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Holly Boswell (formerly Thom) was born in November, 1950 and studied English literature and music composition at Oberlin College in Ohio. Boswell graduated as a Senior Scholar in 1972 and...   Read More

Dr. John Boswell

John Eastburn Boswell (1947-1994) ranks as one of the most significant scholars in gay and lesbian studies. His career as an historian at Yale University spanned 20 years and he profoundly influenced a generation...   Read More

Mark Bowman

Mark Bowman, co-founder and long-time leader of the Reconciling Congregation Program in the United Methodist Church, was born on December 12, 1951, in Mt. Vernon, Ohio. He earned a B.A. degree in social...   Read More

Rev. Canon Malcolm Boyd

The Rev. Canon Malcolm Boyd is poet/writer-in-residence at Los Angeles' Episcopal Cathedral of St. Paul. Born in Manhattan in 1923, Boyd worked in the motion picture industry and became a partner of film pioneer...   Read More

Wayne Bradley

Wayne Bradley was born on August 7, 1949 on the South Side of Chicago to Herbert and Josephine (Messerschmidt) Bradley.  An older sister, Lola, died a few hours after she was born on Pearl Harbor Day.  A...   Read More

Rev. Gerry Brague

Gerry Brague likes to say that he grew up Methodist, became a Presbyterian and as a Presbyterian attended a United Church of Christ/American Baptist seminary so that he could be ordained by the Disciples of...   Read More

Perry Brass

Born in 1947 in Savannah, Georgia, Perry Brass grew up in the 1950s and 60s in equal parts Southern, Jewish, economically impoverished, and very much gay. To escape the South’s violent homophobia, he hitchhiked...   Read More

Rev. Paul Breton

Joseph Eugene Paul Breton was born in December 1940 in Manchester, New Hampshire. He was baptized Roman Catholic at the Parish Church of St. Jean Batiste. He was raised in Hartford, Connecticut, where he attended...   Read More

Rev. Elder Lillie Brock

Born in L.A.--Lower Alabama, that is--Lillie Brock took the country road to the city, studying psychology and education as an undergraduate and graduate student before devoting herself full time to corporate...   Read More

Rev. Dr. Joanne Carlson Brown

The Rev. Dr. Joanne Carlson Brown is a United Methodist minister currently serving in the Pacific Northwest Conference. She was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, adopted by loving parents when she was six months...   Read More

Z Budapest

Zsuzsanna Budapest (nee Zsuzsanna Emese Mokcsay) was born in Budapest, Hungary, during a big winter storm on January 30, 1940. Her mother, Masika Szilagyi, was a medium and a practicing witch who supported herself...   Read More

Ian Buist

John (Ian) Latto Farquharson Buist was born on 30 May 1930 in Dundee to Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Powrie Buist RAMC, an Army doctor, and Christian Mary Buist, the first woman president of the Students...   Read More

John Burnside

John Burnside was born on November 2, 1916 in Seattle, an only child. He joined the U.S. Navy at the age of 16 and married Edith Sinclair soon after his discharge. He graduated from UCLA where he studied mathematics...   Read More

Royal Bush

Royal D. Bush was born and raised in Bellevue, Nebraska where his mother attended the First Baptist Church of Bellevue. A few years after graduating high school, Royal began volunteer within the GLBT community...   Read More

Kim Byham

Kim Byham, long-time Integrity (Episcopal) leader, was born in 1948 in Parkersburg, West Virginia, where he grew up as an active member of Trinity Episcopal Church. After college (Marietta College) and law school...   Read More

Hal Call

Harold L. Call was born in Trenton, Missouri, on September 20, 1917, and earned a degree in journalism from the University of Missouri.  Upon graduation he took a job with the Kansas City ...   Read More

Justin Cannon

Rev. Justin R. Cannon, born July 9, 1984, in Detroit, Michigan, is the founder of www.TruthSetsFree.net, an affirming outreach ministry to gay and lesbian Christians...   Read More

Brother Richard Jonathan Cardarelli

Brother Richard Jonathan Cardarelli, SSF, was born in Connecticut. At an early age he knew two things about himself: that he was attracted to members of his own sex and that he was called to be a priest. While...   Read More

Rev. William H. Carey

Rev. William H. Carey was born in New York City in May of 1958. His family was Catholic, and he was taught to attend Mass regularly. He remembers being aware of his orientation as early as 1962. Of course, he knew...   Read More

Rev. Dr. Robert Carter, SJ

Robert Carter, a Jesuit and early leader of Dignity and the National Gay Task Force, was born in Chicago on July 27, 1927, the son of Earl and Ila Grace Smith Carter. His father managed several music stores. The...   Read More

Mary Louise Cervone

Mary Louise Cervone was born on January 20, 1959, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, into a large Catholic family parented by Mario and Rita Cervone.  Mary Louise was an accomplished musician and music teacher...   Read More

