Queer Inclusion Matters for the Presbyterian Church

by Brian Murphy

“We don’t even need to talk about why being gay is wrong, right?” our youth pastor asked the 10th grade guys Sunday School class.

The classed nodded in agreement.

My friend, Tom Langford, added, “And it’s not a choice. There is no gay gene.”

The conversation moved swiftly on to another topic. I remember nothing else about that day, or even that year, other than those forty five seconds when smiling, well-intentioned guys in khakis and polo shirts unknowingly condemned me to hell.

Take a closer look at the couple from Malawi

by Kara Speltz

While there has been a great deal of coverage regarding the situation of the couple in Malawi, almost nothing has been addressed to the situation that this couple does not fit the label of gay couple.  The following two articles bring a new understanding of the couple and what they face.  We have not seen anything written concerning this previously.  Our thanks to to Jim Burroway for the research involved as well as his capacity to allow people to self-identify as they wish and the refusal to impose our own cultural understandings on others.

“The Malawi Couple: Gay or Transgender? Or Something Else?”
from Box Turtle Bulletin

“Once again the ‘T’ in LGBT is silenced”
from Guardian UK

On the road for equality

by Guest Author

This post is by Equality U director Dave O’Brien. You can connect with Dave on Twitter at @dave_obrien

In March, 2006, equality hit the road and I got to be there with a camera. At over 200 colleges in the US, students face disciplinary action or even be kicked out simply for being gay. At these mostly private Christian colleges, policy states that because homosexuality goes against church teachings, any student who engages in homosexual behavior, who identifies as gay and in some cases who simply advocates a view of LGBT people that is different from what that school teaches, can be expelled from school. As director of the documentary EQUALITY U about the first ever Soulforce Equality Ride, I got to see what goes on at these schools first-hand, and what happens when a bus-load of young, mostly LGBT activists show up for a visit.