Pope Francis faced calls to overturn the Catholic Church’s ban on gender-affirming care for transgender people on Saturday when he held talks with LGBTQ activists at the Vatican.
The 80-minute meeting, held privately at the guesthouse where the pope lives, included a Catholic sister who works with LGBTQ people, a member of the transgender community, and a U.S. medical doctor who helps run a clinic providing gender-affirming hormonal care for adults.
“I really wanted to share with Pope Francis about the joy that I have being a transgender Catholic person,” Michael Sennett, who took part in the meeting, told Reuters.
Sennett, a transgender man from Boston, said he told the pontiff about “the joy that I get from hormone replacement therapy and the surgeries that I’ve had that make me feel comfortable in my body”.
The unusual encounter was not listed on the Vatican’s official agenda of the pope’s meetings for the day.
The meeting with around a dozen LGBTQ activists comes six months after the Vatican’s doctrinal office firmly rejected gender-affirming care, saying it “risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception.”
LGBTQ groups sharply criticized the Vatican document and said the doctrinal office did not seek input from transgender people about their experiences before rejecting gender-affirming care.
“We expressed that as the church makes policies in this area that it’s very important to speak with transgender individuals,” said Cynthia Herrick, an endocrinologist at a St. Louis, Missouri, clinic who took part in the papal meeting.
“The pope was very receptive,” said Herrick. “He listened very empathetically. He also shared that he always wants to focus on the person, the well-being of the person.”
Francis, who is 87, has been credited with leading the Catholic Church into taking a more welcoming approach towards the LGBTQ community, and has allowed priests to bless same-sex couples on a case-by-case basis.
But earlier this year he also used a highly derogatory Italian term about LGBTQ people, for which the Vatican apologized on his behalf.”
New Ways Ministry, a U.S.-based advocacy group for LGBTQ Catholics, organized Saturday’s event.
“The message really is that we need to listen to the experiences of transgender people,” said Sister Jeannine Gramick, the group’s co-founder, who asked Francis for the encounter. The meeting “means that the church is coming along, the church is joining the modern era,” she said.
Gramick’s work with LGBTQ Catholics has attracted the ire of Vatican and U.S. Catholic officials for decades, including Pope Benedict XVI. But she has developed a correspondence with Francis, who first welcomed her for a meeting at the Vatican last year.
The Vatican’s press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Saturday’s meeting.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, known widely as the Mormon church, issued a slew of new policies this week expanding its restrictions on transgender members.
The policies, released Monday, include rules barring trans people from working with children, becoming priests and serving as teachers. The church also expanded on an existing rule that barred trans people from being baptized.
Trans members will also face possible annotation on their membership records, grouping them with churchgoers who have committed incest, sexual predatory behavior, sexual violence against children and embezzlement of church funds.
“Church leaders counsel against pursuing surgical, medical, or social transition away from one’s biological sex at birth,” the church’s General Handbook states. “Leaders advise that taking these actions will result in some Church membership restrictions.”
Those who do “transition away from their biological sex at birth,” the handbook notes, will be completely turned away.
“These individuals and their families are encouraged to counsel with their local leaders regarding Church participation,” it states.
The church did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the new and expanded restrictions on trans members.
Taylor Petrey, chair of the religion department at Kalamazoo College in Michigan and author of a forthcoming book about the intersection of sexuality and the faith, “Queering Kinship in the Mormon Cosmos,” said that the new changes make the church “much more restrictive and much less accommodating than there used to be space for.”
Petrey pointed to the 2020 rule that restricted trans people from being baptized. That rule only banned baptism for trans people if they had begun transition-related medical treatment. However, that rule was expanded this week to also bar trans people from being baptized if they have socially transitioned — changed their name or appearance — without undergoing gender affirming health care.
“What you see in this 2024 change is a rolling back of some of those things or some concern that some local church leaders had taken things further than they expected back in 2020 when they put these new policies in,” he said.
The church will allow for exceptions to the limitations only if granted permission from its leadership, according to the handbook. It also states that restrictions on trans people can be reversed if they detransition.
The new policies conflict with the church’s more welcoming position to the LGBTQ community in recent years, which followed backlash in the early 2000s for its support for California’s Proposition 8 ban on gay marriage.
While it still opposes same-sex marriage and consensual gay sex, the Mormon church came out in favor of the Respect for Marriage Act in 2022, which enshrined protections for same-sex and interracial marriages into federal law. At the time, the church said it would support the legislation because it “includes appropriate religious freedom protections while respecting the law and preserving the rights of our LGBTQ brothers and sisters.”