Right Rev. Otis Charles, DD, STD

Originally from New Jersey, the Right Reverend Otis Charles was ordained in 1951. In the course of his ministry Charles served variously as a parish priest; executive secretary of Associated Parishes, a national...   Read More

Rev. Candace Chellew-Hodge

The Rev. Candace Chellew-Hodge, the last of five children born to a Southern Baptist minister and his wife, felt God's call on her life from as early as she can remember. The Greensboro, North Carolina, native...   Read More

Rev. Dr. Patrick Cheng

The Rev. Dr. Patrick S. Cheng is a theologian, seminary professor, attorney, and ordained minister.  He is the Associate Professor of Historical and Systematic Theology at the Episcopal Divinity School in...   Read More

Kittredge Cherry

Rev. Kittredge Cherry is a lesbian Christian author, minister and art historian who offers gay-friendly spiritual resources at JesusInLove.org.  She blogs at the Jesus in Love Blog and edits the Jesus in Love...   Read More

Rev. Richard W. Clark

The Rev. Richard W. Clark was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and received his Bachelor of Arts in Religion from Westminster College in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania. In 1979, he received the M. Div. degree from...   Read More

Rev. Robert Mary Clement

The Most Reverend Robert Mary Clement, Archbishop of North America of the original American Catholic Church and the original Eucharistic Catholic Church; founder of The Church of the Beloved Disciple in Manhattan...   Read More

Rev. Michael Cole

The Rev. Michael Cole, founder of Christ Chapel in Long Beach, California, was raised in Roseburg and Medford, Oregon, in the religious traditions of Foursquare Gospel and Assemblies of God. He recalled that when...   Read More

Michael L. Collins

Michael Collins was born in October, 1947. He graduated from David Douglas High School in Portland, Oregon, in 1965 and enrolled at Portland State University. He graduated with a B.S. in sociology in 1969. During...   Read More

Rev. Clay Colwell

Clarence Albert Colwell (1923-1999) was born in Waterloo, Iowa, on October 13th. As a teenager he joined the U.S. Navy and was stationed in the Aleutian Islands as CB (construction battalion). He received a...   Read More

Very Rev. Ian D. Corbett

Ian Deighton Corbett was born in Birmingham, England, in 1942, and graduated from the University of Cambridge, where he returned to complete ordination training. He worked in the Diocese of Manchester for 18...   Read More

Dr. Roger Corless

Dr. Roger J. Corless was born in Merseyside, England, in 1938. He exhibited interest in both religion and science at any early age. His family attended church infrequently during his childhood, partly because Brits...   Read More

Jim Cotter

Jim Cotter was a founder member of the Gay (later the Lesbian and Gay) Christian Movement in the UK in April, 1976. He served as Honorary Secretary for the first two years and was the co-ordinator of...   Read More

T. Thorn Coyle

T. Thorn Coyle is an internationally respected visionary and teacher of the magical and esoteric arts. The author of Kissing the Limitless: Deep Magic and the Great Work of Transforming Yourself and the World...   Read More

Jimmy Creech

Jimmy Creech, a native of Goldsboro, North Carolina, was an ordained elder in The United Methodist Church from 1970 to 1999.  He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Biblical Studies from the University of North...   Read More

Dr. Louie Crew

Dr. Louie Crew was born in the deep South in 1936. He received his B.A. degree from Baylor University, his M.A. degree in 1959 from Auburn and his Ph.D. from the University of Alabama in 1971. His dissertation was...   Read More

Rev. Robert Cromey

The Rev. Robert Warren Cromey, retired Episcopal priest, was born in 1931, raised in New York City and lived in San Francisco since 1962. Cromey is married and has three daughters and six grandchildren. Even...   Read More

Rev. Carol Cureton

Rev. Carol Cureton, a native of Missouri, became founder of the St. Louis MCC by a roundabout route. After graduating  from Southeast Missouri State Teachers College with a B.S. Degree in Biology and...   Read More

Mary Daly

Mary Daly is one of the leading voices of modern feminist theology and a self-described "radical lesbian feminist." Daly was born October 16, 1928, the only child in a working class Irish Catholic family in...   Read More

Rev. Judy Davenport

Judy Davenport was born in Cleburne, Texas on May 6, 1942. The only child of a single parent, Judy was raised by her loving maternal grandmother while her mother provided their income as a hairdresser. Judy...   Read More

Virginia West Davidson

Virginia West Davidson, known as Ginny to her family and friends, was born August 28, 1916, in Rochester, New York. Her parents were James H. West and Beatrice K. West. She grew up in Irondequoit along with her older...   Read More

Rev. Ann B. Day

Baptized in the United Methodist Church, influenced by the Church of the Brethren, and raised in the Southern Presbyterian Church, it is little wonder that the Rev. Ann B. Day found a spiritual home in the...   Read More

