I want to be absolutely clear: The end goal is no more nonaffirming churches. Not a “diversity of thought” that’s just rewriting purity codes. Not a “range of opinions” with a variety of ways to exclude and dehumanize and tolerate “separate but equal.” Not a bare minimum. Not an “I love you but.”
Whether these churches accept correct, just, God-honoring theology or simply fade into history as factories of shame and harm and fake-nice, the collective liberation vision does not include nonaffirming theologies. Affirming theology *is* correct theology. We have beat around the bush long enough.
The mainline squandered opportunity after opportunity to draw that line, and we’re seeing the fruit of that, but we’re also seeing the fruit of the risk, the courage, the willingness to say NO to fence-riding and big-tent and “inclusive of all, the marginalized and the powers behind marginalization.”
In Christ, gender is not a factor for whether a marriage is holy, for whether sex is sinful, for whether someone is qualified to lead, serve, parent, teach, adopt, or write, for when passion is lust or love is healthy. That doesn’t mean we abandon discernment, but that gender isn’t relevant to it.
We are uncompromising in that. Lesbian, gay, bi/pan/+, trans/nonbinary/genderqueer, intersex, asexual/aromantic/agender, and all other kinds of queerness are not just permitted but *required* for the full reflection of the image of God and the accurate representation of the Kingdom come on earth.
Churches that factor in gender to who is permitted to do what are not only harmful, even deadly, for a small subset of the population. That is too minimizing. They are lacking in faithfulness. They are missing out on our gifts and our presence, but they are also missing out on the real, true God.
Conviction isn’t the enemy. Just like how becoming affirming isn’t “throwing out sexual ethics” or “there are no rules” or “rewriting history/the Bible,” it also isn’t an accommodation we’re asking for, a way to boost your Good Person points, or a secondary issue. It’s accurate, correct, right.
Have the courage to say so. Have the willingness to exclude the intolerant beliefs and opinions while honoring the need to listen, learn, grow, influence, and teach. It’s not about excluding individuals; it’s about setting our doctrinal truth, our policies, our reason for being.
Conservatives will panic: “See, the crazy liberals want to erase us! They want to eradicate us! They discriminate against us! The intolerant left!” Yes. I do. I want to erase the possibility that any queer kid grows up thinking God hates, Jesus is ashamed, or the Spirit would take away their joy.
I want to eradicate queer death, suffering, rejection, and homelessness. I do discriminate against bigotry and hate and fear-peddling propaganda lies. I want the world to stop tolerating violence, inequality, and terror in the name of “religious freedom,” “thought diversity,” and “broad umbrellas.”
We refuse anything less as the destination. The future is one where every church is practicing and preaching the truth, the life, the freedom, and the blessing that is only reflected with full queer welcome, inclusion, affirmation, belonging, and leadership at every level.
We have a long, complicated history as a queer Christian community. It’s crucial that we preserve, learn, and grow from that history with each generation that follows so we know who we are, that we are not a new trend, and that “tradition” is in the eye of the historian. We are proud to have a deep, rich history of faithful love and justice work, standing strong in our God-given identities. LGBTQIA+ Christians have always been here. Our stories were just erased. Make the invisible visible again in remembering them:
The LGBTQ Religious Archives Network (LGBTQ-RAN) is an innovative venture in preserving history and encouraging scholarly study of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) religious movements around the world. LGBTQ-RAN has a two-fold basic purpose.
Second, LGBTQ-RAN provides an electronic information clearinghouse for these archival collections and other historical data about LGBTQ religious history for the use of historians, researchers and other interested persons.
First, it assists LGBTQ religious leaders and groups in determining how best to preserve their records and papers in appropriate repositories.
The Center for LGBTQ and Gender Studies in Religion (CLGS) was established at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California and opened its doors in the fall of 2000.
Since 1996, Whosoever has existed to publish resources, primarily in the form of curated content, for those who seek a deeper understanding of the truly loving God, whose unconditional love is experienced as boundless grace.
The Queer Saints Project began as a collaboration between the artist, Jason Tseng, and Judson Memorial Church, a historic church located in New York City’s West Village neighborhood. In 2018, Judson commissioned Tseng to create icons of LGBTQIA+ ancestors, to celebrate their inherent divinity, honor their contributions, and reclaim them as queer saints. The goal is to raise awareness and funds for the LGBTQIA+ community using these transcendent images that glorify and celebrate the miracle that is queerness.
