LGBTQ
Allow us to steal a few minutes of your attention for stories that will steal your heart.
Illustration by Islenia Mil
We wander round searching for demons
and making them of each other
when we find none. Out of feigned necessity,
the slightest difference becomes a reason
to tame—to vanquish—to stamp out until
we look up and catch sight of ourselves:
Pope Francis listens during Mass in St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican on March 14, 2021. Tiziana Fabi/Pool via REUTERS
The ruling was a response to practices in some countries where parishes and ministers have begun blessing same-sex unions.
Semler's EP, Preacher's Kid (unholy demos), topped iTunes Christian charts after its release in February. Photo by Molly Adams, courtesy of Semler.
The contemporary Christian music industry has been adamantly opposed to affirming LGBTQ+ people. But Semler's EP Preacher's dares to include songs about queer sexuality, lesbian weddings, and Christian faith.
I don’t live with the illusion that the holidays are cheery for everyone. Many of us find ourselves interacting with family and friends who do not have the same values we do. Here are four tips for navigating difficult relationships over the holidays — without compromising on dignity.
Wonderfully Made
Phillip Picardi, former editor of the LGBTQ magazine Out, looks into the intricacies of religion in his podcast Unholier Than Thou. From harsh treatment of Muslims by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to exploring the sacred role of trans people in some religious traditions, Picardi calls for good-hearted faith. Crooked Media.
Shall Not Be Sold
Appallingly, around the world many people are making money from grueling asylum processes. Asylum for Sale: Profit and Protest in the Migration Industry, edited by Siobhán McGuirk and Adrienne Pine, assembles words of resistance from journalists, activists, academics, and especially asylum seekers proposing more humane visions of asylum. PM Press.
Pope Francis and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I arrive for an inter-religious prayer service in Rome, Italy, on October 20, 2020. REUTERS/Guglielmo Mangiapane
"Homosexual people have a right to be in a family. They are children of God and have a right to a family," says Francis in a new film.
Fortress Press
THIS IS NOT merely a survivor’s memoir; it is a grab-your-Bible-and-learn book; it is a love letter to God and the author’s queer family. In her prologue, “Lost,” Emmy Kegler sets out her agenda: “I want to tell you about the lost chapter of the Bible, the one with the story of a shepherd who leaves 99 sheep behind and goes out looking for the one that is lost. The one with the story of a woman who sweeps her entire house looking for the one coin that is lost. The one with the lost son who wanders from home and a lost son who stays and stews in his resentment and a lost father struggling to unite his broken family.”
In her first of many footnotes, Kegler identifies Luke 15:1-32 as that “lost” chapter. She spends the rest of her book conveying God’s expansive love for all who are deemed lost.
Kegler focuses on details of her story, about how bewildering it was to discover she was gay during the AIDS pandemic, in the year after Matthew Shepard’s murder. She observes, “Perhaps this is why I was fascinated by Jesus’ death: I saw the experience of my own people reflected in it.” In another chapter, Kegler recounts the pain of attending a church youth group for two years, with the leadership ultimately asking her to “pray the sinner’s prayer” when she revealed her sexual orientation.
On June 30, Beloved Arise hosted the first ever Queer Youth of Faith Day. The event was livestreamed on Youtube.
Through their digital platforms, Beloved Arise is working to counter that message, telling youth from New York to Hawaii that they are loved “with no caveats, limitations, or exceptions.”
A general view of the United States Supreme Court in Washington, May 3, 2020. REUTERS/Will Dunham
The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday delivered a watershed victory for LGBTQ rights, ruling that a landmark federal law forbidding workplace discrimination protects gay and transgender employees.
Photo via The Inheritance on Facebook
In The Inheritance, currently on Broadway through mid-March, a century-old English novel (E.M. Forster’s Howards End) gently soundtracks, or perhaps orchestrates, the lives of gay men in their 30s during the period when President Obama was moving out of office, President Trump was moving in, and many of us wondered just where on earth we were.
The Fairness for All Act, which was introduced Dec. 6 in the House of Representatives and sponsored by Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah), pairs nondiscrimination protections for gay and transgender Americans with protections for people of faith. It would outlaw discrimination against the LGBTQ community in most areas of public life, while also creating safeguards for a variety of religious organizations and individuals, including marriage counselors, adoption agencies, and schools.
Charlotte Clymer is an activist, writer, and Twitter savant. She’s a veteran who served with the U.S. Army from 2005 to 2012, and she serves currently as the press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ civil rights organization. Charlotte is one of the most prominent trans activists in the country, and I wanted to learn more about how her personal experiences with poverty, the U.S. military, and being transgender have shaped the person she has become today. I’ve learned so much through our friendship over the years, and I’ve learned even more in this conversation about the challenges she’s encountered, and how and why she remains active in seeking justice and civil rights for all.