In 2019, the church also issued a policy to allow children of same-sex couples to be baptized, rolling back an earlier decision from 2015 to prevent the baptisms.
In a broader section titled “individuals who identify as transgender,” the church handbook states that it “does not take a position” on people who “feel their inner sense of gender does not align with their biological sex at birth.”
“These individuals often face complex challenges,” the handbook reads. “They—and their family and friends—should be treated with sensitivity, kindness, compassion, and Christlike love. All are children of God and have divine worth.”
Petrey said the contradiction is a result of how the Mormon church and other religious groups “are adjusting to the changed landscape around LGBTQ issues over the last 20 to 25 years.”
“The church has also struggled with how to thread the needle on these issues, holding fast to what they see as unchangeable elements of their teachings while still trying to reach out to and be inclusive of LGBTQ members,” Petrey said. “And we’re finding that those two groups are still not quite able to meet in the middle here.”
A priest is suing the gay dating and “hookup” app Grindr after the company reportedly failed to protect his data, leading to his resignation from a top position at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). In July 2021, Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill resigned from his post as the general secretary of the USCCB ahead of a report by The Pillar alleging that he had engaged in inappropriate behavior and frequent use of Grindr.
The suit, filed in the Superior Court of California, claims the group Catholic Laity and Clergy for Renewal (CLCR) purchased the priest’s data from the app and sent it to The Pillar. In 2022 Burrill returned to active ministry as a priest in his home diocese of La Crosse, Wisconsin, with then-Bishop William Callahan stating that the priest had “engaged in a sincere and prayerful effort to strengthen his priestly vows.”
The news of Burrill’s initial resignation was celebrated by comically bewigged homocon “ex-gay” Michael Voris, who himself has since been exposed for not actually being ex-gay, resulting in the collapse of his anti-LGBTQ hate group.
Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum prepares for her last service at the Masonic Hall in New York on June 28.Andres Kudacki / AP
For more than three decades, Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum has led the nation’s largest LGBTQ synagogue through the myriad ups and downs of the modern gay-rights movement — through the AIDS crisis, the murder of Matthew Shepard, the historic civil-rights advances that included marriage equality, and mostly recently the backlash against transgender rights.
She is now stepping down from that role and shifting into retirement. The New York City synagogue that she led for 32 years — Congregation Beit Simchat Torah in midtown Manhattan — will have to grapple with its identity after being defined by its celebrity rabbi for so long.
Her retirement also comes at a challenging moment for the LGBTQ-rights movement. Same-sex marriage is legal nationwide, but conservative politicians are enacting restrictions on transgender healthcare, restricting LGBTQ curriculum in schools, and proposing bans on the performances of drag queens.
“I’ve been blessed and privileged to have the opportunity to use the gifts I have, on behalf of God’s vision for the world,” Kleinbaum said in an interview. “I’m very, very lucky that I’ve been able to do this. I just feel like now is the time to make room for a younger generation.”
Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum sings during her last service at the Masonic Hall in New York on June 28.Andres Kudacki / AP
Embraced by her congregation and left-leaning politicians, Kleinbaum, 65, taught an unapologetic progressive vision for Judaism that resonated beyond the enclave of Manhattan and liberal Judaism. When Donald Trump was elected president, Kleinbaum had the synagogue do outreach to Muslims. The congregation also built an immigration clinic to help LGBTQ refugees in hostile parts of the world get asylum in the U.S.
“It is a religious calling to help the immigrant. I see that it is just as deeply important for (the synagogue) as it is leading Friday night services,” Kleinbaum said.
Congregation Bet Simach Torah, better known as CBST, has roughly 1,000 paying members. About 4,000 Jews, from nonreligious to Orthodox, show up to the temple’s High Holy Day services, historically held in New York’s Jacob Javits Convention Center on the West Side of Manhattan.
The temple’s regular congregants have been a Who’s Who of media and LGBTQ historical figures. Edie Windsor, who sued and won to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act, was in regular attendance while she was alive. Andy Cohen, of “Real Housewives” fame, is there regularly. Joan Rivers showed up for Yom Kippur. Kleinbaum’s wife is Randi Weingarten, the head of the nation’s biggest teachers union.
Appointed in 1992, Kleinbaum spent much of her first year burying members of her congregation, many of them dying from AIDS. The need for a salaried rabbi to provide pastoral care was among the biggest reasons for CBST to hire its first rabbi. One of her first funeral services was for a member of the search committee that hired her.