Kittredge Cherry provides profiles and a saints day calendar that ask “What if” in queering the Bible and Christian history, as well as recognizing modern-day and historical queer people of faith in ways the church has largely ignored. Dare to imagine, explore, question, and enjoy beyond the normative and cisheteropatriarchical-assumed stories we’ve been taught.
Growing up in the segregated South, Rev. Carolyn Mobley-Bowie knew the challenge of finding an accepting place in the world—a challenge that only grew when her attraction to women came into conflict with her devotion to God. The predominantly gay Metropolitan Community Church offered refuge.
An essay by historian John D’Emilio “On Teaching Religion and Homosexuality in the U.S.,” and six chronologies on religion and homosexuality in the United States. First published on OutHistory in 2014.
This timeline highlights key milestones and flashpoints within the UMC, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Episcopal Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, United Church of Christ, as well as in civic life.
By affirming denomination
Your experience may vary, but overall, these denominations have come to a broadly LGBTQIA+ affirming stance and hold socially progressive theology.
When We All Get to Heaven is a documentary project that tells the story of one of the first gay-positive churches, the Metropolitan Community Church of San Francisco, and how it faced the personal, social, and political trials of the AIDS epidemic, including the deaths of 500 of its members.
Dr. Lynne Gerber (she/her/hers) is an independent scholar. She is the author of Seeking the Straight and Narrow: Weight Loss and Sexual-Reorientation in Evangelical America (Chicago, 2011). She is currently working on a history of religion and HIV/AIDS in San Francisco.
He’s preaching revolution! In this episode, Reverend Troy Perry, founder of the Metropolitan Community Church, joins us to chart his unlikely journey from Southern Baptist roots to gay‐affirming ministry and queer liberation. He recalls founding MCC in his living room in 1968, officiating groundbreaking same-sex marriages, and fighting for dignity when society told him faith and queerness could never co-exist.
There were fires—literal and metaphorical—that threatened his church, courtroom battles, and protests in the street. Through it all, he held onto something radical: that God loves us all, fully and without apology. Tune in to witness faith as resistance and prophecy as sanctuary.
Affirmation was founded in 1972 and went on to establish Reconciling Ministries. Affirmation was the first group to include Transgender people and was the first to provide direct support to LGBTQ+ people in Uganda and Kenya.
As the Church embraces a more inclusive and hopeful future, the Center exists to intentionally collect, preserve, and share the stories of Queer individuals whose voices, ministries, and faith have long been marginalized. Through this work, the LGBTQ+ UMC Heritage Board is tasked with ensuring LGBTQ+ people and their legacy in the Church can move forward unapologetically to be seen, celebrated, and empowered in the fullness of who they are.
TransEpiscopal – TransEpiscopal is a group of transgender, nonbinary, and allied Episcopalians dedicated to fostering the full embrace of trans and nonbinary people, and our loved ones within the Episcopal Church and to inspiring faith-based advocacy for trans and nonbinary justice in the wider world.
LGBTQIA+ Episcopal History – Faithful Episcopalians have been working toward a greater understanding and radical inclusion of all of God’s children for nearly a half-century.
United Church of Christ LGBTQIA+ History
Open and Affirming Coalition– Beginning in 1969, the United Church of Christ has advocated for the LGBT community. From the campaign to decriminalize same-sex relationships to support for marriage equality, the UCC has made a difference in the lives of LGBT citizens and their families. The issues have changed over the decades, but the basic commitment to full inclusion and human rights remains the same.
Presbyterian Church USA LGBTQIA+ History
Timeline of LGBTQIA+ History – The Presbyterian Historical Society has created a timeline of LGBTQIA+ related history in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). The stories included show how church members’ perspectives as well as the language used to speak about sexuality shifted throughout decades of advocacy work by LGBTQIA+ Presbyterians and allies.
Oral history project at the Center for Queer Studies – Amy Short, in her work on the BMC Elder History Project, has been busy collecting stories, primarily from older BMC individuals, but also from some younger ones as well. Currently she has over 40 hours of taped interviews that will be preserved for their archives, with some utilized for trainings or simply shared as a celebration of their strength and variety as a community.
Many more to come! If you have more queer Christian history/archival sites to suggest, please submit them via DMs on Bsky, Threads, Instagram, Substack, Discord, or Facebook (all under @ jennadewitt), or send me an email at jennadewitt (at) gmail (dot) com.
You’re going to hear me say a phrase a lot: “Sexual liberation includes the choice not to have sex.” What do I mean?
