Affirming the Gays at Christian Colleges

On Monday, the New York Times published an article on the rising presence of pro-LGBT or queer-affirming groups on Christian college campuses. The article recalls the efforts of the Soulforce Equality Ride, a grassroots campaign that brings young adults to Christian colleges and universities across the country to engage in open and honest conversations about faith and sexuality, and how the presence of the Riders has really stirred up student involvement in talking about homosexuality on their campuses. However, as expected, these groups of students are met with resistance at their colleges.

As a past Equality Rider (2007) and a former student at an Evangelical university—that came out as openly gay while I was still a student—I find this conversation in the NY Times to be long overdue, yet still very relevant today. Through my own experiences as an out gay student at Christian college and an activist that has engaged in hundreds, if not thousands, of conversations with Christian college students about this very subject, I offer my thoughts and reflections on the subject presented in the article.

Pensar: Rethinking Ourselves as Neighbors

As I continue to think about the time I spent at the U.S./México border this past January, I am also searching for new ways to articulate how my experiences and conversations about immigration and the border have affected my way of thinking about these issues that, to some (including myself), are very sensitive and serious matters to be addressed.

I now move into the next part of my blogging series about my border trip: pensar. I've been struggling to write this section because I've been expecting myself to have fully processed the stories I heard and the things I saw and took in during my trip. Then I remembered, we will never be done thinking about borders, movement, migration—the conversations, if anything, have just begun and are far from ending.

Fighting Our Battles

I am asked all the time how I keep up the work I do with with responding to and dealing with constant forms of religious abuse, bullying, homophobia, etc. The truth of the matter is, there isn't really one answer. The way I respond to the surge of emails I get with Leviticus verses changes all the time. The type of conversations I have with my adversaries differ person-to-person, situation-to-situation.

I've spoken at a number of schools and churches to offering training workshops on responding to our adversaries. And in those trainings we explore a variety of ways we can counter arguments and work towards actions that induce change. But as I continue my work, I have to keep rethinking the way I approach social justice work. Thus I offer a meditation on how we fight our battles, from where my mind is right now. How do we go forth and "keep fighting the good fight" — as my cellmates told me while I was in jail in Waco, Texas.

Ver: At the Border of Divided Communites, Lives, and Experiences

A few weeks ago I blogged about an upcoming trip to the US/Mexico border. Alas, I have returned from my visit to Tucson, AZ and Nogales, Sonora (México), with a lot on my mind and a lot to still process. The topic of immigration and the borderlands conjures up many emotions for a lot of us, and my experiences of hearing stories in the region has definitely challenged and reaffirmed many of the feelings I went into the trip having. In short, the trip was a very transformative experience. I had some tough and emotional experiences while in México and in the border region; but the experience was also rewarding and inspiring.

Our trip was hosted by an organization called BorderLinks. The BorderLinks' educational philosophy to these type of trips that they hope will incite delegations to forge a path towards dialogue and social change is simple: ver, pensar, y actuar. See, Think, and Act. Which is the way I will present my experiences of visiting the border. In this post, I will focus on what I saw, what I heard, and the type of experiences I took in. In two following posts, I will address my thoughts and what I'm still thinking about; and what I hope to do with the stories I heard and that really hit me hard with a plethora of emotions and feelings.

Finding Freedom and Coming Out of a Christian College

In 2007 I had the unique, but rewarding, opportunity to be a Rider on the Soulforce Equality Ride. We visited various Christian colleges and university across the country that have policies and/or environments that discriminate against LGBTQ students, faculty, and staff. Part of my interest in the Ride came from my own personal connection with Christian colleges. Prior to my involvement with Soulforce I was a student at Azusa Pacific University, one of the largest evangelical Christian universities in the country. However, after coming out as openly gay to the entire university, I was forced to make a very difficult decision: to leave the university.

When I talk about my coming out experiences, I am often asked, "What was it like to be gay at a Christian college?" And as I think about my own story and the stories I encountered from queer students on the Equality Ride, I feel inclined to reply by just simply saying, "It sucked." But if I'm going to really think about what it was like to be a gay student at a Christian college, I need to elaborate just a bit more. Granted, I can only speak from my own experiences and the stories I've heard from other LGBTQ students.