This moment in American history calls for courage
Brave spiritual leaders spent the last 100 years presenting our case for LGBTQIA+ affirmation, ministering to LGBTQIA+ people, helping religious institutions overcome ingrained bigotry, and publicly standing up to injustice in our communities.
Countless books and articles published, millions of debates won, and thousands of churches, synagogues, sanghas and other affirming faith communities registered — sometimes leading to denominational schism — all to declare that LGBTQIA+ people are sacred, loved, and welcome.
We made enormous progress, yet our nation and our LGBTQIA+ communities are still drowning in a deep sea of bad religion.
Legislators quote Jesus while passing un-Christlike laws that discriminate against transgender Americans.
White Supremacist Christian nationalists are mobilizing to make the United States an autocratic theocracy.
Far from welcoming the stranger, our nation brutalizes immigrants and people of color.
Rather than heal the sick, our nation eliminates healthcare.
Instead of feeding the hungry, our nation makes it harder to feed your family.
Disparaging peacemaking, our nation is increasingly militaristic.
Bad religion is about fear.
Fear of new understandings of science, gender, and family structures.
Fear of being insignificant and left behind as society evolves beyond their willingness to adapt. Ultimately, fear of death.
People who are arrested in their development because of bad religion are driven to dominate others to make themselves feel powerful and safe in this changing world.
Most LGBTQIA+ people are born into this mire.
For every LGBTQIA+ person who has wrestled their way free, there are ten more who accept bad religion’s messages as gospel (though 80% of LGBTQIA+ people still consider themselves religious or spiritual).
People who believe their existence is an abomination to G*d.
People who paint all spiritual wisdom with the brush of the oppressive White Supremacist Heterosexist Capitalist Patriarchy.
People blind to their spiritual nature because they learned the lie so young that Spirit rejected them first.
People who lose themselves in pleasure and addiction because their natural path into spiritual consciousness is dammed
Our people are in pain.
Our nation is in crisis.
To meet this moment, LGBTQIA+ affirming spiritual leaders, faith communities, and everyday people must bring our long experience to the arena of mainstream culture.
We can no longer be the quiet presence of the alternative.
Bad religion is winning because it dominates the conversation in the environment.
Our Love must rise up to counter and transform their Fear — in the media.
What appears on television gains legitimacy in the minds of viewers, shapes cultural norms, and has the potential to reach many more people.
If we work together, we can make LGBTQIA+ affirming spiritual messages available on every TV screen and spread the good news about LGBTQIA+ affirming faith communities.
Austin’s QWELL Community Foundation and a diverse planning committee of LGBTQIA+ spiritual leaders from around the country are working to produce the first annual National Pride Interfaith Service, including:
- Tahil Sharma, Faith Work Director at The Task Force Aiden Diaz; Q Christian Fellowship; Member of the Lavender Interfaith Collective
- Rev. Irene Monroe, “All Rev’d Up” podcast
- Rabbi Debra Kolodny, As the Spirit Moves Us
- Rev. Jimmy Gibbs, United Church of Christ
- Daniel Karslake, Filmmaker, “For the Bible Tells Me So” and other works
- Rev. Dr. Marian Edmonds-Allen, Parity
- Ross Murray, ELCA Deacon, GLAAD, The Naming Project, “Yass Jesus!” podcast
- Rev. Mark Anthony Lord, Living the Course community
- Rev. Paul M. Turner, Editor-in-Chief, Whosoever; Senior Pastor, Gentle Spirit Christian Church, Atlanta, Ga.
- Pastor Matt O’Rear, St. Luke’s Lutheran (ATL)
- Rev. E. Eldritch, Interfaith Community Organizer, Circle Sanctuary (Nature Spirituality Church)
The Service will be an expression of spiritual affirmation, solidarity, and community power that inspires LGBTQIA+ people to question the lies they were taught, seek support at affirming faith communities, and heal their religious trauma.
The Service will convict all Love-driven people to move forward in solidarity to defend and promote our shared values.
The Service will feature LGBTQIA+ and Ally spiritual voices from diverse traditions, each declaring the dignity, worth, and divine nature of every person, including our LGBTQIA+ siblings.
And we are going to broadcast the Service to the world.
Together, we will make messages of spiritual LGBTQIA+ affirmation inescapable.
We will unite to mount billboard campaigns all over the country — including in communities where hate has its strongest stranglehold — to shift public perception of local community values toward affirmation, diversity, and friendliness.
We will organize to lift up the voices of LGBTQIA+ affirming spiritual leaders and people of faith on social media.
Every LGBTQIA+ American has received the messages of bad religion.
Now we must ensure that every LGBTQIA+ American hears the truth from a luminary in their belief system, a messenger who looks like them, shares their experiences, and speaks their language.
But an hour or two of affirming television once a year is not enough, no matter how far-reaching its marketing campaign.
We imagine an “Aperture Fund” providing financial support to LGBTQIA+ affirming faith communities willing to broadcast their weekly services on local television — a weekly crack in the wall to let the light in.
We also imagine a biannual GREATER LOVE gathering of youth from LGBTQIA+ affirming faith communities of all traditions to connect and equip the next generation of spiritual activists.
Proclaiming our messages of Love on the airways (and the roadways) will help change the toxic environment in which LGBTQIA+ people live, strengthen affirming faith communities, and place the antidote to religious trauma within reach of the poison.
LGBTQIA+ affirming spiritual leaders are too-often soloists.
Now we become a choir.
Author of “Shirt of Flame: The Secret Gay Art of War,” under the pen name Ko Imani (“revolutionary faith”), Clayton Gibson founded the MyOutSpirit social networking website and serves as executive director of QWELL, the LGBTQIA+ community foundation for greater Austin, Texas.