Rev. Patricia de Jong

The Rev. Patricia de Jong was born from a long line of Dutch Calvinists, a cloistered community that even continued to hold services in Dutch in her childhood. The community also incorporated the church into the...   Read More

Christian de la Huerta

Christian de la Huerta is the author of the best-selling and critically-acclaimed Coming Out Spiritually. Chosen by Publishers Weekly as one of the ten best religion books of 1999, the book was...   Read More

Robert G. De Santis

Robert G. De Santis was born in 1939 in Cold Spring, New York, was raised his first five years in Glenham, and then lived in Beacon, New York, until age 30. He served in the U.S. Air Force and received an...   Read More

Rev. Gregory Dell

The Rev. Gregory Dell became pastor of Broadway United Methodist Church in Chicago in 1995. At the time, approximately 40% of the congregation's members were gay or lesbian. Since the 1980s, he had included holy...   Read More

David-Edward Desmond

In 1966, 26-year-old David-Edward Desmond founded a break-off from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) in Denver, Colorado. The United Order Family of Christ was for young gay men only, ages...   Read More

Swami Dhumavati

Swami Dhumavati was born in England as Lucy Horne. Her family attended a Brethren Church and during school years she attended Anglican services. As a young adult, she traveled and worked around the world. She studied...   Read More

Charlotte Doclar

Charlotte Doclar was born in New Orleans on April 2, 1934. She attended the School of the Sacred Heart of Jesus on Canal Street, operated by the School Sisters of Notre Dame (SSND) for all twelve...   Read More

Karen Doherty

Karen Doherty was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, on July 6, 1952. She was baptized at the same church where her father served as an altar boy, and her mother and father were married: St. Genevieve’s in Elmora. Her...   Read More

Stephen Donaldson

Writer and activist Stephen Donaldson was born Robert A. Martin, Jr. on July 27, 1946 in Norfolk, Virginia. The son of a career naval officer, his childhood was spent in numerous seaport cities of the eastern ...   Read More

John P. Doner

John Doner founded the first church for gays and lesbians in Latin America, Iglesia de la Comunidad Metropolitana Reconciliación (MCC), in Mexico City in 1981. In 1992 he and the Rev. Dr. Tom Hanks, along...   Read More

Issan Dorsey

Issan Dorsey, founder of the Hartford Street Zen Center in San Francisco, was born Tommy Dorsey in Santa Barbara, California, in 1933. The oldest of ten children in a Catholic family, he contemplated studying for...   Read More

Joseph Doucé

Joseph Doucé, gay Baptist pastor and pyschologist who ran the Centre du Christ Libérateur in Paris, was born into a poor, Catholic peasant family on April 13, 1945, in Sint-Truiden, Belgium. He demonstrated passions...   Read More

Rev. Lewis Durham

The Rev. Lewis E. Durham was director of the Glide Urban Center in the 1960s from which grew the Council on Religion and the Homosexual and other early gay ministries. Durham’s father was a pastor who worked in...   Read More

Rev. Elder Don Eastman

The Rev. Elder Don Eastman was formerly an ordained minister with the Assemblies of God.  He received his theological training at Central Bible College in Springfield, Missouri. Following graduation in 1966, he...   Read More

Susan B. Anthony Echo

Susan B. Anthony Echo was a mover and shaker and brainstormer in the United Church of Christ Coalition for Lesbian/Gay Concerns during the 1980s, remaining active into the 1990s. She served on the national...   Read More

Lisa A. Edwards, Ph.D.

Lisa A. Edwards has been the rabbi of Beth Chayim Chadashim (BCC) since August 1994, but her connections to BCC predate that. While a rabbinic student studying in Los Angeles, Rabbi Edwards was first a BCC member...   Read More

Rabbi Denise L. Eger

Denise L. Eger was raised in Memphis, Tennessee.  She graduated with honors from the University of Southern California with a Bachelor's Degree in Religion in 1982.  She received her Master's...   Read More

Rev. Elder Cecilia Eggleston

Cecilia Eggleston was the first woman and first lay person to be elected District Coordinator in the European District of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches. She became involved in UFMCC...   Read More

Rev. Carole Elizabeth

The Rev. Carole Elizabeth prepared this autobiographical statement in May, 2011:    I was born the only daughter of Arthur and Esther Olson on May 18, 1944. Dad was a pastor in the old ELC Norwegian...   Read More

Fred H. Ellis

Fred Ellis, a member of Integrity (Episcopal) since 1991, was born in 1952 in Lufkin, Texas. He grew up as an active member of the Methodist Church, attended college at the University of Texas at Austin, and...   Read More

Dr. Marvin Ellison

Marvin M. Ellison, Jr. was born in 1948 in Knoxville, Tennessee, to Marvin M. Ellison and Esther Alexander.  There was an older sister and younger brother in the family.  The family heritage is largely...   Read More

Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell

Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell has been teaching and writing about Jewish women's history and feminist spirituality for the past twenty years. The founding director of the American Jewish Congress Feminist Center in Los...   Read More

Rev. Alejandro Escoto

The Rev. Alejandro Escoto is the Minister of Spanish Speaking Ministries and Pastor of La Iglesia de la Comunidad Metropolitana Los Ángeles (ICMLA), which is Spanish for Metropolitan Community Church Los Angeles...   Read More

Arthur Evans

Arthur Evans was born in York, Pennsylvania, on October 12, 1942. His father was a Scottish immigrant of Welsh descent. After dropping out of elementary school, the father worked most of his life on...   Read More

Renae Extrum-Fernandez

Renae Extrum-Fernandez is a fifth generation Methodist born in Pittsburg, California, in 1957. She lived there with her parents, Raymond C. Extrum, school superintendent of the Knightsen School District, and...   Read More

Rev. Don Fado

Don Fado was born in 1933 to a Pennsylvania family. At a young age the family moved to Redding, California, where Don grew up in the Methodist Church. His first recollection of a gay person in his life...   Read More

Jack Fertig

Jack Fertig, one of the first Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence--best known as Sister Boom Boom a.k.a. Sister Rose of the Bloody Stains of the Sacred Robes of Jesus--was born on February 21, 1955, in Chicago. He...   Read More

Patricia Kevena Fili

Patricia Kevena Fili, aka Amethyst Moonwater, Pagan and Wiccan Priestess, was born in March 1951 in Portland, Oregon. Assigned male gender at birth, Patricia had two older brothers.  Patricia was interested...   Read More

Rev. Elder Diane Fisher

Rev. Elder Diane Fisher is the regional elder for Region 5 of the Metropolitan Community Churches which includes eastern Canada, the northeastern U.S. and eastern Europe. Diane has been an MCC member for...   Read More

Rev. Flo Fleischman

The Rev. Florine L. Fleischman was a student at the University of Tampa in the late 1940s where she connected with other lesbians and gay men, particularly through Literati, a student writers group. She also...   Read More

Rev. Sarah Flynn

Sarah Jean Flynn was assigned male gender at birth as James D. Flynn in 1938 in Chicago, Illinois. She was nine years old when the family relocated to a small college town in the panhandle of Texas. At thirteen...   Read More

Clark Friesen

Elder Clark Friesen hails from the farmlands of Kansas where he was reared in the Mennonite Church. He was sent out as a missionary in 1969 to serve at the Mennonite Church of the Sermon on the Mount, a church...   Read More

Rev. Ruth Frost

The Rev. Ruth Mary Frost was born in 1947 into a family with strong Lutheran roots. She is third generation clergy in her family. Her father, Dr. Gerhard Frost, was a prominent pastor and poet-theologian in the...   Read More

Mary Gaddis

Mary Leola Gaddis was born to Mac and Leola Gaddis in San Luis Obispo, California, on August 13, 1949. She was the oldest of three with a brother James and a sister Nancy. Her father was an engineer for the...   Read More

Prof. Dr. R. Ruard Ganzevoort

Ruard Ganzevoort was born in 1965 in a liberal reformed family in the Netherlands. With his parents, siblings, and occasional foster children, he lived in several places in his home country and Surinam, South...   Read More

Nicole Garcia

Nicole Michelle Garcia was born Michael on December 12, 1959, in Boulder, Colorado, the oldest son in a Hispanic, Roman Catholic family. On December 12, 1532, the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared to an Indian peasant,...   Read More

Rev. Darlene Garner

From Columbus, Ohio USA, Darlene Garner is a lesbian Christian woman of African, Cherokee, and Irish descent with a National Baptist and Episcopal spiritual heritage. She came out as a lesbian in 1973 and joined...   Read More

Dr. Sally Miller Gearhart

Dr. Sally Miller Gearhart worked in the ivy halls of academia for forty years as a teacher of Theatre, Communication, Rhetoric, English, and Women Studies. She was probably the first open lesbian in higher...   Read More

Rev. Joseph H. Gilbert

Joseph H. Gilbert was born in Philadelphia on October 4, 1930, the eldest of five siblings.  His father, Joseph Henry Gilbert, was an engineer and his mother, M. Lovedy Gilbert, had worked as a nurse. When...   Read More

Rev. Elder John Gill

John Gill was born in 1945, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the steel city, known as the Birmingham of the North. Both his parents were native western Pennsylvanians, and for the first eight years of Gill’s...   Read More

Chris Glaser

Chris Glaser received his M.Div. from Yale University Divinity School in 1977 and earlier, his B.A. in English Honors and Religious Studies from California State University, Northridge, in 1973. While in college he...   Read More

Dr. William Glenn

William D. Glenn, a former Jesuit and high school dean, is a licensed psychotherapist with a private practice in San Francisco and Santa Rosa, California. Glenn’s education includes graduate...   Read More

