After Marriage Equity….What’s next for the LGBTQ Community ‘Yeah we can’t hire you, it wouldn’t work here’. That was the response that a UCC peer who is in the midst of a search and call process within the United Church of Christ received from a church who she had just told she was married to a woman who she parented a child with. That happened this week, within the UCC.

It is experiences like this that remind me of the work that still exists as we move towards equality and justice for all of God’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender children. In addition to the workplace discrimination that occurs against the LGBT community continues in many states, it’s estimated that 20% of homeless youth are LGBT and those youth commit suicide at dramatically higher rates. Violence against the LGBT community continues with over 2,000 incidents of anti-LGBT violence in the past year with the transgender, gay people of color and gay male communities facing the most severe violence. Gay conversion therapy (despite being opposed by the American Psychological Association) is still allowed in the vast majority of states. LGBT families continue to face discrimination in many states to foster and or adopt children.

And that is just in this country. If you step outside of the US, our LGTB brothers and sisters in many countries in this world face realities that are particularly grim. In 78 countries around the globe, LGBT people are arrested, imprisoned, or even put to death simply for who they are or whom they love. In Nigeria, for example, federal law classifies same-sex sexual activity as a felony punishable by imprisonment.

But today in the United States, lesbians and gays can get married. That is something that I, a lesbian woman who has been with my partner for 23 years and share in the parenting of two children, do not take lightly. The day I legally married my spouse in front of our friends and family was a blessing beyond my wildest imaginings and it is out of that foundation of legal privilege that I can now stand and be sustained for the continued struggles for equity and justice. It is out of that state of privilege that I feel a continued call to bring my time, my resources and my passion to the continued work of justice and equality for all of God’s children.

Being married is wonderful, but walking in a world where all of God’s LGBT children can travel safely, do work that they are called to do, love with dignity and authenticity, be honored for the gifts they bring to this world and raise families that continue the work of justice….that is a dream that is worth continuing to fight for.

Marci Weis
Member in Discernment

[1]http://www.nationalhomeless.org/factsheets/lgbtq.html

 http://old.ilga.org/Statehomophobia/ILGA_State_Sponsored_Homophobia_2013.pdf.  

[1]https://www.equalitymi.org/media-center/media-releases/national-report-hate-violence-against-lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender-0