Every week, millions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people attend religious services. Some are fortunate to be welcomed with open arms in congregations like the United Church of Christ. Others, including many young people, may be attending worship services with their family and be part of a church that is not only unwelcoming, but actually preaches prejudice and bigotry toward LGBT people.
Rejection
From the pulpit of an unwelcoming church, the gay person may hear that they are a sinner, a degenerate, an abomination. They likely will be told that the bible rejects homosexuality. At the very core of this is religion-based bigotry.
Activist Churches Spending Millions to Harm LGBT People
The Catholic, Mormon and many Evangelical churches have gone far beyond their church walls in promoting religion-based bigotry toward gay people.
They have spent tens of millions of dollars fighting for laws and constitutional amendments that prevent LGBT people from gaining rights that have been traditionally afforded only to straight people. Most specifically, they have fought to pass constitutional amendments to prevent same-sex couples from getting married in more than 2/3rds of the states and have even worked to prevent gay people from adopting children.
What Can You Do?
Faith In America is launching four specific faith initiatives: Catholic, Evangelical, Southern Baptist and Mormon. Although the opposition to LGBT rights can be witnessed across the religious spectrum we have identified these faiths as particularly opposed to LGBT members and have strong opposition to gay marriage and LGBT rights on religious grounds.
We need your help in applying pressure to encourage these faiths to stop using religion-based bigotry against LGBT people.
- Talk about the harm.
- Make it clear that being gay is not a choice.
- It is wrong to use religion-based bigotry to justify discrimination.
- Tell your story.
Catholic Initiative
In the Catholic Church people with “homosexual tendencies” are encouraged not to come out to the general public because the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops states, “In the context of parish life, however, general public self disclosures are not helpful and should not be encouraged.” [Ministry to Persons with a Homosexual Inclination: Guidelines for Pastoral Care, pg 17]
Faith In America is launching our Catholic Initiative to show to the Conference of Catholic Bishops that a person’s sexuality is not a choice and that religion-based bigotry causes enormous emotional harm to LGBT youth and adults.
→How can you get involved in the Catholic Initiative?
Evangelical Initiative
One can only imagine the emotional strain faced by a teenager when one of the nation’s leading pastors compares your sexuality to incest.
→How can you get involved in the Evangelical Initiative
Southern Baptist Initiative
“As an evangelical Christian whose career has been spent in the South, I must say I find it scandalous that the most physically and psychologically dangerous place to be (or even appear to be) gay or lesbian in America is in the most religiously conservative families, congregations and regions of this country.” David Gushee, a Christian ethicist, author and Southern Baptist minister, Christian Century, June 2009
→How can you get involved in the Baptist Initiative
Mormon Initiative
The Mormon Church spent $22 million to fight the California marriage battle even though the Mormon population in the state is approximately 2%.
→How can you get involved in the Mormon Initiative