Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry

“Mom, Dad, I have something to tell you.”  
Do you remember speaking these words or hearing them from your child? The anxiety about what will happen next—acceptance or rejection, turmoil or unity in your family? That’s exactly what Gabriela was wondering when she approached our table at an event in Texas earlier this year. She picked up our brochure and read it thoughtfully—“Mamá, Papá: tengo algo que decirles.”  

She told us that she’d be planning to come out to her parents, but she’d had no resources in Spanish to help them understand—until now. Her friend Anna was standing nearby, listening as we spoke with Gabriela.  She picked up the English language version: “Oh God, I need this too. My parents are evangelical Christians and I haven’t told them about me yet.” Even though the materials were written by and for Latino/a families, she thought it would help their conversation. 
Every day, the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies is changing the stories about religion and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. We are demonstrating that love and acceptance are deep values of our faith and of our families. And in doing so, we directly address a primary cause of homophobia and transphobia in our world. Through advocacy, accurate scholarship, and innovative communications, we are showing a new way. One that includes and celebrates LGBT people, our friends and our families.

I hope you will help us keep changing these stories by making a gift today.

Together, we can show families that embracing their lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender children is a faithful response, consistent with their religious values. Parents want to love their kids but some of them have been encouraged by homophobic and transphobic religious people to reject their own children. We show them a different option and help families remain together. 

“Everyone has a story and we are all at different places in telling it.  Religion and sexuality are not topics that we talk about openly in Asian and Pacific Islander communities.”  Vince is part of the Pink Elephant Project, a collaborative program from several API organizations, including CLGS’s API Roundtable. The program has been an important avenue for him to reflect on his life as a Filipino Guamanian gay man living with AIDS.  His story is just one of the many we’ve recorded LGBT Asian Pacific Islanders and then using those stories to change people’s perspectives.  “Yet, our faith is as much a part of us as our sexuality is.  For me it has been very healing and I know that there are many others out there who need to hear our story as much as we may need to tell it, and in doing so, we become one and our communities become more whole.”  

We’re changing other stories, too. On eve of the US Senate’s passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, CLGS faxed a letter signed by eleven seminary presidents to each Senator. We hadn’t even sent half the faxes yet when we got a call from a Senate staffer, “Keep faxing, keep faxing!” he said. He told us that this letter was unlike anything else that was coming to them and it changed the narrative by showing faith leaders in favor of ending discrimination in the workplace. It made an impact on Senators because we shared a true but unexpected story, one that they need to hear.

We’re sparking new conversations in places like North Carolina, where Rev. Roland Stringfellow partnered with the NAACP to present Umoja: Unity in the Community, a program to engage Black Church leaders to talk about sexuality and gender. 

CLGS co-sponsored the Festival de Fe in March in El Salvador, the first time an LGBT-affirming faith conference has ever been held in that country. Ambassadors from the United States, Canada, and Germany all participated in the conference and affirmed the human rights for all Salvadorans, including LGBT people, as crucial to their global work. 

There are so many more stories that we could tell. We hope that you will be a part of them by contributing to our work, by attending our programs, and helping us change the world, one story at a time. There is so much more to do until our world fully accepts and honors people of all sexual orientations and gender identities. But we are so hopeful because we hear again and again of transformation and acceptance, in individual families, in communities of faith, in schools, and in lives all around us. 

Thank you for all that you do and thank you for supporting the life-saving – AND soul-saving! – work of CLGS!