LGBT

Sid High 4-26-2023
A family photo of trans Christian Sid High's family sitting on a couch in their living room as they look off to the side. Sid's dad sits on the left; Sid's mom sits in the center with his younger sister in her lap; Sid sits on the right.

Sid High, right, and family attend online church from home in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. After multiple pastors told Sid, a transgender Christian man, that he was going to hell, the family began worshiping at home. / Rachel Mummey / Getty Images

Sid High is a trans Christian in Iowa and a youth ambassador for Beloved Arise. He spoke with Sojourners’ Mitchell Atencio.

I REALLY SUPPRESSED my trans identity before I came out. For me, that wasn’t accepting myself as my true self. There’s something to be said for being who you are without having to hide who you are for the approval of others. I feel more at peace with myself because God is pleased with me for being who I am and living in my authentic self. God wanted me to be who I am and to be able to show other people that they can be who they are too.

I started the first Pride event [in Marion, Iowa] when I was 15. That’s when I started getting interested in helping the community more. People often see the queer community as sinners. Even if people do believe it’s a sin, the right thing to do is not to judge and to continue to love — because that’s what Jesus did. God is Love, and [God] made us to love, regardless of who we love.

Laurel A. Dykstra 3-20-2023
The book ‘Daring Adventures: Helping Gender-Diverse Kids and Their Families Thrive’ has a cover with swirling paint strokes of blue and pink. The book is hovering at an angle, cast against a light purple backdrop.

Daring Adventures: Helping Gender-Diverse Kids and Their Families Thrive, by Rachel A. Cornwell

“GIRLS JUST SIT AROUND and talk about being friends, but the boys go on daring adventures!” Arkansas first-grader Evan’s less-than-feminist argument for joining the Boy Scouts became the title of his mother’s book. Rachel A. Cornwell wrote Daring Adventures: Helping Gender-Diverse Kids and Their Families Thrive for kids exploring gender identity in unsupportive communities and for families seeking to support them. A United Methodist pastor, Cornwell emphasizes that full acceptance of transgender and gender-diverse people is entirely compatible with a life of faith.

At a time when Christians are championing anti-trans legislation, it is critical that cisgender, heterosexual Christian leaders publicly affirm trans and gender-diverse people. With the high rate of suicide among trans youth who experience rejection from family or community, books like Cornwell’s save lives.

For Daring Adventures, Cornwell draws from her own family’s experience with Evan’s gender transition and shares insights from interviews with nearly 20 other families of transgender and gender-diverse children. I was particularly touched by the high schoolers who started an online group for younger kids: They talked about favorite animals, transgender celebrities, and drew pictures of their future selves.

Cassidy Klein 3-20-2023
An illustration of Jesus sitting on a globus cruciger as he raises his hand to text that reads, "Glory to God for all things." One version depicts the text in the colors of the LGBT Pride flag and the other the colors of the transgender flag.

“Glory To God For All Things — Pride Colors” / from @artofmarza

ACCORDING TO AN Orthodox miracle story, St. Nicholas — the fourth century archbishop who inspired the figure of Santa Claus — quieted a raging sea. When sailors were caught in a storm on the Mediterranean, they called out for help. Nicholas appeared, walking on the waves before them. He blessed the ship, and the storm calmed. This is why he became the patron saint of sailors. It’s also why Mary Marza, a queer Orthodox artist in her mid-20s who is based in Los Angeles, illustrated St. Nicholas as a “waterbender.” Waterbenders, from the animated series Avatar: The Last Airbender, can control water and its movements. This is one of many works featured on her Instagram art account, Art of Marza.

“I liked the concept of blending saints with the elements or just blending the saints with things from my favorite stories and pop culture,” Marza wrote in an Instagram caption about this portrayal of St. Nicholas.

Marza (who asked to use her art account name instead of her real last name for this article) creates digital art and stickers that blend Orthodox iconography and prayer with street art and anime. The grungy, graffiti-and-animation-inspired aesthetic of her art and its confluence with iconography is part of her longing to “[see] God in places where people assume we can’t find Him,” she wrote on Instagram.