Rev. Peter Gomes

The Rev. Peter John Gomes, Harvard chaplain and professor and a leading voice against religious intolerance, was born on May 22, 1942, in Boston, Massachusetts. His father, from the Cape Verde Islands off the west...   Read More

Mitchell Santine Gould

Mitch Gould is the leading authority on Walt Whitman's mysterious connection to Quakerism, and coined a term to describe this difficult problem — which occupied the heart of Whitman scholarship for a...   Read More

Augustus Graham

Augustus Graham and his camerado John Bell Graham were founding fathers of Unitarianism in Brooklyn, as well as the founders of many critical arts and social welfare organizations, in the generation just before...   Read More

Dr. Judy Grahn

Judy Grahn’s mother told her that she began exhibiting interest in religion at the age of three, and by the age of eleven she was writing prayers for Sunday School.   Judy has been on a lifelong quest for...   Read More

Jeannine Gramick

Jeannine Gramick, a Roman Catholic nun, was born in 1942 and educated in Catholic grade and high schools in Philadelphia. She moved to Baltimore in 1960 to join the School Sisters of Notre Dame, until her...   Read More

Rabbi Julie Greenberg

Rabbi Julie Greenberg is the spiritual leader of Congregation Leyv Ha-Ir, Heart of the City, in Philadelphia and a therapist in her practice, Counseling with Soul. She entered the Reconstructionist Rabbinical...   Read More

Rabbi Steven Greenberg

Rabbi Steven Greenberg received his B.A. in philosophy from Yeshiva University and his rabbinical ordination from Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary. He is a Senior Teaching Fellow at CLAL (National Jewish...   Read More

Rev. Jan Griesinger

The Rev. Jan Griesinger was ordained in the United Church of Christ (UCC) in 1970. She has worked in the field of campus ministry since that time, first for the World Student Christian Federation and then as the...   Read More

Dr. Alfred A. Gross

Alfred A. Gross was born in 1895 into a New England family of some financial means. He received educational degrees from Amherst College (1915), Yale Divinity School (1917) and Oxford and received a doctorate in...   Read More

Deryn Guest

Deryn Guest was born in the heart of the blackcountry, in the United Kingdom. Women in the blackcountry had a reputation for chain-making and the production of nuts and bolts and her grandmother was involved in...   Read More

Clyde Hall

Clyde Hall is an internationally recognized and acknowledged authority of Native American culture, dance ritual and folkways. Clyde was born and raised in Fort Hall, Idaho and is a Native American of...   Read More

Rev. Howard Hall

Howard Hall was born on March 10, 1936 to Earl and Alethia B. Hall. Raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, he first served the Church as a devout altar boy in his home parish. In the 10th grade, he entered the minor...   Read More

Nicole Hamel

Nicole Hamel estnée à Cap-rouge près de Québec. En 1968, après avoir obtenu  un Baccalauréat en Catéchèse à l’Université Laval,...   Read More

Phebe Ann Coffin Hanaford

Phebe Ann Coffin Hanaford may be America's earliest certifiable lesbian minister. According to Lisa M. Tetrault (see below), Phebe Ann (Coffin) Hanaford was born in Siasconset on Nantucket Island on May 6, 1829,...   Read More

Rev. Dr. Tom Hanks

The Rev. Dr. Tom Hanks has served as a missionary in Latin America since 1963, first with the Latin American Mission as professor of Hebrew Bible at the Latin America Biblical Seminary in San Jose, Costa Rica...   Read More

Rev. Esther Hargis

The Rev. Esther Hargis was born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1947, the daughter of two teachers and the oldest of four children. She grew up attending Lyndon Baptist Church, a Southern Baptist church in Louisville,...   Read More

Rev. Cedric Harmon

Cedric Harmon is a native Midwesterner with Southern and New England influences—a surprise last child to older parents who shared with him the gift of experience and wisdom. He was a precocious youth...   Read More

Rev. Linda Harris

The Rev. Linda Harris was born May 10, 1944. She did not attend church in her early years. Her mother and sisters were Catholic but she and her father did not go anywhere. Linda remembers her father’s mother...   Read More

Most Rev. Stanley J. Harris DD

The Most Rev. Stan Harris, D.D. was born in in Glenelg/Adelaide, South Australia on April 8, 1944. Born of Presbyterian parents, he converted to Catholicism in 1956, realizing he was gay about six months later!...   Read More

Dr. Beverly Wildung Harrison

Dr. Beverly Jean Wildung Harrision, internationally renowned scholar and teacher of Christian social ethics and feminist theory, was born on August 4, 1932, in St. Paul, Minnesota. She was the fourth child of...   Read More

Brenda Harrison

Brenda Harrison was an active member of the Evangelical Fellowship for Lesbian and Gay Christians (www.eflgc.org.uk) beginning in 1987, serving as co-convenor for...   Read More

