL PERSICO
Photographs 3-5 by BAILEY ELIZABETH
Jeff Jordan and David Pickett (submitted photo)
Jordan leads protesters at Hershey (submitted photo)
ON THE GROUND is a pilot initiative of Flying Kite that creates a temporary media hub in a vacant or under-utilized storefront or building and takes a deep dive on neighborhood transformation through news coverage, events and social media. After 90 days, it's on to the next neighborhood.