Bishops incite anti-trans hate A friend of mine in Puerto Rico tipped me off the other day that the American territory’s Conference of Catholic Bishops was endorsing a massive street protest against local political efforts to make the island safer and more legally equitable for transgender
Read the rest of the series When you hear the word “church,” what first comes to mind? For many of us queer folk, harmful memories may reemerge — memories of people who “loved” us but wouldn’t accept us, and of places where we were “welcomed”
Here I sit in quiet stillness. For 30 minutes, there is no scrolling, swiping, messaging, emailing, chores, work, or needs of any form. For 30 minutes, I kneel before a makeshift altar composed of two candles and a vaguely anthropomorphic stone statue. For 30 minutes,
Read the rest of the series I have been watching the College of the Ozarks’ lawsuit against the Biden administration over protections afforded to LGBTQ+ persons and cannot in good conscience keep silent about this very personal matter. I am a queer, non-binary trans person
Occasionally a seminal work appears that becomes a defining piece, a turning point, or a breakthrough in a particular area. Considering the religious LGBTQI conversion movement, the documentary “Pray Away,” released today on Netflix, could very well be that work. After mental health professional organizations
In Freeing Jesus: Rediscovering Jesus as Friend, Teacher, Savior, Lord, Way, and Presence, Diana Butler Bass discusses six ways of approaching Jesus, six ways that Christians have spoken of Jesus, and most importantly, six ways Christians have experienced Jesus — or as she calls it, the
Read the rest of the series Two weeks before graduation in 2020, I was counting down the days until I would receive my diploma from Moody Bible Institute. Graduation was set to be virtual that year due to COVID-19, but that couldn’t overshadow my joy.
I had just finished my Master’s in Biblical Studies, and with an emphasis on Near Eastern archeology was on a summer tour working on archeological sites from Turkey to Lebanon to Egypt and from Jordan to Israel. I was so single-mindedly focused on the past
Powerful priest exposes Church hate speech Last autumn as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops actively lobbied Congress to kill a proposed national suicide hotline because it directed help to suicidal LGBTQ people, the Conference elected Jeffrey Burrill as their general secretary. He had worked as a high-level
Read the rest of the series Stories are powerful, but not all stories withstand the test of time -and not all stories should. Think of the story of The Giving Tree by the great Shel Silverstein. At one point in time, it was perfectly okay