Our little, emerging UU fellowship has, for a year and a half now been going through a series of workshops designed by the Unitarian Universalist Association to lead congregations through a process toward official recognition by the denomination as a Welcoming Congregation.
In the course of our workshops and discussions, we have come to realize that, though we know a great deal collectively about male and female homosexuality and a reasonable amount about bisexuality, we still have a lot to learn and understand about transgender people and issues they face. We are making use of the UUA's Welcoming Congregation Handbook, but if you know any good resources on transgender issues that can fairly smoothly be worked into a discussion-group format or workshop, I'd appreciate your comments below.
I did find this beautiful video on YouTube:
How can that not tug at the heartstrings? It's exactly the kind of encounter we hope will only increase for people of all sexualities. (And it's an ad for a bank?!) We hear that young people are cool about sexuality issues, at least compared to their parents and grandparents. But there are still plenty of people who see things the old way...
Small though our congregation is, we are blessed with gay members, straight members, bisexual members, and members with gay children - and that's just that I'm aware of. Not everyone cares to talk about such things much or often - and that's all right! But I can say without reserve that no one here has ever made me or anyone else unwelcome because of real or perceived sexual identity. We began as an open and accepting congregation. The Welcoming Congregation process, when complete, will allow us to use a designation that will make it unambiguously clear to everyone who cares to know that we are fully committed to full inclusion of people of all sexualities in our community and in our services, as members, attendees, and visitors - as participants and leaders in every capacity.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
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4 responses:
This is just one of many reasons I love MVUUF!
Yes, in general the younger crowd is more accepting of sexual diversity. However, as anyone who works with young people regularly can tell you, we have a long way to go to create a truly accepting society.
But I don't mean that as discouragement, but rather as encouragement. We all must work for social justice every day. When a child condemns something by saying "That's gay," for example, we have the responsibility to tell that child that his words are hurtful to others.
Thanks for your post, Paul.
Hi, Luke!
I miss your blog posts and really miss having you here in Mt. Vernon. But Shannon tells me things are really good for you in Tlaquepaque.
Good to hear from you!
crazy ad for a bank! tho, one of the big differences I noticed in the area of glbt equality while I was in canada was the fact that the glbt community was a definite advertising demographic. I figure that is a pretty big ruler in a capitalistic society on where they stand in terms of equality.
I have been meaning to ask how things went this month at the meeting. I really did miss it!
It's just good business to be LGBTQ friendly. Businesses, states, and countries who are have an advantage over their overly cautious or bigoted competitors.
The workshop went quite well though our numbers were few. 11 workshops down, 3 to go!
I think we should work up some wording for a proposal for our September membership meeting to have plenty of time for the final phase discussion of congregational approval of the Welcoming Congregation designation.
I don't foresee any difficulty at all, but we don't want to spring it on people at the meeting.
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