Valentine’s Day Marks the Public Launch for Believe Out Loud
To be gay in America overwhelmingly means to be denied essential rights and protections. From marriage equality to parental rights, hate crimes to job discrimination, the estimated 30 million Americans who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT), face pervasive social and legal opposition to exercising basic liberties most citizens take for granted.
Sadly—especially in media portrayals—nowhere is this opposition more vitriolic than within the Christian church. Amplified by the megaphone of talk radio and cable news bloviators, the anti-gay agenda has been a top priority of the very visible religious right for more than two decades.
But the “God vs. gays” dichotomy is false, and reflective of only part of Christendom. The religious right’s divisive paradigm is paralleled by more progressive stances that have resulted in inclusive institutional transformation within secular and religious settings, notably the Episcopal Church’s recent lifting of its ban on gay bishops and the Evangelical Lutheran Church’s vote to ordain non-celibate gays and lesbians. In California’s Proposition 8 battle, 50% of white mainline Protestants voted for marriage equality. If the level of mainline votes had risen to just 60%, gay marriage would still be legal in California.
On Valentine’s Day, Intersections—along with many allies and advocates for LGBT justice—launched a new effort into the public arena, Believe Out Loud. Our expectations are high: we hope this becomes not just a campaign, but a national movement for equality for queer people. Peter Laarman, Director of Progressive Christians Uniting, and an early architect for this effort, has written a comprehensive background piece on Religion Dispatches.
Believe Out Loud is based on the premise that social justice for LGBT persons will only be achieved as hearts and minds are changed within the Church. Research shows that there is a vast segment of congregational leaders who are “silent friends” who believe that LGBT folks should be welcomed in the churches but who have yet to take “meaningful personal actions” to support this community—either within congregations or in the public arena.
Believe Out Loud provides thoughtful resources and effective interactive tools to begin conversations within congregations in order to move hearts and minds from fear to empathy, from ignorance to understanding and from apathy to action around the issue of LGBT justice. In so doing, a high-profile, compassionate ecumenical Christian movement for LGBT equality will be born—one that will open religious doors previously shut to gays and lesbians and mobilize people of faith to work for LGBT rights in the larger society.
A result of more than two years of collaborative research, planning and development, and a collaborative effort among existing religious and secular LGBT advocacy groups, Believe Out Loud combines traditional community organizing strategies with new technologies and advanced social marketing principles. A web site, www.believeoutloud.com, serves as the central hub for this work.
I invite you to visit our Believe Out Loud site and see the resources that are there. As with any launch, there are some bugs, (unexpectedly high traffic crashed the site yesterday), so be patient with us. Join us on Facebook and Twitter too and look for updates as we continue to add more robust features to the site and public events to our schedule. Order a T-shirt or an iphone cover and display the Believe Out Loud logo. Send us your story about how you have experienced both the positive and negative “intersections” between the faith community and LGBT persons. And most importantly, don’t be afraid to speak out and act up on behalf of equality for queer brothers and sisters in all aspects of life.
Join the movement. Break the silence. Believe out loud.
