inclusion understanding

At a time when many African American ministers are still espousing an anti-queer rhetoric that the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer communities are pimping the civil rights movement and history of the 1960’s, at the busy intersection of Ellis and Taylor Streets in San Francisco stands the Rev. Cecil Williams of Glide Memorial United Methodist Church whose ministry intersects faith and theology to the struggles of LGBTQ civil rights.

After a Unitarian Universalist minister wrote a pro-LGBT letter to the editor of an area newspaper, her church got an anonymous homophobic note.

I am not your daughter or your son. But if you are a Christian with a lesbian daughter or a gay son, and if you've allowed yourself to be spoon-fed the traditional condemning rhetoric about homosexuality, I can probably speak for her or him. As the holidays approach, he or she is probably in the same pain that I’ve experienced.

I am not your daughter or your son. But if you are a Christian with a lesbian daughter or a gay son, and if you've allowed yourself to be spoon-fed the traditional condemning rhetoric about homosexuality, I can probably speak for her or him. As the holidays approach, he or she is probably in the same pain that I’ve experienced.

A good friend of mine and I were getting into a heated debate at Starbucks—naturally—over whether or not it’s possible to reconcile Islam with the LGBTQ community. My friend Zara was outed by her strict Muslim Pakistani family at the age of 19 when they read through her diary while she was away at work one evening. The scene awaiting her arrival was ugly. No longer able to see a place for herself in Islam, she broke ties with her beloved religion—and with her family. Why do so many gay Muslims self-segregate themselves rather than modify their interpretation of their faith to be more inclusive?