The 1990s brought the increased visibility of gay and lesbians in the public sphere, but also brought the passage of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as between only a man and a woman.
“She really was doing rabbinical triage work at the beginning, working with a community that ultimately saw (a third) of its members die of AIDS,” said William Hibsher, a member of CBST for several decades who was there when Kleinbaum was appointed.
Hibsher was not an observant Jew in early 1990s, but he said he felt inspired by Kleinbaum’s work as well as the care she provided to his partner, who died from AIDS in the mid-1990s. He later became heavily involved with the synagogue, including serving on its board of directors and helping raise millions for its current location on West 30th Street.
When New York legalized same-sex marriage in 2013, Kleinbaum stood in the park across the street from the marriage bureau and performed same-sex weddings outdoors. Among the couples she married in 2014 were two men who had spent 20 months planning their wedding, which was held in a former Broadway theater.
Kleinbaum hasn’t specified what she plans to do in retirement, but said she’s likely to continue doing social justice work or working in Democratic politics. CBST has given her the title of “senior rabbi emerita” to show a level of connectedness as she steps down, but the bimah at CBST will no longer be hers.
Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum reads with her daughter during her last service at the Masonic Hall in New York on June 28.Andres Kudacki / AP
Even people who would be considered her ideological adversaries have found common ground to collaborate with her on issues of religious freedom and human rights.
When President Joe Biden appointed Kleinbaum to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, which monitors and researches freedom of religious expression worldwide, she served as a commissioner along alongside Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council. The council opposes the LGBTQ-rights movement.
“She’s able to step back and see where (two with strong ideological differences) can meet on core issues, and realize here’s where we can find common ground,” said Fred Davie, an administrator at Union Theological Seminary and a longtime friend of Kleinbaum.
Kleinbaum served two terms on the USCIRF. Her first term ended early in 2020 when she decided to focus attention on her congregation amid the COVID-19 pandemic. For her and the congregation, it was familiar territory after the AIDS crisis.
“We knew immediately many of the elements that we had to deal with: isolation, loneliness, fear,” Kleinbaum said. “There were differences, of course, between AIDS, but many things were enough similar that it almost felt like muscle memory.”
For the congregation, there seems to be a degree of uncertainty of what the synagogue will be without her. CBST, like many congregations, skews toward older members; many have been with Kleinbaum since the beginning.
The synagogue named Jason Klein as new chief rabbi earlier this year; he will start on July 1. But the consensus among members seems to be that Kleinbaum is simply irreplaceable.
“I think people, in their heart of hearts, wanted to find a Kleinbaum 2.0 to replace her,” Hibsher said. “There’s a landscape of wonderful progressive synagogues throughout Manhattan. So part of the question for the congregation will be: Is there a need for an LGBT synagogue in the year 2024? I think there is.”
While Kleinbaum laid out her plans to leave CBST a year ago, there were audible gasps at Yom Kippur services last September among the attendees when it was mentioned that CBST would no longer be headed by her. Her second-to-last Shabbat service, held June 21, was a sold-out event. The keynote speaker: New York Attorney General Letitia James.
“Most importantly, she has given us a space,” James said, using her hands to point to the synagogue and its standing room only crowed. “This space. Where we can be safe. Where we can be free.”
Several churches have made the decision to leave one of the oldest Christiandenominations in the United States after the delegation voted to hit members who support LGBTQ+ worshipers with a “limited suspension.”
The Christian Reformed Church in North America (CRCNA), which has approximately 200,000 members, voted 134-50 last week to disaffiliate congregational leaders and institutions that go against the church’s beliefs on same-sex relationships by publicly embracing the queer community. The decision comes two years after the synod voted to include “homosexual sex” in its definition of “unchastity,” which also includes adultery, polyamory, and pornography.
The synod did not vote to designate same-sex relationships as a “salvation issue,” instead determining that it “does not meet the high standards of definition and articulation needed for declaring a heresy.”
Rev. Ryan Schreiber, a pastor from Michigan, attended the meeting to speak in support of LGBTQ+ members. He said he intends to disaffiliate his Grand Rapids church following the synod’s vote, which he expects to negatively affect church membership and even threaten the denomination’s longevity.
“I am deeply concerned about the Christian Reformed Church, and especially those that I’m leaving behind, gentle conservatives and moderates,” Schreiber told Religion News Service, adding, “There is a coalition of churches in the Christian Reformed Church that is turning the polity of the Christian Reformed Church into a steamroller.”