Muvija M, Reuters 1-18-2023

Christian gay rights campaigners protest in the grounds of Canterbury Cathedral in Canterbury, southern Britain, Jan. 15, 2016. REUTERS/Toby Melville

The Church of England will refuse to allow same-sex couples to get married in its churches under proposals set out on Wednesday in which the centuries-old institution said it would stick to its teaching that marriage is between a man and a woman.

Da’Shawn Mosley 12-27-2022
Uncle Clifford (Nicco Annan), the owner of The Pynk strip club, stands beside Lil' Murda (J. Alphonse Nicholson) as they look off in the distance.

From P-Valley

P-VALLEY IS A DRAMA about employees of a fictional strip club in Mississippi called The Pynk. Watching the show, which Starz has renewed for a third season, gives me déjà vu. In the opening minutes of the first episode, we see a neighborhood overtaken by a flood, the camera eventually focusing on a floating suitcase — which a woman who looks like she just survived a hurricane grabs. I’m reminded of Toni Morrison’s titular character Beloved, who “walked out of the water”; it’s all instantly reminiscent of the Southern, sin-filled aura of stories by Flannery O’Connor. A few minutes later, I’m hit with production design as colorful as that of the TV show Pose — unabashed theatricality.

This description should feel as dizzying as twirling around a stripper pole — that’s the inevitable impact of the artistic and spiritual heft P-Valley wields. The show, which is an adaptation of a play by Pulitzer Prize winner and Tony Award nominee Katori Hall, is about nothing less than free will. Hall explores complex topics such as sex work, abuse by men, abortion, and homophobia. Here in the Mississippi Delta, viewers get to know a mostly Black community trying to live as freely as the Constitution of their nation built by slaves declares white men should.

Emmy Kegler 1-31-2022
Illustration of rainbow lights beamed out the windows of a church steeple

Illustration by Michael George Haddad

THE RELIGIOUS FAITH of LGBTQIA+ people remains, in religion reporting, a puzzlement.

For those of us in the LGBTQIA+ family who were raised in religious—especially Christian—households, our churches have often demanded that we choose between our faith communities and our identities. Until recently, genuine LGBTQIA+ role models of faith were markedly rare. Too often, especially in evangelical communities, so-called role models were promoted because they publicly renounced their sexuality or identity in exchange for “faithful” pursuit of celibacy and gender conformity. Many of us can recount horror stories of religious trauma by those who rejected and condemned our essential selves. It’s not surprising that many of us run from religions dedicated to instilling self-hatred in us.

Yet a survey of LGBT adults in the United States shows they maintain relationships with faith and spirituality at rates similar to all Americans. Twenty percent of LGBT adults in the U.S. (compared to 25 percent of all Americans) say they attend religious services at least once a week, and 47 percent consider themselves religious. (Among all Americans, 41 percent say religion is “very important” in their lives.) If LGBTQIA+ people are engaged with their faith at similar rates to other Americans, why aren’t they centered as positive examples in religion reporting? Last December, Julia Métraux at the Poynter Institute reported on a lack of coverage in religion reporting on LGBTQIA+ communities and on the importance of queer reporters and editors in centering those stories.

Lexi McMenamin 6-29-2021

'Queer Youth of Faith Day' social media graphics. Courtesy Beloved Arise.

June 30 marks the end of Pride Month, and Beloved Arise is closing out celebrations with its second annual Queer Youth of Faith Day. The organization, dedicated to LGBTQ youth of faith, is joined by several co-hosts, including LGBTQ youth suicide prevention organization The Trevor Project, LGBTQ advocacy organization PFLAG, Jewish Queer Youth, Q Christian Fellowship, and Interfaith Alliance.

The United States Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., May 17, 2021. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Thursday that Philadelphia violated Catholic Social Services’ religious freedom by not placing children with the agency after CSS refused to place foster children with married same-sex couples.

