Fact Sheets on LGBTQ Justice

Religious education resources developed for the National Weekend of Prayer for Transgender Justice, including fact sheets, videos, articles, and curricula.

Gilead Sabbath ›› Educational Resources ›› Religious Export of LGBTQ Prejudice Religion has been a primary medium for cultivating anti-LGBTQ prejudice among African people, especially people of faith. Below is a brief synopsis of the ways religion is being used against the rights, health, and security of LGBTQ Africans. The Gilead Sabbath Initiative as well as the education, prayer, and […]

Gilead Sabbath ›› Educational Resources ›› Fact Sheet for Faith Communities This fact sheet gives a broad sense of the realities of LGBTQ people in African countries. We encourage you to share it with your community and to engage in dialogue around the issues it presents. Click here for a PDF version of this fact sheet. ANTI-LGBTQ LAWS IN […]

Used correctly, the language describing sexual and gender diversity can prevent miscommunication, misperceptions, stereotypes and discrimination. Terminology around sexual orientation and gender identity changes frequently, as language evolves. It is always best to check more than one source for terminology. These definitions are adapted from Bisexuality: Making the Invisible Visible in Faith Communities (Religious Institute, 2014), the National […]

“The transgender experience deserves and requires its own focus,” writes Rev. Chris Glaser in his introduction to Gender Identity & Our Faith Communities (2009), a faith-based curriculum from the Human Rights Campaign. “Though it is appropriate to link [all] LGBT experience because all of us endure discrimination and abuse for not fitting society’s gender expectations, […]

There is no single model of an “LGBT family.” There are families led by an LGBT parent or parents, LGBT couples without children, families that parent gender-variant or intersex children, and families that include LGBT sons, daughters, cousins, grandchildren and other relations. There also is no telling how many LGBT families there are. One measure […]

A surprisingly high number of teenagers involved in religious communities (up to 14%, according to one national studyClapp, Steve, Kristen Leverton Helbert and Angela Zizak. Faith Matters: Teenagers, Religion, and Sexuality (Fort Wayne, IN: LifeQuest, 2003), 96.) identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual. But only a fraction of them discuss their sexuality with their clergy […]

Intersex individuals are people who have atypical development of reproductive or sexual anatomy, including (but not limited to) external genitals that are not easily classified as male or female, incomplete development of internal reproductive organs, variations of the sex chromosomes, overproduction or underproduction of sex-related hormones, and abnormal development of the testes or ovaries. Intersex is […]

Bisexual people are individuals with emotional, and/or sexual attractions toward people of more than one sex or gender. Bisexuality is a enduring sexual orientation, like homosexuality or heterosexuality. Today, researchers understand that sexual orientation is more complex than sexual behaviors alone. The Religious Institute defines sexual orientation as an individual’s enduring romantic, emotional, or sexual attractions […]

In San Francisco in 1964, the Council on Religion and the Homosexual was created “out of the growing awareness on the part of clergymen of the extent to which homosexuals had been shut out of the church and society.” “Exhibit: The Council on Religion and the Homosexual,” LGBT Religious Archives Network, http://www.lgbtran.org/Exhibits/CRH/Exhibit.aspx Since then, virtually […]