Schreiber isn’t alone — synod delegate Trish Borgdorff was one of several Reform leaders in Michigan that told local station News 8 her church also intends to disaffiliate itself. Ultimately, she expects the majority of the nearly 30 supportive churches in her area to follow suit, saying: “There isn’t room for us anymore in the denomination I love.”
“What grieved my heart the most was that we were separating over conflict,” Borgdorff said. “In a broken world where we so long for peace, that even under what we know to be God’s call on our lives, we couldn’t find it with each other. And so it was a call to all of us to acknowledge that the problem we are facing, we all contributed to. It’s not any one person, not any one side.”
At the bottom of the first page of the program for Spelman College’s Baccalaureate Service held on May 18, 2024, at the Georgia International Convention Center in College Park, a southwest suburb of Atlanta, is the last sentence in baccalaureate speaker Bishop Yvette A. Flunder’s bio, and perhaps for some the most jarring. It reads: “Bishop Flunder is a proud mother and grandmother and recently celebrated 40 years of commitment and marriage to her partner in ministry and life—Ms. Shirley A. Miller, a renowned Gospel music artist.” It is not unusual for queer people to exist in conservative Black religious spaces, whether parishioners or clergy. However, it is rare to encounter a faith leader like Flunder who has repeatedly chosen to tell the truth about her sexual orientation when, at the bare minimum, Black church politics can often demand adherence to a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell policy.’
A San Francisco native and third-generation preacher, Flunder is ordained in the United Church of Christ and the Metropolitan Community Church. Flunder founded the City of Refuge United Church of Christ in 1991 and is also the Presiding Bishop of The Fellowship of Affirming Ministries, a multi-denominational fellowship of 110 primarily African American Christian leaders and laity representing 56 churches and faith-based organizations from all parts of the United States, Mexico, and Africa.
“You have to understand that when I come, I bring my whole self,” Flunder said as she settled into her seat across from me in the large conference room inside the Convention Center following her baccalaureate address.
Bishop Yvette A. Flunder enters the Georgia International Convention Center for Spelman College’s Baccalaureate Service on May 18, 2024. (Image: Darian Aaron)
The selection of Flunder by Spelman College to preach during a religious ceremony traditionally held the day before commencement, for some, is a radical choice in conservative Historically Black College and University (HBCU) culture. Spelman has a organized presence of queer students on campus including its LGBTQIA organization Afrekete! and various sexual orientations and gender identities were represented in the 2024 graduating class. But Spelman’s invitation to Flunder is not just a reflection of Spelman campus diversity, it is also about elevating the experience of LGBTQ students at Spelman and other HBCUs. Flunder spoke directly to the queer Spelman woman who will face the triple discrimination of racism, sexism, and homophobia.
“Embrace yourself—your understanding of your importance and the fact that you were born with this incredible gift that only a percentage of people in the world have is itself, in my thinking, a gift,” Flunder told me. “This community is overrepresented with gifts and skills— music, art, food, decoration—the ones who dress the pastor’s wife and beautify the churches,” she added.
A renowned gospel singer as well, Flunder provides lead vocals on Walter Hawkins and the Family and the Love Center Choir’s 1990 classic, “Thank You.” She sang with the Spelman College Glee Club before delivering her baccalaureate address. Flunder tells GLAAD that Gospel music wouldn’t exist without LGBTQ people.
Bishop Yvette A. Flunder sings Walter Hawkins classic “Thank You” with Spelman College Glee Club during Baccalaureate Service. (Image: Screenshot via YouTube)
“Half of the tenors, a quarter of the altos—Gospel music wouldn’t exist—absolutely would not exist without the contributions [of LGBTQ people],” she said. “And I think that it begins with our thanking God, thanking our understanding of the divine to have been chosen because not everybody can handle this.”
A home for ourselves
Flunder is clear that God has appointed and anointed her to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And while the Black church still wrestles internally with sexism, misogyny, patriarchy, and homophobia, other religious denominations have formally embraced LGBTQ members and clergy within its community. The United Methodist Church recently voted to repeal its decades-long ban on LGBTQ clergy and same-sex weddings. Flunder, who co-created the Fellowship of Affirming Ministries 22 years ago, tells GLAAD the same is possible for the Black church.
“We have to have the courage to create something of our own,” she said. “One of the first things we did was create a home for ourselves. We all went to seminary and theological school, so we would know what we’re talking about.”