Rev. Dr. Rodger D. Harrison

The Rev. Dr. Rodger DeLong Harrison was born in the Mary Imogene Bassett hospital, Cooperstown, New York, on June 16, 1928. His mother, Marion DeLong Rose Harrison, was a stay-at-home-mother in their Mount Vision,...   Read More

Rev. Elder Jeri Ann Harvey

Rev. Elder Jeri Ann Harvey was born January 3, 1934, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma (USA) into a Cherokee nation family.  This heritage was an important aspecet of Jeri Ann's identity. She graduated from high school...   Read More

Rev. Vin Harwell

The Rev. Vin Harwell (1947 - 2000) was born in York, Alabama. He graduated from Eckerd College in St. Peterburg, Florida, and later from Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. Before becoming a...   Read More

Rev. Dr. Brent Hawkes C.M.

The Rev. Dr. Brent Hawkes C.M. LLD is a native of Bath, in rural New Brunswick. He grew up in a strict fundamentalist Baptist family. He recalls knowing at a very early age that he was...   Read More

Harry Hay

Harry Hay (1912-2002) is best known as the founder of the U.S. gay movement but is increasingly known as a pioneer of gay spirituality. He started the Mattachine Society in 1950 and launched the Radical Faerie...   Read More

Wilhelmina Hein

Wilhelmina Hein was born Willem Hein in the Netherlands in 1947 and emigrated to Australia in 1958 with his family. Discovering a difference about his sexuality and identity at an early age, he grew up in a strict...   Read More

Lee Frances Heller

Leo F. Heller, Jr. was born on April 5, 1919, in Youngstown, Ohio, in humble circumstances. He led a singularly undistinguished life finally becoming a resident at the Good Shepherd Mission in Paterson, New...   Read More

Mitzi Henderson

Mitzi Henderson was raised in the Presbyterian Church, the child of parents who were devout religious leaders and activists for social justice. Married immediately after college, she was the mother of four young...   Read More

Gordon Herzog

Gordon Herzog was born to Jesse T. Herzog and Ethel B. (Dillingham) Herzog in St. Louis, Missouri on September 13, 1934. His family resided first in Normandy and later in Hazelwood, Missouri. Gordon was raised...   Read More

Rev. Dr. Carter Heyward

The Rev. Dr. Carter Heyward is an Episcopal priest, professor, theologian, activist, and writer. A pioneer in the areas of feminist liberation theology and the theology of sexuality. Carter was born on August 22,...   Read More

Rev. Anita Hill

Anita Carol Hill was ordained to the Lutheran Ministry of Word and Sacrament in an extra ordinem service on April 28, 2001. One currently seated bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA)...   Read More

Malcolm Himschoot

Malcolm Himschoot was born in 1977 in Denver, Colorado, and raised in Idaho Springs, Colorado in a conservative Christian milieu.  Malcolm’s father was a builder and mother worked as a nurse. There was...   Read More

Rabbi Linda Holtzman

Linda Holtzman is the senior rabbi at Mishkan Shalom, a Reconstructionist synagogue in Philadelphia. Previously, she served as the Director of Practical Rabbinics at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. She...   Read More

Rev. Daniel Hooper

The Rev. Daniel M. Hooper was born in Bakersfield, California, in 1947. Hooper was educated at California State Polytechnic University in San Luis Obispo, California, and studied for his M. Div. at Pacific...   Read More

Rev. Glenda Hope

Glenda Hope was born in 1936 in Atlanta, Georgia, and grew up there in a Southern Baptist family. They were regular church participants and active in a...   Read More

Rev. James Hopkins

James Hopkins was born into a fundamentalist Southern Baptist family in a Chevron company town in Colorado. His parents left the Southern Baptist tradition because it was becoming too liberal. James felt that his...   Read More

Rev. Elder John Hose

The Rev. Elder John H. Hose was a native Ohioan who held an A.B. degree from Elmhurst College, a Master of Divinity degree from Eden Theological Seminary, and a Master of Science in Education from the University...   Read More

Andrew Hudson

Andrew Hudson was born in 1935 in Birmingham, England. He was the great-great-grandson of the early 19th century miniature painter William Hudson. Both his grandfathers were Anglican clergy. His father was a...   Read More

Rev. Dr. Laud Humphreys

Laud Humphreys was born Robert Allan Humphreys on October 16, 1930, in Chickasha, Oklahoma. His parents were Ira Denver and Stella Bernice Humphreys. His brother Howard was twenty years older and brother William...   Read More

Dr. Mary E. Hunt

Mary E. Hunt, Ph.D., is a feminist theologian who is co-founder and co-director of the Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual (WATER) in Silver Spring, Maryland, USA. A Catholic active in the women-church...   Read More

Dr. Rick Huskey

Dr. Rick Huskey, M.D., D.Min., M.Div., a co-founder of Affirmation: United Methodists for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Concerns, was born May 19, 1950 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Rick grew up in...   Read More

