LGBTQ Equity — Blog — Side With Love

Spiritual Solace After the Pulse Orlando Shooting

We are sending you much love and grace at this tough time. So many of your reached out to us about the Orlando Massacre that we wanted to make sure you did not miss the invitation to join this incredible and moving online event that we are planning with a large set of social justice partners.

LGBTQ faith leaders (ordained and unordained) of Color will be offering prayers and blessings for the LGBTQ community and all who love us. Their voices will be leading us, but ALL who are in need of this are welcome to join and listen. Sending resiliency and comfort in this time. Sign-up here.

Side With LoveJune 17, 2016LGBTQ Equity, Racial Justice

On Sanctuary, Security and Solidarity

There are a lot of articles out there about #Pulse. There is a lot of media. A lot of statistics. Some of us are in anguish because we are LGBTQ and we grieve for our people, we rage for our people, we fear for ourselves and our people. Some of us are in anguish because we love LGBTQ people and LGBTQ people of Color deeply and we want to be there for them in this moment. Most of us are also deeply concerned and mourning because we see the media using this tragedy to attack our Muslim family around the country.

We know that there are deep spiritual issues at play for LGBTQ people in this moment. Live wires of cultural pain and history. A few of them that we see:

Side With LoveJune 15, 2016LGBTQ Equity, Racial Justice

A love letter from Standing on the Side of Love

An Open Letter to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer-identified Unitarian Universalists,

Today, we are a people in mourning – mourning not from natural causes but from an unnatural act of hatred directed against us. We hear the horrors of what happened at Pulse in Orlando and it cuts into us like a hot blade. Suddenly our world, which, with the tremendous gains we have made in recent years, had begun to feel a little safer, is ripped open, bleeding and raw, once again.

We hear the words of US Attorney General Loretta Lynch, just last month, when she addressed the transgender community by saying, “no matter how isolated or scared you may feel today, the Department of Justice and the entire Obama Administration wants you to know that we see you; we stand with you; and we will do everything we can to protect you going forward,” and those words ring hollow today. “You can’t protect us,” we scream! Not when hatred and division are the order of the day.

Side With LoveJune 13, 2016LGBTQ Equity

Showing Out for North Carolina

North Carolina’s leadership moved forward to effectively legalize discrimination of LGBTQ communities- including particularly heinous policing of Trans and Gender Non-Conforming folks- with the passage of House Bill 2 (HB2).

We know HB2, and its similar bills across the US, are not actually about bathrooms or safety. These bills are about controlling peoples’ movement, spaces and communities. When people cannot use bathrooms it is almost impossible to be in public.

Such policing makes sense because these bills are about a fight for who can be in public with safety and dignity. Bills such as HB2 are also about scapegoating Trans and Gender Non-Conforming people to attack workers rights and organizing wins. May we be emboldened to come out against closets, against shadows, against the controlling and rolling back of organizing wins across the country.

Side With LoveApril 22, 2016Racial Justice, LGBTQ Equity

Welcome to 30 Days of Love: Towards Racial Justice

We are thrilled to welcome you to 30 Days of Love: Towards Racial Justice. Over the next thirty days, we’ll be sharing content- here, on Facebook and Twitter - about urgent organizing for racial justice happening around the country. We are thrilled to have Rev. Elizabeth Nguyen, Leadership Development Associate for Youth and Young Adults of Color at the UUA, and Carey McDonald, Outreach Director at the UUA, acting as our inaugural 30 Days of Love hosts.

In their role, Elizabeth and Carey will provide a short video reflection for each of our weekly messages. Centered around the themes of gratitude and wonder, it is our hope that the content of 30 Days of Love feeds and inspires you. Beginning next Tuesday, you’ll receive weekly messages from partners at the frontlines of organizing for racial justice in the country.

Below, hear or read a little more directly from Elizabeth and Carey. To see additional resources for your observance of 30 Days of Love, click here.

Side With LoveJanuary 15, 2016Black Lives Matter, Racial Justice, 30 Days of Love, Immigrant Justice, LGBTQ Equity

A Summer Standing on the Side of Love: My Story

Unitarian Universalism is in my blood. I am here today because my parents met at the UU church in Birmingham, Alabama many years ago when they were seeking spiritual community in young adulthood. Despite growing up within UUism, I feel like my faith is very deliberate and was truly formed by my involvement in my home church in Chapel Hill, North Carolina throughout high school. One day my minister mentioned to me a program for youth involved in social justice in Boston. This would turn out to be the inaugural Activate Justice Training of the UU College of Social Justice. So, I went to Boston and was exposed to this faith organization on a national level for the first time while I solidified my commitment to social justice. Also, I met an intern they were hosting and I made a note in the back of my head to remember that as an option when I became a college student. Three years later, after my first year studying religion and political science at UNC Asheville, it seemed like the perfect fit, so I applied and was placed with our Standing on the Side of Love campaign in the UUA’s Washington DC office.