“The refusal of Philadelphia to contract with CSS for the provision of foster care services unless CSS agrees to certify same-sex couples as foster parents violates the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in a narrow decision.

Lexi McMenamin 6-09-2021

Screenshot of Miguel Díaz, the former U.S. ambassador to the Holy See under President Barack Obama, offering a blessing during DignityUSA's Catholic Pride Blessing event on June 1, 2021. 

Earlier this year, the Vatican said that its priests and ministers cannot bless same-sex unions. For LGBTQ Catholics, this was a setback for what many saw as the church’s more welcoming trajectory under Pope Francis. But not everyone is following the instructions; in the United States and across the globe, Catholics have directly disobeyed the Vatican’s instructions.

On the first day of June — which marks the beginning of Pride Month in the United States — DignityUSA, an organization supporting LGBTQ Catholics, hosted a Catholic Pride Blessing, where LGBTQ Catholics could be blessed by clergy.

LaTesha Harris 7-15-2020
Rainbow flag outside of Stonewall Inn
A rainbow flag waves in the wind at the Stonewall National Monument outside the Stonewall Inn, site of the 1969 Stonewall uprising, considered the birth of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) movement in Greenwich Village in New York City, New York, U.S., June 4, 2019. REUTERS/Mike Segar/File Photo

“We know that the more places where a young trans person can show up in the world as their whole self, the better,” said Hartke. “So why not make church one of those places? Can we imagine a world where the church is the most supportive place in a trans person's life, rather than the place they fear the most?”

Cathleen Falsani 8-24-2018

Photo courtesy Greg Fromholz

Whenever people try to exclude LGBT Catholics from the life of the church, they are “tearing apart the body of Christ,” Fr. James Martin told the standing-room-only crowd that packed a tented hangar Aug 23. at an international meeting of Catholic families in Dublin, Ireland. “At the World Meeting of Families, this is an important aspect: By not welcoming, by excluding LGBT Catholics, the church is falling short of its call to be God’s family."

Da’Shawn Mosley 6-01-2018

TO BE A FATHER is to be an example, and the writer Silas House knows this well. His latest novel, Southernmost, is the story of a father and pastor named Asher who strives to do what’s right, while his young son, Justin—who is distrustful of the church—watches.

But Asher’s quest for morality places him on a path of unwanted attention and threatens to separate him from Justin, until Asher makes the questionable decision to take his son with him on a journey for which neither of them are prepared.

Rarely have the church’s tensions about homosexuality—and how deeply those tensions can fracture a family—been explored in fiction. But with this, his sixth novel, House explores how Asher’s relationship with his wife, Lydia, disintegrates when, to Asher’s disgust, she turns away a gay couple in need of shelter after a flood. House examines Asher’s heart, which is broken over his failure to defend his brother Luke when they were young, forcing Luke to go it alone in dealing with societal hatred over his sexual orientation. In Asher’s heart, House finds hope and desire for a faith that welcomes more than it excludes.

Austen Hartke 5-30-2018

Image via Nicholas Kwok/Unsplash

Christian ministries have been a part of the prison reform movement for decades, and Barna polls like the one conducted by Prison Fellowship tell us that 89 percent of practicing Christians agreed with the statement, “It’s important that prison conditions are safe and humane, specifically because I believe every person has intrinsic value and worth.” Our Christian belief that every single person bears the image of God within them informs the actions we take to support each other.

Dani Gabriel 5-22-2018

Image via @lil_bear_photo/Unsplash

"We experience being known in many different ways: in baptism, whether as infants or children or adults, in confirmations, in ordinations, in weddings. We haven't had anything for people who have transitioned to change their name or ask that we use different pronouns for them. Yet this is obviously a really profound shift in who they understand themselves to be. It’s important for the church to affirm that identity, and name it as good."

