Defiantly Joyful

A Note About Language

Preface

Historical Context

Timeline compiled by Rev. Diana McLean and Alex Kapitan

Coming Home by Rev. Virginia Wolf

Butterflies by Rev. Dr. Sandra Szelag

[untitled] by Dr. Helen Bishop

You Can’t Preach Here! You Can’t Marry Here! by Eric Schuman

Before There Were Heroes by Rev. Kimberley Debus

An Inconvenient Family by Rev. Aija Simpson-Newbury

A Queer Co-Ministry Love Story by Rev. Wendy Bartel and Rev. Lynn Gardner

The Price of Inclusion by Rev. Manish Mishra-Marzetti

Failing Forward: Lessons from California’s Marriage Equality Proposition by Rev. Dr. Jonipher Ku¯pono Kwong

Meeting the Moment by Rev. Laura Smidzik

Loved into Being by HP Rivers

Prophetic People by Rev. Jami A. Yandle

Believing in Fairies by Rev. Dr. Myke Johnson

A Different Church by Rev. Gail R. Geisenhainer

A Deep and Continuous Call by Rev. Dr. Gwendolyn Howard

Called to Task Divine by Rev. Thomas Disrud

A Brief History of UU LGBTQIA+ Groups by Rev. Jane Dwinell

Building TRUUsT by Rev. Mr. Barb Greve, with Alex Kapitan

Postscript: We’re Not Done Yet

Appendix: UUA General Assembly Social Witness Statements

About the Contributors

Preface

Unitarian Universalists, individually and collectively, have often been at the forefront of LGBTQIA+ justice efforts. We were among the first religious organizations to conduct same-sex services of union. We were among the first to ordain openly gay male clergy, and later openly lesbian, bisexual, and transgender clergy. We responded with love rather than hate to the AIDS crisis. We were leaders in the fight for marriage equality in a variety of states and at the national level.

Our shared Unitarian Universalist values, outlined in Article II of the bylaws of the Unitarian Universalist Association, as updated in 2024, includes the statement “We declare that every person is inherently worthy and has the right to flourish with dignity, love, and compassion.” We have demonstrated for decades that “every person” certainly includes LGBTQIA+ folks.

It is equally true, however, that we have not been perfect in this area. My wife and I are both Unitarian Universalist women ministers—a queer clergy couple, something that just a generation ago might have been unthinkable even in our liberal denomination. When I came out in 2014, I didn’t worry at all about losing either the faith to which I had belonged since childhood or my position as ministerial intern at a Unitarian Universalist congregation. My colleagues in ministry did not have that safety just a few decades ago, during the same years that my family was discovering Unitarian Universalism. I do not remember any openly LGBTQIA+ people in my childhood church, and I now realize that, even in a liberal religious setting like ours, being out might not have felt safe in 1970s–80s Nebraska. I was sobered to realize that only within my lifetime has our liberal denomination begun to consider the humanity and rights of LGBTQIA+ folks‚and not always compassionately. I also recognize that as a white woman, my queer identity is still more readily accepted than some others’.

There are barriers to full inclusion even today, particularly for trans and nonbinary people. Clergy and other religious professionals, in particular, have often found it hard to find and keep congregational positions. The barriers are still more complex for people who are marginalized on more than one axis of identity, such as sexual orientation and race, or gender identity and neurotype. We have made progress, but there is still work to do.

This book tells some stories of how LGBTQIA+ lives and Unitarian Universalist faith have intersected, at personal, congregational, and denominational levels. It also illustrates times when our faith helped to transform the lives of LGBTQIA+ people. The stories captured here often moved me to tears—sometimes tears of sorrow for the harm done to individuals, and sometimes tears of pride in Unitarian Universalists for taking faithful risks to further the cause of LGBTQIA+ justice and inclusion.

This book is part of a larger project, the UU Rainbow History Project, sponsored by the UU Retired Ministers and Partners Association (UURMaPA) and partially funded by a grant from the UU Funding Program. The project began as a recognition of the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion and includes a website (uurainbowhistory.net), two conferences held in 2019, and now this book.

The larger project focuses on the history and stories of LGBTQIA+ ministers, their partners, and their allies. This book presents the voices of LGBTQIA+ folks themselves, not only ministers, but also other religious professionals and lay members of congregations. It contains primarily personal essays, together with some reprinted sermons and other historical documents—which also often touch on the personal, just as personal essays touch on historical moments. I chose not to include material that is already available on the Rainbow History website, and I am grateful for all the excellent submissions that I received. I encourage readers to go beyond this volume by visiting the website and reading what’s available there: not only additional personal essays and sermons, but also transcripts of panel discussions, keynotes, and more. It is a rich resource for anyone wanting to know more about LGBTQIA+ lived experiences within Unitarian Universalism.

This history is still being written, as we continue to resist efforts to limit LGBTQIA+ rights. My hope is that this book will inspire us by showing both our successes and our failures as we have imperfectly lived into our affirmation of the inherent worthiness of every person, and have imperfectly included LGBTQIA+ people in that affirmation. There is much more material still out there, and I hope that it will be published in another project.

Contributors to this book lived through some of the key episodes in our denominational history. As with all memory and all history, their accounts may sometimes differ. I invite you to set aside any inclination to decide whose version is “right” or “wrong,” and to focus instead on the larger messages in each essay.

Even as I prepare this text, we are losing LGBTQIA+ trailblazers, including Rev. Dr. Dorothy Emerson who was key to this project, and I was brought on board after her death. During the writing of the book we lost at least a dozen others. These deaths and others made even more clear that we must capture this history before we lose it.

However, no single book can contain all the relevant stories. Moreover, no one owes us their stories: not the “us” behind this book project, nor the “us” of the book’s eventual audience. With that clarity, I have honored both an explicit “no” and silence in response to requests for stories. If, in doing so, I have inadvertently omitted anyone who would have wished to say “yes” to the request, I offer a heartfelt apology.

This book is inevitably an incomplete collection, only a sampling of the stories that are out there, some known and some relatively unknown. Not everyone who could share a story wants to; not all the stories still have people who are alive to tell them. I’ve done my best, and yet I know that pieces will always be missing.

Given that, I have worked to make this book as representative as possible of the stories I know are out there. While each contribution is unique, it also stands for many others, similar in a variety of ways, that did not make it into these pages. I hope that, together, they will reinforce the understanding that LGBTQIA+ folks, even within a single faith tradition, are far from being a monolith about whom broad generalizations can be made.