Sex-negative purity culture and celibacy-shaming culture are part of the same harmful system with moving goalposts. Both force sex on us.
The fight is not purity culture vs. hookup culture. The fight is true sexual liberation and self-agency against mandates controlling our bodies. No one can tell you you have to have sex in order to be good, normal, healthy, or mature. Not in marriage, not in singleness.
If sex positivity ends when “no” is said too often, expressed too confidently, or extends to a certain age before it’s “not normal! Humans NEED sex!”, that’s not sex positivity. It’s still a form of purity culture with a different set of rules you’re forced to play by. Other people’s standards.
Purity culture isn’t about abstaining from sex. It’s about putting strict rules on when you *must* have it. Secular culture simply removes the marriage element. There’s something “wrong” with you if you’re a “sad virgin” at 21, they say. “He just needs to get laid.” “What a frigid bitch.” etc.
If you don’t have sex, whether in marriage or out of it, you’re a freak. Doctors want to find out why you’re sick. Therapists worry about you and think if you just tried dating or hooking up, you’d find healing. Friends don’t trust you because surely you have to have something wrong with you.
No, maybe family doesn’t kick you out, but they sure as hell pity you and look down on you and shame you. You’re a joke. You’re a political jab. You’re a concern. The GOP wants to make you an example of all the things wrong with this country. “Your body, my choice” they scream now.
trigger warning: SA
You have to worry about getting pregnant even if you don’t want to have sex ever because telling men that leads to them thinking it’s a challenge. We call it corrective rape. Correcting what’s wrong with us.
Meanwhile conversion therapy plays out for us every day because we’re considered mentally or physically ill if we don’t have sex by (16? 18? 22? 30? 45?). No one has to make a “Side X” or “nonaffirming” camp for asexuality because it’s the air we breathe. It’s everyone around us.
Even those who consider themselves affirming of us think of it as a niche, for “those people.” Good for them, but for NORMAL people, you know, real humans need sex. Real adults mature into wanting sex. Real liberated people say “yes.” The consent is for us to feel morally, culturally pure about it, not for you to actually refuse over and over. And certainly not forever. Eventually, you’re “supposed to” want it.
But maybe you don’t. Whether by orientation or interest or opinion or lack of suitable options.
I’m not at risk of being excommunicated for staying celibate and single by church policy. I’m at risk of being excommunicated from society by refusing to let men use my body for things I don’t want just so I can meet some developmental norm or perceived biological need (of theirs, of course) or hit a milestone or rite of passage to prove I’m not “weird” or “broken” or making others uncomfortable.
Is it better than being kicked out of a home as a teen? Sure. Am I still fighting every day to get people to see the harm of amatonormativity and allonormativity? Now and always.
Liberation and bodily autonomy.
If that’s what you’re for, you are united with us in the same fight against purity culture. If this feels like a threat to you, consider liberating yourself and those around you from the shame boxes altogether. Both the purity culture box and the not-sexual-enough shame box.
Collective liberation is for all of us to have the freedom to determine our own choices, about our bodies and identities and lives. It’s shaping the kind of society we want to live in. We have to think bigger than judging people for the sex they have or haven’t had. That’s not enough. Liberation respects, trusts, and honors each of us living as our whole selves authentically true to our needs and what is freedom to us.
I started this year with a specific Word of the Year, a tradition in Christian women’s circles dating back to the heyday of the “blogsphere.” I usually don’t remember mine by April, but this year was different. This year the word that came to me, or that I picked (depending on what you believe about such things), was “complicated.”
As in, letting myself be.
I refused to simplify myself any longer. I would not pretend to be straight for others’ comfort. I would not pretend to be the perfect gold-star aromantic asexual person while denying the reality of my vague sapphic attractions, while accepting that I would never be fully accepted in the lesbian community either. Aromantic and yet a romantic. A cis woman and yet deeply, intrinsically, queerly, asexually so.
I would not hide that I have nontraditionally presenting ADHD in addition to my variety pack of mental illnesses. I would give up trying to screen and test myself over and over for autism, which I probably don’t actually have but also don’t not have entirely. I would be hyperactive and exhausted, both wrapped in brain fog and begging for someone quick enough to catch up with my twice-exceptional brain that has already put the pieces together. I would live into the reality of my disabilities despite feeling unqualified to use that term. I would respect my body’s needs and differences as my own and not the object of others’ expectations.
Invisible Cake Society 