In the early years, Flunder also tells GLAAD that the Fellowship of Affirming Ministries simultaneously connected to affirming organizations, like the United Church of Christ. However, they were predominantly heterosexual, and the worship experience was far from her Pentecostal roots.
“I thank the Lord for them, but they clap on the one and the three, and I clap on the two and the four, and I just can’t,” Flunder said jokingly. “And I like good gospel music that sounds like jazz but with church lyrics.”
Using a more serious tone, Flunder discusses why she encourages people to attend affirming churches.
“Spend some time around theological education. It’s too many books out there now that are written by people who are either gay-affirming or gay,” she said.
“Nobody has an excuse now not to read and understand what is in the text. Just like the Bible says, ’slaves obey your masters.’ You don’t bit more believe that than the man on the moon. And the Black preacher who told you you’re going to hell for being gay, well, you’re going to hell ’cause you’re not a slave. Because the Bible says, ’slaves obey your masters.’ How come you can leapfrog over that? But you can condemn me? How is that conceivably possible? Obviously, some things have to do with a certain time and culture. They shift and change. Take the girdle off the Bible,” she said. “You don’t take everything literally. Just the stuff that you want.”
Some so-called Christians may believe that by elevating the perceived “sins” or shortcomings of others, in this case, LGBTQ people, their sins will be overlooked. It’s a harmful practice rooted in toxic theology that encourages bondage instead of freedom through Christ—a pill prescribed to Flunder that was too bitter for her to swallow.
“When they realized that I was gay in the church, one of the missionaries came to me, she said, ‘Now baby, we see you. We know who you are.’ She said, ‘You just need to get you a little husband,’” Flunder recalls. “She’s trying to tell me if I’m going to move [up] in the church, I need to find a pliable, reasonably obedient man. Not only do I not want to do that to myself. I don’t want to do that to him. I don’t want to pick a man and say, all I need you for is window dressing,” she said. “I’m in love with my partner. The air she breathes. And that’s the truth. You don’t stay with somebody for 40 years if you don’t mean it. That’s the kind of love I want. I don’t want to play house or church. And I told her, hell no, I’m not doing that.”
Bishop Yvette A. Flunder pictured with her wife of 40 years, Mother Shirley A. Miller. (Image: Instagram)
Mother [Shirley A. Miller], often travels with Flunder but did not accompany her to Atlanta for Spelman’s baccalaureate service due to mobility issues.
“We are the othered ones, but the spirit has called the othered ones,” Flunder told the graduates towards the end of her baccalaureate address. “Change the direction of religion. It’s not supposed to be a private social club. It’s time for the disinherited, the demeaned, the excluded, the diminished to stand up, speak up, and move up to the table—it’s time.”
On Thursday, Pope Francis presided over a ceremony that laid out his vision for the coming 2025 Jubilee, a once-every-quarter-century event that will bring tens of millions of Catholic pilgrims to Rome. The papal bull, delivered in the atrium of St. Peter’s Basilica, laid out a vision of hope for the coming Holy Year, asking for gestures of solidarity with the poor, prisoners, migrants and Mother Nature.
Since he rose to the papacy in 2013 and famously declared, “Who am I to judge,” hope for those neglected, disenfranchised, and ostracized people has been central to his tenure. Lately, those people have included a group of trans sex workers who have earned the pope’s attention.
Over the last several years, Francis has earned the enmity of conservative Catholics for welcoming LGBTQ+ people with his approval of blessings for same-sex couples and a declaration that “being homosexual is not a crime.” Concurrently, Francis has welcomed dozens of transgender women, many of them sex workers, to the Vatican for blessings and audiences and even a lunch that brought a busload of them accompanied by the press.
One was Laura Esquivel, a trans sex worker from Paraguay.
She described herself as tough and made of iron.
“Soy hecho de hierro,” the 57-year-old would say. She had worked the streets since she was 15, did time in an Italian jail for cutting another sex worker in a fight, and apologized to no one, including the pope.
But somehow, the pope now knew her name.
“It’s almost like Laura has become a friend of the pope,” Rev. Andrea Conocchia told The Washington Post. Conocchia, also known as Don Andrea, is a priest in the seaside village of Torvaianica where Esquivel plied her trade.
Don Andrea had helped Esquivel and her fellow trans sex workers in the small town, 20 miles south of Rome. The town is a destination for men who increasingly bought the workers’ particular brand of company. However, as the pandemic raged in Italy, business dried up, and food and money became scarce for these women in the small town.
