And again, Titania is an ass.

 Finished Seanan McGuire's The Innocent Sleep yesterday, which is kind of Sleep No More extended out, starting when Titania changed Fairie and ending roughly 3 months after Halloween. However, it's written from Tybalt's point of view, so we get a better idea of what life was like during the revamp for folks who weren't locked up in Titania's illusions, like Undersea and the Cait Sidhe. 

Which is to say, mostly ugly.

Undersea is cut off from the land, and Simon of course got shunted back to being Amandine's loving husband, which is mildly upsetting to Dianda and Patrick, not to mention both of their sons being trapped elsewhere. The Cait Sidhe are pretty much all trapped in the various Courts of Cats, as only those of Royal blood can get on the Shadow Roads. Which leads to a bunch of starving cats and kittens. Eventually, this leads to a very fun heist cleaning out a few of San Francisco's Costco's to feed the courts. 

A Roane in Undersea makes a prophecy letting all parties know that around Moving Day is when any moves to break the illusion must happen. Given that Moving Day is roughly 4 months away from the first part of the narrative, one can imagine the amount of angst involved. We do eventually get to a point where the previous narrative of these events starts intermingling with this newer perspective, and we finally get a few answers to things not stated in the past volume. 

After the narrative ends, we get a novella about one of the Octopi Fey native to the seas. Dianda's protector, actually. The book is downstairs, and I'm not attempting to spell her name or race without it sitting in front of me.) By far the biggest reveal in this is that Dianda is probably having a new girl baby pretty soon, fathered by both Simon and Patrick. Why the girl is so important we don't know, but I'm guessing it will eventually tie in to one of the last missing threads, what happened to the Other Queen (Maeve) after Janet broke the ride. 

Fun story, worth reading.

And now for something fairly serious.

 So, many years ago, when I was really starting to be more open about being gay, a lady I knew from Cub Scouts and church gave me a book about a Presbyterian minister and his quest to become an ordained minister within the Presbyterian Church (USA). (Bit of obscure history. The Denomination split during the Civil War ear into the Northern United Presbyterian Church and the Southern Presbyterian Church in the United States. There are a few other shards running around, but they tend to be...different. The two branches reconciled in 1982ish, which I remember. So, when this starts, it would have been the United branch, but by the end, we're in PC(USA).)

Anyway, Rev. Glaser tells us of his growing up Baptist, and finally realizing he's gay in college during the Vietnam era. He speaks of his calling to ministry and how he found himself joining the Presbyterians in Los Angeles before attending Divinity School at Yale. 

Eventually, we enter the fun of the 1970's Presbyterian Task Force on Homosexuality (I may have the name wrong, but basically, the General Assembly [the national governing board, which more or less makes decisions that the local Presbyteries approve or decline] appointed a task force to see about making recommendations on ordaining LGB people. (Trans folks weren't particularly included in the conversation at that point in time.) 

There's also whole sections on his work ministering to gay folks in college, and the problems he runs in to with being open about his avowed homosexuality from both the gay and straight students.  And the few openly gay ordained ministers in the era, one in the United Church of Christ and of course the Metropolitan Community Church. Anyway, the task force's majority report, suggesting guidelines for ordaining gay folks, got shot down and a watered down minority report instead got approved. 

Now, in between this, is an exploration of Glaser's thoughts on God and his personal dramas. When I read this roughly 26 years ago, I spent a lot of those sections going "Oh Guuuurl" or "Oh, get her". Much further on, I better understand what he's talking about, and how odd attraction and love are. While a lot of his more intellectual thoughts on faith tend to be Boomer reformation stuff, particularly in the epilogue he gets into some more meaty thoughts on sexuality as an expression of God, which given that just about everyone likes to ignore Song of Solomon, is something one really doesn't hear about often. 

And frankly, This was likely addressed more to a straight audience, helping heterosexuals better understand what it means to be gay and Christian, with a secondary focus on letting gay Christians know they are not alone. However, given it took PC(USA) until 2011 to finally reconcile on a national level with LGBTQ+ parishioners wanting recognition and acceptance, his happy ending really didn't happen until 30 years after where this book ends. (To be fair, individual churches and Presbyteries did make their own decisions prior to this, but mostly in the Out of Sight of the General Assembly, Out of Mind of the General Assembly sense.) This makes an interesting continuation of Congregations in Conflict by Keith Hartman, showing some of the same arguments happening 10-20 years apart in different settings. Supposedly, Glaser has written more books since this one, so I may eventually check it out and see how his story continued during AIDS and ENDA/DOMA.