Dani Gabriel 4-24-2018
MY CONGREGATION, All Souls Episcopal Parish, is in a college town. In the summer when students and faculty go on break, our numbers thin considerably, so we move the pews to create a more intimate space in the round. But today was not an average summer Sunday. The pews were overfull. People were sitting on the sides, and there were extra chairs in the back.

My son Samson stood in front of our pew. One of the men in the congregation knelt and fixed his bow tie. The Sunday morning sunlight was streaming through the stained glass and the skylight. I hugged friends.This is going to be good, right? I prayed . Please, Lord, I hope we’re doing the right thing.

On Aug. 13 we renamed and blessed my son, Samson Red Gabriel. Samson is transgender. That week we had gone to court to legally change his name and gender, and that week he turned 10. That Sunday held the joy of five baptisms, all the hilarity and devotion that goes along with that, and this incredible rite that had never been done before in the Episcopal Church. As far as we know, nothing like it had been done for a child in a mainline church before, period.

Da’Shawn Mosley 3-23-2018

Illustration by Faith Zamble

Bio: Bruce Schoup was pastor of Peace Congregational United Church of Christ in Clemson, S.C., when the church started a new outreach project. The goal: Build a mobile “tiny house” to serve as temporary residence for LGBTQ people kicked out of their homes due to their gender and sexual identities. Nationally, 40 percent of homeless youth identify as LGBTQ.

Website: thepeacechurch.org/tiny-house-project

1. What inspired the tiny house project? Peace Church was founded with the intention of reaching out to the LGBTQ community, communicating the message that there are Christians in the area who not only welcome LGBTQ individuals, but affirm them. One day, I saw a tiny house on wheels built by an individual in the area and said, “You know, we can do that.” And lo and behold, right about that same time, a grant offer came along [from the UCC’s Justice and Witness Ministries] for new initiatives in peace and justice. And the two ideas just sort of clicked together in my head: What a wonderful place that could ultimately be a safe house for LGBTQ people and lift up several concerns. It’s a project that’s easily replicable—tiny houses are a relatively inexpensive space that a person can claim as their own.
 
Betsy Shirley 9-18-2017

Erica Lea. Image via Erica Lea.

Albuquerque Mennonite Church will announce today that they have called Erica Lea to be their pastor — the first openly LGBTQ person to serve as a lead pastor in the Mennonite Church USA, a denomination that claims more than 70,000 adult members in the U.S.

Layton E. Williams 9-13-2017

FILE PHOTO: Plaintiff Edith Windsor greets the crowd outside after arguments in her case against the Defense of Marriage Act at the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, DC, on March 27, 2013. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo

Edith Windsor died at the age of 88 this week. Her legacy in bending the arc ever more toward justice — nationwide and indeed within the faith community — cannot be overstated.

In 2013, Edie won her Supreme Court case in a landmark victory for LGBTQ rights in the United States. I was newly out, trying to become a minister in a denomination that had just begun allowing the ordination of LGBTQ people. Even as my church still struggled to be fully inclusive toward LGBTQ people, many of us saw hope and possibility in stories like Edie’s. That hope kept us faithful — both to God and to our own queer identities.

Kimberly Winston 9-06-2017

Image via RNS/Sally Morrow

Almost every Christian denomination in the U.S. shows signs of growing diversity as white Christians, once the majority in most mainline Protestant and Catholic denominations, give way to younger members, who tend to be of different races, according to a study released Sept. 6 by the Public Religion Research Institute.

And American evangelicals — once seemingly immune to the decline experienced by their Catholic and mainline Protestant neighbors — are losing numbers and losing them quickly.

the Web Editors 8-31-2017

On Tuesday, a group of 150 Evangelical leaders representing the Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood released a document called the “Nashville Statement,” which delineates their conservative theological position on human sexuality and gender. The statement not only condemns those who are bisexual, lesbian, gay, and transgender, but also anyone who supports them — claiming that agreeing to disagree on human sexuality is sinful in itself.

Though little in the document is new, the response from countless other Christians — ranging from evangelicals to progressives — has been swift and emphatic.