Journeying Toward Reconciliation: Personal Stories of Faith, Sexuality and the Church

This is not the only stand I have taken for freedom in my lifetime. I have always been a champion for those in our society who are not trea...

In my personal life and in my work as a physician, I have met many gay and lesbian men and women. It is clear to me that sexuality and sexu...

Why am I involved in promoting a reconciling conversation that embraces people of all gender identities and sexual orientations in the full...

We have had no experience with close family members or friends who are LGBT. We have not watched as someone we love suffers the hurt of rej...

Once I was pastor to a small congregation that consisted mostly of farm families, in an area that was rapidly being surrounded by new subur...

It was the first week in my new appointment at First United Methodist Church in Charlotte when the secretary informed me that a young man n...

I grew up in a small town where my family was very active in our church. My parents, although relatively quiet people, modeled loudly in de...

While my parents contributed in important ways to my upbringing, my knowledge of “the birds and the bees” had to wait until a biology class...

Twenty-three years ago, we had just employed a new Minister of Music at our Church. He was a lifelong United Methodist. He was baptized in ...

As John Donne so famously said, no man is an island. We don’t exist in a vacuum, and when one identifies oneself as gay, it creates a circl...

Growing up as a Christian in a fundamentalist Bible church had its challenges, but growing up as a gay Christian in that same setting prese...

I would like to tell you a story. It is a true story. It is about love. When our daughter came out to us in the summer between her junior...

Yes, generations of born-and-bred Methodists! Therefore, when our daughters were born, we had them baptized and, later, confirmed to become...

Our daughter was in college when she came out to us. It was the mid-80s, a time when news like hers was much less acceptable than it is tod...

Let’s call her Ramona. She was a second-year student at the seminary where I was teaching—bright, attractive, straight-A student, well-orga...

Parents of homosexual children are often in conflict with the teaching of their church. In some cases this causes serious problems within t...

The primary reason for my involvement with Reconciling Conversations is that I was personally invited to participate. As is true with most ...

One of the most gifted and effective ministers I have been privileged to know was an amazing lady I’ll call “Jane.” With a heart for the po...

Neddy grew up in a small town in Georgia. He started Sunday school at age two. He and all his friends attended the confirmation class. Then...

Where do you start a story when you are not even sure where it started?  Probably with Allan, who called me Mother, even though he was olde...

     When our son John told us last November that he and Ken, his partner for 37 years, planned to be married in April, it surprised us. As ...