Some assistance for the town’s sex workers came directly from the Vatican.
Don Andrea suggested they write to the pope and thank him. He replied with a handwritten note, telling one of Esquivel’s compatriots, “Thank you very much for your email. … I respect you and accompany you with my compassion and my prayer. Anything I can help you with, please let me know.”
When vaccines became available, the women were welcomed to Paul VI Hall in the Vatican for shots, unavailable in the rest of the country to undocumented workers like them.
“They saved our lives,” Esquivel said.
At her first audience with Francis, accompanied by Don Andrea and a small group of trans women and a same-sex couple on a warm summer morning in 2022, Esquivel blurted in Italian, “I’m a transsexual from Paraguay.”
The pope smiled and told her, “You are also a child of God.”
Esquivel asked for his blessing, and he touched both her shoulders.
“God bless you,” he said.
“You, too,” Laura responded.
Francis laughed and said, “We should speak Spanish, we’re South American,” acknowledging their shared identity.
Visits with women like Esquivel became regular events.
“Groups of trans come all the time,” Francis told fellow Jesuits in Lisbon last August. “The first time they came, they were crying. I was asking them why. One of them told me, ‘I didn’t think the pope would receive me!’ Then, after the first surprise, they made a habit of coming back. Some write to me, and I email them back. Everyone is invited! I realized these people feel rejected.”
Ten days before that Vatican lunch with trans women, among a thousand underprivileged and homeless people of Rome — and the first public acknowledgment that Francis was engaged with the trans community — the Vatican had released guidance that transgender people could be baptized and serve as godparents.
Esquivel was seated directly across a table from the pontiff. The talk over plates of cannelloni was light.
“Pope Francis never criticized me or told me to change my life,” Esquivel said.
Not long after, Esquivel was diagnosed with colon cancer. Don Andrea and the Vatican took Esquivel under their wing, helping her establish residency to enroll in the National Health Service, and providing lodging in Rome while she underwent chemotherapy.
The pope asked Don Andrea often about her health.
In thanks for his help and concern, Esquivel brought homemade empanadas to the papal household, accompanied by Don Andrea. As the guards let her in, she turned to him and said, “I feel like someone.”
United Methodist delegates on Thursday removed a 52-year-old declaration from their official social teachings that deemed “the practice of homosexuality … incompatible with Christian teaching” — part of a wider series of historic reversals of the denomination’s long-standing disapproval of LGBTQ activity.
The historic vote came as delegates also approved a new definition of marriage as a covenant between “two people of faith” while recognizing the couple may or may not involve a man and a woman. That replaces an exclusively heterosexual definition of marriage and followed a debate that exposed tensions between some U.S. and international delegates.
The 523-161 vote to approve a section of the church’s Revised Social Principles took place at the General Conference of the United Methodist Church in the penultimate day of their 11-day legislative gathering in Charlotte.
It came a day after the General Conference removed its long-standing ban on “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” from being ordained or appointed as ministers. Step by step, delegates have been removing anti-LGBTQ language throughout their official documents.
But the marriage definition was approved only after debate and a compromise amendment — one of the few instances of open debate during this otherwise overwhelmingly progressive conference.
“God designed marriage to be between a man and a woman,” said Nimia Peralta from the Northwest Philippines. While the conference earlier approved a regionalization plan enabling different parts of the global church to adapt rules to their local contexts, “God’s word can never be regionalized,” she said.
The Rev. Jerry Kulah of Liberia held aloft a Bible as he said: “We do not have another Bible apart from this Bible. … The Bible is very emphatic that we have marriage between a man and a woman.”
But the Rev. James Howell of Western North Carolina applauded the new language as being able to “embrace everyone.”
“Cynics and young adults will not listen to us talk about Jesus if we say we do not condone people they love and care about,” Howell said. “Friends, it’s time.”
The Rev. Kalaba Chali, based in Kansas, said the principles are general enough without forcing people in different cultural contexts “to do things the same way.”
The approval came only after an amendment offered by lay delegate Molly Mwayera of East Zimbabwe, who noted that many African countries do not allow for same-sex marriage. After extended wordsmithing, the assembly settled on an amended item that affirmed marriage as a sacred covenant bringing “two people of faith (adult man and woman of consenting age or two adult persons of consenting age) into union.”
