May 01
THE LAST event I spoke at during LGBT History Month in February was the first interfaith seminar coordinated by the LGBT rights charity Stonewall. The invitation came after I trained as a Role Model to deliver LGBT awareness sessions in schools registered as Stonewall School Champions. I wrote about my first experience as a Role …
Permanent link to this article: https://abravefaith.com/2016/05/01/stonewall-interfaith-seminar-lgbthm-review-pt-6/
Apr 24
IN OCTOBER 2014, the UK Government announced £2 million funding for charities offering creative ideas to stamp out homophobic, biphobic and transphobic (HBT) bullying in schools. In March 2015, eight organisations received a share of the fund, including the children’s charity Barnardo’s, for its plan ‘to provide face-to-face support for victims of HBT bullying and training for …
Permanent link to this article: https://abravefaith.com/2016/04/24/barnardos-faith-toolkit-lgbthm-review-pt-5/
Apr 10
One of the few LGBT History Month events in February which tackled the controversial theme of Religion, Belief and Philosophy head on was a performance of a play written and performed by Jo Clifford, a trans Christian actor portraying Jesus as a trans woman. I first became aware of the one-person show called The Gospel …
Permanent link to this article: https://abravefaith.com/2016/04/10/the-gospel-according-to-jesus-queen-of-heaven-lgbthm-review-pt-4/
Mar 06
LGBT History Month has taken place in the UK every February since 2004, organised by Schools Out UK, a campaigning group for LGBT people in education, and taking inspiration from the annual commemoration in October each year in the USA.
Permanent link to this article: https://abravefaith.com/2016/03/06/believing-in-lgbt-people-my-review-of-lgbt-history-month-part-1/
Feb 20
‘It’s a sad, sad situation, and it’s getting more and more absurd.’ So sang Elton John 40 years ago – his lament for a lost relationship could have been written for the Church of England this past month. At the first full meeting of its governing body this year, the General Synod met this week to …
Permanent link to this article: https://abravefaith.com/2016/02/20/sorry-seems-to-be-the-hardest-word-on-the-cofes-apology-to-lgbti-christians/
Jan 10
THIS WEEK the heads of Anglican churches around the world (known as Primates) will gather in Canterbury to debate the future of their global network, the Anglican Communion, because of deep divisions over church teachings on sexuality.
Permanent link to this article: https://abravefaith.com/2016/01/10/how-can-we-disagree-well-a-personal-response-to-the-primates2016-meeting/
Dec 24
AT A carol service last Sunday, hosted by Open Table, an LGBT Christian community in Liverpool, I read one of the readings, which I found moving, inspiring and too good not to share. The poem, called Coming Out by Sigrid Rutishauser-James, draws on the image of light in darkness, which was the theme of the whole service: Come …
Permanent link to this article: https://abravefaith.com/2015/12/24/coming-out-a-gay-christian-poem-for-christmas/
Dec 05
IT’S TEN YEARS this month since the first civil partnerships for same-sex couples in the UK. The first couple to benefit from the new legal recognition for their relationship were Chris Cramp and Matthew Roche from West Sussex, on 5th December 2005. Yet when images from the first UK civil partnerships appear in the media …
Permanent link to this article: https://abravefaith.com/2015/12/05/a-momentous-decade-reflecting-on-ten-years-of-uk-civil-partnerships/
Nov 20
THIS WEEK in England there is an interesting combination of commemorations – Anti-Bullying Week, Interfaith Week, and Trans* Awareness Week, culminating today in Trans* Day of Remembrance (TDOR). I have been at four events in the past week to mark these campaigns: ‘An All Embracing Faith’ – Keynote speech by Ruth Hunt, CEO of Stonewall …
Permanent link to this article: https://abravefaith.com/2015/11/20/makingnoise-antibullying-interfaith-tdor/
Oct 31
AT THIS time of year it’s not unusual to hear people in England complain of the ‘American import’ of Halloween and its lanterns, costumes, and trick-or-treating. While it’s true that Halloween celebrations have become as commercialised as Christmas, in the USA and increasingly here in the UK, it’s also true that it was our ancestors …
Permanent link to this article: https://abravefaith.com/2015/10/31/halloween-summers-end-a-feast-for-remembering/
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