Hundreds of pro-lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Christians will tackle issues of race, class, ability, age, gender identity and sexual orientation at the Many Stories, One Voice conference to take place in New Orleans, La., Sept. 4-7. Two pre-conference institutes will discuss, analyze and strategize on how to organize around these issues.

On Wednesday, Sept. 3, participants will converge at For Such a Time as This, a gathering of transgender people and allies to discuss the dynamics of ministry with the transgender community, the challenges and advantages of becoming more visible in their faith communities and how to build relationships of support and accountability between transgender people and their allies. This pre-conference institute is convened by TransFaith Online in an effort to highlight transgender people and their concerns, as they become more visible in both secular and religious communities.

Waheguru Ji Ka Khalsa, Waheguru Ji Ki Fateh

At certain times in one's life, one looks at one's own identity and considers what it means to be a Sikh. For some, this is compounded by their identity as gay men or women. No reference is made to homosexuality within the Guru Granth Sahib, although `lust' is stated as being one of the Five Thieves (similar to the Seven Deadly Sins within Christianity). However, despite the fact that homosexuality was known to exist in India at the time of the Sikh Gurus and that the Gurus do not appear to have believed it to be an important subject to deal with in their Bani, Punjabi culture is extremely homophobic and this can cause some individuals to turn away from the
Sikh faith as they are unable to draw a distinction between the Sikh religion and the Punjabi culture on this particular issue.

Toby Johnson, Catholic monk turned activist, psychotherapist and spiritual writer, was born in 1945 in San Antonio TX. He entered religious life after high school, first as a Marianist and then as a Servite. After leaving seminary in 1970, he moved to San Francisco and lived in the Bay Area throughout the 1970s. While a student at the California Institute of Integral Studies from which he received a master's in Comparative Religion and a doctorate in Counseling Psychology, Johnson was on staff at the Mann Ranch Seminars, a Jungian-oriented summer retreat program. There he befriended religion scholar Joseph Campbell and came to regard himself "an apostle of Campbell's vision to the gay community."

Will Roscoe has been active in the the Gay movement since 1975, when he helped found Lambda, the first Gay/Lesbian organization in Montana. The following year, he served an intern at the National Gay Task Force, and in 1977, as coordinator of the Gay People's Alliance at the University of Oregon, he spearheaded the formation of the Oregon Gay Alliance, a statewide coalition of Gay/Lesbian groups. In 1978, he completed an internship at the Pacific Center for Human Growth in Berkeley, where he coordinated a successful campaign to win United Way funding, the first Lesbian/Gay social service agency in the country to do so. He also served as voter registration coordinator for the No on 6 campaign in San Francisco (the Briggs initiative), registering over 10,000 new voters.

I was not a subtle child. When I was eight, I dropped a huge queer clue on my parents and their closest friends during one of their cocktail parties. I swept into the living room, plopped a tape recorder on the coffee table, and cleared everyone from the Oriental rug. I needed an audience, I told them, while I rehearsed the choreography of the second grade's may day dance.

The music was Abba’s “Super Trouper.” My father gulped a martini as I raced through box steps and ball-heel changes for his high-ranking military buddies. In that moment, my father realized that the Read family’s long history at Virginia Military Institute had died with a thud. His son was a fairy.

More Light Presbyterians

Intersex... is a medical condition of birth where the individual is born with mixed or indeterminate biological sex. It has traditionally been called hermaphroditism or pseudohermaphroditism and may occur in approximately two in every 100 births.

It is likely that you have never heard a minister preach on Matthew 19:11a-12:

Jesus said unto them...For there are some Eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb; and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. [emphasis added.]

Harry Knox and Sharon Groves, Conscience Magazine, Spring 2006

Much has been written about the Vatican’s “Instruction” refusing to allow openly gay men enter Catholic seminaries. The first press leaks about the document coincided with the formation of a new effort by the Religion and Faith Program at the Human Rights Campaign Foundation in the summer of 2005 that had a twofold mission: (1) to equip religious leaders and lay people alike to speak out about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender equality from a faith perspective and (2) to work with people of
faith to change the conversation about LGBT equality from within their faith communities.

Gay Perspective: Things Our Homosexuality Tells Us About the Nature of God and the Universe
Toby Johnson

In this companion volume to his critically acclaimed, Lambda Literary Award - winning Gay Spirituality, Toby Johnson further explicates his visionary stance that gay people's nature as outsiders gives them a uniquely powerful perspective on the nature of God and religion. By living outside gender norms, gay people are more open to seeing across boundaries of gender and gain access to a less dualistic outlook on the nature of life. Once again, Johnson approaches this potentially controversial subject matter with -erudition, empathy and visionary speculation and gives meaning to gay consciousness beyond superficial issues of sexual behavior.

Toby Johnson is the editor of White Crane, a quarterly journal of gay men's spirituality, as well as the author of Gay Spirituality. He lives in Wimberley, Texas.