It’s the UMC’s first legislative gathering since 2019, one that features its most progressive slate of delegates in memory due to the departure of many conservatives from the denomination. More than 7,600 mostly conservative congregations in the United States — one quarter of the denomination’s American total — disaffiliated because the UMC essentially stopped enforcing its bans on same-sex marriage and LGBTQ ordination.
Those churches left under a window that enabled American churches to leave with their properties, normally held by the denomination, under more favorable than normal terms. While the conference voted against extending that window to international churches, the liberalization measures approved by the conference could still prompt departures of some international churches through different means — particularly in Africa, where conservative sexual values prevail and where same-sex activity is criminalized in some countries.
The progressive momentum of the General Conference was evident from the vote Thursday. They voted on the last of a series of approvals of a wholesale rewrite of the denomination’s Social Principles — a non-binding but influential compendium of the denomination’s social stances on everything from war and peace to the environment and family relations.
The new version no longer includes this language from the previous one: “The United Methodist Church does not condone the practice of homosexuality and considers this practice incompatible with Christian teaching,” while it also urged members not to condemn gays and lesbians.
The old version said sexual relations are “affirmed only with the covenant of monogamous, heterosexual marriage.”
The new version omits this phrase and describes “human sexuality as a sacred gift” and a “healthy and natural part of life that is expressed in wonderfully diverse ways.” It doesn’t say anything about restricting sexual activity to marriage. It does say people have the right to consent to sexual activity and condemns sexual harassment and exploitation and opposes pornography and its “destructive impact.”
The new version calls for human rights for all, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity and other racial, ethnic and gender categories.
Thursday’s change is particularly significant because the statement of homosexuality being “incompatible with Christian teaching” dates back to the beginning of the 52-year-old debate on LGBTQ issues within one of the nation’s largest Protestant denominations. The phrasing was adopted on the floor of the 1972 General Conference via an amendment proposed by a delegate, added to the original draft statement that had said “persons of homosexual orientation are persons of sacred worth.”
The denomination had been revising and adding to the Social Principles for decades; this amounts to the first wholesale rewrite in many years. Other sections of the rewrite were approved earlier this week.
The drafters of the revision chose more general language because the denomination spans countries and cultures around the world, said John Hill, interim general secretary at the Board of Church and Society, at a news conference earlier this week.
“We have a church whose local contexts are dramatically different,” he said. “And so our hope was that statements that could speak theologically to these matters, but not to any specific context, could then be applied across the context of the church.”
Rev. Andi Woodworth has been co-pastor of Neighborhood Church, a United Methodist congregation in Atlanta, since 2016. This year, on March 11, she became the first out trans clergy member to address the Georgia House of Representatives during its morning prayer. She had been invited by her state rep, Democrat Saira Draper.
“My hunch is just being there humanized me and humanized my community,” Woodworth says.
Georgia lawmakers had been considering several pieces of anti-LGBTQ+ and specifically anti-trans legislation, mostly tacked on to other bills, she notes. The most concerning ones included a trans athlete ban, restrictions on sex education, parental notification on library books children check out, and a ban on puberty blockers for trans minors (a Georgia law being challenged in courtprohibits other gender-affirming treatment for youth). But the session closed March 28 with none of them passing.
“I want to say this had something to do with my presence at the capitol,” Woodworth says, but she gives primary credit to all the activists and citizens who worked against this legislation.
While at the capitol, she had a good conversation with House Speaker Jon Burns, a Republican. “We found some commonality,” she says.
She points to what’s long been known — if you know a person who is a member of the LGBTQ+ community, you’re more likely to be supportive of their rights.
Woodworth has been representing for trans people since her transition in 2020. “My church has been incredibly accepting, and we have grown,” she says. “We’re finding a new connection with the LGBTQ community.”
She was one of the founders of the church, and the goal was always for it to be an LGBTQ-affirming, anti-racist congregation. She eventually realized that when she said, “All of who you are is welcome here,” she was talking not just about others but about herself.
Her co-pastor is Rev. Anjie Woodworth, to whom she was married before transitioning. The change in their relationship went smoothly, however. “The way we think about it is if we weren’t married, we’d still be best friends,” Andi Woodworth says. And they Andi Woodworth are.
Andi Woodworth had been a minister for seven years before helping to found Neighborhood Church. She always loved thinking about God, she says, and she was a religion major in college. “I just ate it up,” she recalls.
The United Methodist Church has been seen arguments over LGBTQ+ inclusion for several years. Its Book of Discipline has explicitly excluded noncelibate gay and lesbian people from the ministry since 1972, and the church doesn’t allow same-sex marriages. But the rules don’t address trans people, so that loophole has let Woodworth continue in the ministry with no problem.