Image via REUTERS/Toby Melville
Mahmood explained that issues such as increasing wealth inequality, and the scapegoating of migrants and refugees, set against the backdrop of the migration ‘crisis’, have led to increasing hostility and incidents of hate crime under the Tories — majority white (97 per cent) and male (71 percent) — members or supporters of U.K.’s Conservative Party.
Illustration by Michael George Haddad
A succession of lawsuits involving the state of Michigan, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Christian adoption agencies has again pitted religious freedom against LGBTQ rights.
In 2017, after a same-sex couple seeking to adopt was turned away by Bethany Christian Services and St. Vincent Catholic Charities, the ACLU took the couple’s case to court. In March, the case was settled in favor of the LGBTQ clients. Adoption agencies that receive funds from the state of Michigan can no longer turn away LGBTQ couples or individuals because of religious objections. In response, Bethany—the largest Christian adoption and foster agency in the U.S. and headquartered in Michigan—reluctantly changed its policy in the state to allow LGBTQ couples to foster children. In contrast, St. Vincent filed a follow-up lawsuit against the state human services department.
“We are disappointed with how this settlement agreement has been implemented by the state government. Nonetheless, Bethany will continue operations in Michigan, in compliance with our legal contract requirements,” a Bethany spokesperson said in a statement.
Image via Yunuen Bonaparte
“A teacher once told me it would be better if I didn’t tell people I’m gay,” said Jed McDonald, a Pasadena City College student and former youth in foster care.
“I think she meant it as helpful advice because she wasn’t a mean teacher, but it didn’t feel that way,” McDonald said.
Foundry United Methodist Church in Washington, D.C. on Monday, June 3, 2013. by Elvert Barnes Photography
One could ask whether taking a vote from 800 delegates from different regions, cultures, and countries, but all part of an increasingly global United Methodist Church, is the best way to discern the will of God or how a denomination should move forward. That’s what former Methodist Bishop Will Willimon wondered to me yesterday, the day after the historic vote to strengthen the church’s “traditional” ban against LGBTQ clergy and marriages. Willimon was disappointed that “once again, the Methodist Church is a mirror of the culture.” The vote showed again how divided the church is, as the vote was nearly split down the middle. That split shows, painfully, that the church is no better place to heal division than anywhere else in our culture.
2017 BET Awards - Los Angeles, Calif., - Jussie Smollett. REUTERS/Danny Moloshok
To claim that this attack was motivated by a singular form of bigotry is false. Such a claim is also violent and contributes to the culture that silences and erases the complicated reality of compounded oppression experienced by black LGBTQ persons every day. Hate is rarely simple and the intersectionality — or dynamic forms of subjugation individuals face because of their marginalized identities — black same-gender loving people face is at work here.
Image via Sandor Szmutko/Shutterstock
“The queer community in Chechnya is small, so if one was reported by their family member, they would be tortured to release the information of other gay people,” said Lyosha Gorshkov, the co-president of the Russian LGBT Network. “Many were kept in a basement for a couple of weeks and subjected to humiliation, torture, rape, electric shock. Some reportedly committed suicide."
IN THE DECADES before the Civil War, three of the nation’s largest Protestant denominations—Baptists, Presbyterians, and Methodists—split over slavery, biblical interpretation, and abolition. Historians have long claimed that these denominational schisms paved the way for a national rift. Once these Protestant churches failed to hold together, breaking into regional bodies of South and North, wrote C.C. Goen in Broken Churches, Broken Nation, “a major bond of national unity” dissolved and hastened America’s warring fate.
As the churches divided over slavery then, so they are dividing over sexuality and gender now. Many of the biblical arguments and hermeneutic approaches once used to support slavery are now employed to reject the humanity, gifts, and dignity of women and LGBTQ persons. If you read 19th century sermons or tracts from Southern Presbyterians, for example, you only need to swap out a few words and you have a blog about how the Bible doesn’t allow women to preach or gay and lesbian couples to marry. Mark Twain once quipped that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. In this case, however, the similarities are so striking that history appears to plagiarize itself.
In recent years, Episcopalians, Lutherans, and Presbyterians have all faced contentious splits over these issues, and now the United Methodist Church—the largest mainline Protestant denomination—is struggling with the same.
History may plagiarize, but it will not repeat. These denominations aren’t as significant as they once were, culturally or politically. The Baptists not only split over slavery but remained permanently divided in Northern and Southern branches, then divided and divided again. The Methodists reunited in the 20th century, as did the Presbyterians. But for all their remarkable contributions, neither denomination regained its former status.