BSA Jamboree leadership challenged the values of the UUA, UCC and SFE while they were hosting the Friendly Cafe at the 2017 National Boy Scouts of America Jamboree.

The word “Welcome” comes from the Old English and means “one whose coming is pleasant.” I love that we begin with a welcome because as Unitarian Universalists, “welcome” connects us to our 7 principles. In Unitarian Universalism, you can bring your whole self: your full identity, your questioning mind, your expansive heart.

Midcoast Maine is not always a safe or easy place for LGBTQ people to live openly. A segment of the population remains homophobic and transphobic, and LGBTQ Mainers face harassment and discrimination. There are no LGBTQ bars or community gathering places. As a Welcoming Congregation, MUUF is proud to embrace the LGBTQ community in all its diversity and to provide a spiritual home and a safe space for all. In the words of our brand new mission statement, adopted in May, “Our mission is to nurture spiritual growth, engage in justice, and love joyfully, without limits.” Being a Welcoming Congregation is one of the ways we live our faith and our mission.

Although I came out as trans with a plan in place, I had underestimated the losses that accompanied the truth of my identity. Being genuine seemed to make me less welcome than I’d ever been before. I won’t say that TRUUsT saved me; that seems over dramatic. I will say that attending the first TRUUsT retreat brought me a feeling of welcome that had been missing for many years.

As a queer woman of color, I experience the diminishment of my own humanity when people try to convince me that focusing on racism somehow ignores sexism, heterosexism, and all the other “isms” that work to make us small. Instead I understand white supremacy to cast a wide range of identities as somehow less than, in order to maintain systems of unearned privilege that benefit the few over the many.

We honored the murdered, and continue to do so. We wept, and continue to do so. But the hate crime that was the Pulse shooting, committed against the LGBTQ community on Latin night, was not the end of it all. We go on.

One attendee reflected: “It’s not often that people in leadership in our faith have the space to be ministered to. I was offered this space and the opportunity to be ministered to FULLY. All of my being was validated and appreciated.”