The denomination has often debated lifting these antigay rules, and many progressive congregations ignore them. With the expectation that delegates to the church’s General Conference this year will end these policies, many conservative congregations have left the denomination. Neighborhood Church will keep its United Methodist affiliation, Woodworth says.
There was an uproar among right-wing Christians over Transgender Day of Visibility falling the same day as Easter Sunday this year — March 31 — and President Joe Biden recognizing it. But being Christian, or a faithful adherent of any religion, doesn’t have to mean being anti-trans, Woodworth points out. Her church used the coincidental date in its message that day, noting that Easter is when Jesus “came out” of his tomb.
Woodworth and the church spread a wide-ranging message of inclusion. “I’m not publicly partisan, but I’m certainly political,” she says, explaining that her mission is to “work for liberation of all humans.”
“We’re going to point to what is right, particularly for the marginalized and the poor,” she says. “We do a lot of anti-racism work, reproductive justice, gun reform. … We’re showing up to advocate for policies that lead to a better life for everybody.”
Regarding this year’s presidential election, “I want to be extremely hopeful and optimistic,” she says. “The election represents a chance for us to remember who we are.” And the vast majority of Americans are pro-LGBTQ+, she adds.
She’ll continue reminding people of that, and she takes joy in being an out, proud, and outspoken trans Christian. “I’m out here and really enjoying my life,” she says. “I feel blessed.”
The Vatican has issued a declaration listing “gender theory,” gender-affirming care, and even surrogacy as “violations of human dignity” alongside war, poverty, human trafficking, and other actual atrocities.
On Monday, the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, the department in charge of religious discipline for the Catholic Church, released its “Dignitas Infinita.” The 20-page document has been in the works for the past five years and was approved by Pope Francis in March, according to the Associated Press. It calls for unconditional respect for human dignity regardless of “the person’s ability to understand and act freely,” reiterating Catholic teachings opposing abortion and euthanasia.
Notably, it denounces “as contrary to human dignity the fact that, in some places, not a few people are imprisoned, tortured, and even deprived of the good of life solely because of their sexual orientation.” It quotes Pope Francis’s 2016 “Amoris Laetitia” (“The Joy of Love”), in which he stated that “every person, regardless of sexual orientation, ought to be respected in his or her dignity and treated with consideration, while ‘every sign of unjust discrimination’ is to be carefully avoided, particularly any form of aggression and violence.”
At the same time, it quotes a January 2024 address in which Francis described “gender theory” as “extremely dangerous since it cancels differences in its claim to make everyone equal.”
“Desiring a personal self-determination, as gender theory prescribes,” the document asserts, “amounts to a concession to the age-old temptation to make oneself God.” It also claims that “gender theory” denies “the greatest possible difference that exists between living beings: sexual difference.”
It quotes Francis’s “Amoris Laetitia,”, stating, “It needs to be emphasized that ‘biological sex and the socio-cultural role of sex (gender) can be distinguished but not separated,’”
In a section on “Sex Change,” Monday’s declaration asserts that gender-affirming care “risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception.” However, it endorses surgical intervention for intersex people, which it describes as people “with genital abnormalities.”
As for surrogacy, it claims the practice violates a child’s “right to have a fully human (and not artificially induced) origin,” and “also violates the dignity of the woman, whether she is coerced into it or chooses to subject herself to it freely,” because she “is detached from the child growing in her and becomes a mere means subservient to the arbitrary gain or desire of others.”
LGBTQ+ Catholic groups have already slammed the declaration.
Francis DeBernardo of New Ways Ministry told the Associated Press, “While it lays out a wonderful rationale for why each human being, regardless of condition in life, must be respected, honored, and loved,” the document “does not apply this principle to gender-diverse people.”
“The suggestion that gender-affirming health care — which has saved the lives of so many wonderful trans people and enabled them to live in harmony with their bodies, their communities and [God] — might risk or diminish trans people’s dignity is not only hurtful but dangerously ignorant,” said Berlin-based activist Mara Klein. “Seeing that, in contrast, surgical interventions on intersex people — which if performed without consent especially on minors often cause immense physical and psychological harm for many intersex people to date — are assessed positively just seems to expose the underlying hypocrisy further.”
With Republican lawmakers across the U.S. continuing to push restrictions on access to gender-affirming care, Klein slammed the Vatican’s declaration at a time of “rising hostility towards our communities.”
