But every once in a while we come across a true ally who is as firm their Christian faith as they are their principles that all people should be equal…and when that happens, especially in an unlikely demographic region, it’s a sure sign of hope for the future.

According to a post on Citizens-Times.com:

People of Faith for Just Relationships met at the First Congregational United Church of Christ, where supporters included four Asheville City Council members.

The organization wants “to stimulate Asheville and City Council to take a leadership role in a statewide effort to recognize the need for equal civil rights, employment rights, family rights and protection from bullying for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender citizens,” spokesman the Rev. Joe Hoffman said.

Read more here!

According to a post on guardian:

“There’s a wish to label those people who believe that there should be less of a role for religion in public policy, as somehow extreme, when they’re not extreme. I’ve looked carefully at what’s been done in the name of religion…”

More here!

“There are two things in my life that are an absolute,” the megachurch pastor told his flock. “I did not ask for either one of them, both of them were imposed upon me, I had no control over either of them. One was the call of God on my life… and the other thing … was my sexual orientation.”

More at the original source: NPR.org

It’s a GREAT Blog for all regardless of faith or spirituality.

Check it out at: God’s Art Museums!

According to an article on the Huffinton Post:

Changing hearts and minds is difficult, and it is actually quite remarkable how much our society has already changed in realizing the equality of LGBT people. This is a testament to the courage of every gay person who has come out and lived in a way that compelled the dominant culture to see his or her humanity. It is also proof of the capacity of human beings to grow and develop through ongoing difficult conversations and encounters that address the real but unfounded fears of people not so different from each other, that shed light on beliefs that have no basis in fact, and that share people’s genuine pain of exclusion.

Read more of this insightful post by Rabbi Irwin Kula at: Huffinton Post!

According to the post:

Right-wing biblical types often complain that homosexuals will pollute the holy water of their sacred straightness, that the evils of sexual “deviance” will somehow flood ancient terrains of purity and tradition. The LGBT mission, say conservative evangelists and prophets of Armageddon, is to gush forth rampant gayness across the land. But this month, institutions of bigotry are doing a remarkable job at queering themselves.

Find out what they’re doing at: www.sfgate.com

The university student prayed five times a day, and joined a local mosque.

Then one day, at age 27, he started to wonder why he had never been with a girl. “Why don’t I like women that way?” he asked, and it led him to a counselling office, where he sat, sobbing, with the realization that he was gay — a pariah to his community.

Mainstream Islamic leaders say gay men should be shunned and some around the world are killed each year.

Jahangir’s world imploded; work on his PhD ground to a halt.

But out of that despair, Jahangir began to work on another project: Understanding the teachings of Islam on homosexuality. From his office at the University of Alberta, he contacted experts, read everything he could on the subject and studied the scriptures intensely for two years, rebuilding his own identity in the process. His work is starting to be recognized internationally.

More at: Canada.com!

– Black Elk (1863-1950)

Find more at: Queer Look at the Bible!

Raja Ben Slama, Tunisian researcher and writer, says as you read this verse that “the divine order is based on the gender binary explicit and does not accept third genera”. The truth is that we cannot imagine this verse relegating to the gender system, but the biological discrimination is common, which cannot be denied. Even if we go back to the turmoil in the type indicated by Judith Butler, in “Trouble dans le genre, pour un feminisme de la subversion”, we do not find a triple, quadruple or even penta gender in the system, and every conception of the individual’s sex can not come out in the context of bilateral biological (Female/Male) as a reference which can be agreed on or disagreed, but can not be denied at all. Gays, bisexuals, transsexuals or who believe themselves are neither women or men, According to Ben Slama, they are in most cases possess penis or they do not possess it. We even go further if we assume that the verse does not refer to the “natural” but on “cultural” prospective, why not the Quran in its report that man was created from male and female referring to the duplication of sexual diversity and psychological characteristics of each human being. This interpretation is possible, the verse mentioned above (created you from male and female) uses the word “from” which allows an interpretation that differs from the standard interpretation (We created humans from males empowered by masculinity and females empowered by femininity), however the other interpretation is not denied by the Arabic language (created each one of them (humans) carrying some masculine traits and some feminine traits).

More at: Soula and Boula’s Space!

Read more at the Huffington Post!