As we honor our lives by celebrating PRIDE throughout the month of June, may all who chose to marry or chose not to marry continue the fight by exposing the hate that we all experience as we go about our daily lives.

On February 13th 2018, QDEP’s Bobby Steggert and Ian Zdanowicz participated in a panel organized by Unitarian Universalist Association at the All Souls Church. The topic of the event was forced migration of people identifying as LGBTQ. Debrown Idrissu and Edafe Okporo gave brilliant talks about their trajectories in their home countries and experiences regarding incarceration in detention centers and the immigration process in the USA.

The new #ALLPrideMatters pride flag is not a divisive distraction from Pride, but a more perfect expression of Pride for are racialized context. The new #AllPrideMatters pride flag expresses a more perfect union of the Pride that we all hope to celebrate across the country and around the world in June.

On May 27, 2018, Community Unitarian Universalist Congregation at White Plains had a special LGBTQ Celebration Sunday Service, commemorating our renewal as an LGBTQ Welcoming Congregation. Our Welcoming designation dated back to 2005, but since then the transgender/non-binary movement has evolved greatly and we wanted to renew our commitment to Welcoming all within the LGBTQIA community.

Fast forward to a couple of months ago when my 80-year old godfather called to share the news that his beloved country, Trinidad and Tobago, had finally changed its legislation on Thursday, April 12, when Judge Devindra Rampersad “determined that sections of the Sexual Offences Act… criminalised consensual same-sex activity between adults, and were unconstitutional.”

“When the sharpest words wanna cut me down; I’m gonna send a flood, gonna drown them out; I am brave, I am bruised I am who I’m meant to be, this is me.”

The power of grace to save us, to move us towards our best and truest selves, even when we don’t know what we’re looking for or what we need, is amazing and beautiful. What a blessing it is for me that Unitarian Universalism has been a part of the grace that has shaped and transformed my life.

Georgia and the Southeastern United States are in crisis because of HIV/AIDS. The people living in the Southern region of the United States are at the highest risk of contracting HIV. Now that I have your attention I want to provide some statistics for the State of Georgia….

I came out when I was 12, prompting several years of severe bullying. Soon after I turned to religion for help, only to find out that I was not welcomed, that I was not “the child of God” the church wanted me to be. I quickly learned that being a member of the church meant hiding a part of…

I am a privileged, cisgender woman. The world sees me as white. I often pass as heterosexual without trying. My body works in the ways most people expect bodies to work. For these, and many other reasons, I benefit from a vast, unspoken ranking system of privilege and oppression. As a lesbian, I…