Loraine Hutchins

Loraine Hutchins, Ph.D., is a founder and leader of the U.S. bisexual rights and liberation movement who has increasingly integrated issues of spirituality into her sexuality education work. She co-edited Bi...   Read More

Rev. George Augustine Hyde

George Augustine Hyde (1923), who led the first known church to openly minister to and with homosexuals in the U.S., attended a Roman Catholic seminary, though he left before achieving priestly ordination. He...   Read More

Rev. Jack Isbell

The Rev. Jack Isbell was born in 1943 in Nashville, Tennessee where he lived for his first 11 years. His father, Noel, was a chief petty officer in the U.S. Navy. His mother, Naomi, came from a strong Baptist...   Read More

Christopher Isherwood

Christopher William Bradshaw-Isherwood (1904-1986) was born in Cheshire, England, on August 26, 1904, to Kathleen Machell-Smith and Frank Bradshaw-Isherwood. Frank was in the British military and was killed in...   Read More

Bishop Michael Francis Augustine Itkin

Bishop Michael Francis Augustine Itkin was one of the seminal figures in the ""gay church"" movement in the 1950's and 60's. Later known by his religious name of Mar Mikhael, Itkin was...   Read More

Rev. Dr. Jay Johnson

Jay Emerson Johnson is an Episcopal priest and theologian and has served the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry at Pacific School of Religion (PSR) in a number of capacities since 2003,...   Read More

Rev. Jeff R. Johnson

The Rev. Jeff R. Johnson was installed as Pastor of University Lutheran Chapel and the Lutheran Campus Pastor at the University of California, Berkeley, on November 7, 1999. Prior to this call to the Chapel,...   Read More

Rev. Kevin Johnson

The Rev. Kevin A. Johnson is an ordained pastor in the United Methodist Church (UMC), in good standing, but has not been able to be the pastor of a church within the UMC since 1982 because of the general church's...   Read More

Rev. Malcolm Johnson

The Rev. Malcolm A. Johnson was born on 8 September, 1936, in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk. At  the outbreak of the Second World War his parents were evacuated to a small village, Acle. It was an idyllic, rural...   Read More

Mel Johnson

 Elder Mel Johnson joined the Metropolitan Community Church in 1987 and has been a member of Sunrise MCC in Palmdale, California; MCC of the Redwoods in Marin County, California and MCC-San Francisco,...   Read More

Toby Johnson

Edwin Clark (Toby) Johnson, Ph.D., Catholic monk turned activist, psychotherapist and spiritual writer, was born in 1945 in San Antonio Texas. Johnson has been partners with Clifton D. (Kip) Dollar since 1984....   Read More

Rev. Dr. William R. Johnson

The Rev. Dr. William R. Johnson (born June 12, 1946 in Houston, Texas) was the first openly gay person ordained in the United Church of Christ (UCC) and the first such person ordained in the Christian Church...   Read More

Canon Clinton Jones

Clinton Robert Jones, Jr., was born November 8, 1916, in Brookfield, Connecticut, the only child of Clinton Robert Jones and Henriette Elizabeth (Morehouse). Clinton, Jr., was raised on a large farm managed by...   Read More

Bishop Zachary Jones

Zachary Jones was born and raised in Los Angeles, California in 1958. He was the youngest son of seven children born to Maggie and Frank Jones. Early in his life, his mother knew he had a strong call to God and to...   Read More

Victor K. Jordan

Victor K. Jordan is volunteer archivist at both The Riverside Church and the National History Archive at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Community Center in New York City. Victor was born February 27,...   Read More

Father Mychal Judge

Father Mychal Judge was born in South Brooklyn, New York, on May 11, 1933, older of fraternal twins with sister Dympna. An older sister Erin was born in 1930 and brother Thomas Emmett the following year, but he...   Read More

Raven Kaldera

Raven Kaldera is a queer northern-tradition shaman and a pansexual FTM transgendered intersexual. That complicated string of titles translates to someone who was born with an intersex condition, raised female,...   Read More

Michael Kelly

Michael Bernard Kelly is known internationally for his work in integrating Christian spirituality and gay experience. Born in Australia in 1954 into a devout Catholic family, he joined the Franciscans after finishing...   Read More

El-Farouk Khaki

El-Farouk Khaki was born in Tanzania in 1963 and raised in London, England and Vancouver. He is a graduate of University of British Columbia Law School (1986), a member of the Law Society of Upper Canada (and British...   Read More

Stan C. Kimer

Stan C. Kimer is long-time active lay leader within the Metropolitan Community Churches and the North Carolina Council of Churches. In addition to his ministries within the Christian Community, Kimer served as...   Read More

Rev. Richard Kirker

The Rev. Richard Kirker was a founder member and first General Secretary of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement, based in London, U.K. In twenty-five years, Richard has taken the Lesbian and Gay Christian...   Read More

Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum

Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum has been the Senior Rabbi of New York City's Congregation Beth Simchat Torah (CBST) since 1992. Under her leadership, CBST has become an important voice in Judaism, in the world-wide...   Read More

Debra Kolodny

Debra Kolodny has been a volunteer and professional activist in the faith, labor, social justice, women's, and LGBT communities for thirty-two years. She began her career in the labor movement in 1986 where...   Read More

Nancy E. Krody

Nancy E. Krody was born in 1939 in Cincinnati, Ohio.  She received a B.A. in political science and sociology from Ohio State University in 1960. She subsequently completed two years of course work toward an...   Read More

Richard LaFortune

Richard LaFortune (also known as "Anguksuar," or "Little Man"), Native Two Spirit and GLBT organizer, was born into the Yupik (Eskimo) tribe in 1960 in a small fishing village in southwest Alaska. His mother’s...   Read More

Archbishop Alfred Lankenau

 Archbishop Alfred Louis Lankenau, retired Primate of the Orthodox-Catholic Church of America, died on Wednesday, February 24, 2010 in Indianapolis, Indiana. He had suffered a lengthy struggle with cancer. ...   Read More

Gene Leggett

Franklin Gene Leggett, an early openly gay Methodist clergy, was born in 1935 in Edinburg, Texas. He graduated from Pan American College in 1956. Raised in the church, he was destined for ministry and enrolled in...   Read More

Elinor Grace Kirby Lewallen

Elinor Grace Kirby Lewallen was born on May 17, 1919, in Star Township in Cloud County, Kansas. Elinor was the third of four children born to Osbourn and Grace Kirby.  She attended elementary school for the...   Read More

Rev. Chuck Lewis

The Rev. Charles Lewis was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1931. He studied chemical engineering at the University of Pittsburgh, leaving to spend two years in the U.S. Army from 1953-1955. He graduated from...   Read More

Renato Lings

Kjeld Renato Lings, Ph.D., was born in a rural part of West Jutland, Denmark, near the town of Herning. His father was a schoolteacher and his mother was an organist and housewife. They were both committed...   Read More

John M. Linscheid

Although John Linscheid works as an office manager at the University of Pennsylvania’s Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department, his biography is here because he is a writer, speaker, and an activist in...   Read More

Pastor Jim Lokken

Jim Lokken was born into a Norwegian Lutheran family from Minnesota, in the old Evangelical Lutheran Church. His parents moved to Pasadena, California, where they raised Jim and his brother Stan.   Jim...   Read More

Samuel E. Loliger

Samuel E.Loliger was born into a Swiss family in Canton, Ohio, in September 1937. Two sisters came into the family after him. His father was a mill worker who had an eighth-grade European education. His mother was...   Read More

Rev. Dr. Cindi Love

Rev. Dr. Cynthia "Cindi" Love is an ordained minister and human rights activist and advocate, author and award-winning entrepreneur. She has also served as Executive Dean in one of the largest community...   Read More

Rev. Elder Louis Loynes

Rev. Louis Loynes was born in 1928 and raised in San Jose, California where he lived with his family until entering college at Vallejo, California. After his graduation from college, he entered the U.S. Navy where...   Read More

Donald Stewart Lucas

Donald Stewart Lucas was born in rural Colorado in 1926, but moved to San Francisco in 1949, performing in local theater until the middle 1950s. There he was introduced to the Mattachine Society and the idea of...   Read More

Fr. Bernard Lynch

Bernard Lynch was born in Ireland in 1947. His father worked for the local railway making deliveries by horse and cart of goods from the train station around the market town of Ennis capital of County Clare. Clare...   Read More

Del Martin & Phyllis Lyon

Phyllis Lyon was born on November 10, 1924, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and raised primarily in northern California. She graduated from Sacramento High School in 1943 and went on to the University of...   Read More

Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati

Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati, spiritual teacher, AIDS activist, author and artist, was born Joyce Green in Brooklyn, New York, in 1940. She grew up in poverty in a Jewish family and claims that "the streets and...   Read More

Diarmaid MacCulloch

Diarmaid MacCulloch was born 31 October 1951, in Kent, England; the only child of Rev. Nigel J.H. MacCulloch T.D. and Mrs. Jennie MacCulloch (née Chappell). Mr. MacCulloch was an army chaplain until 1956...   Read More

Iain MacDonald

Iain McDonald was born in 1953 in Dundee, Scotland, where his father Norman was one of the youngest elders of the Church of Scotland. Iain moved with his parents to England in 1958 and, after a conventional church...   Read More

Bishop S.F. Ma-Hee

Bishop S.F. Ma-Hee is the eldest child of an evangelist/minister of music. She was the founder and first pastor of the Redefined Faith Worship Center (formerly Redefined Faith Unity Fellowship Church), the first...   Read More

Elder Michael Mank

Michael H. Mank was born Herman L. Mank, Jr., on May 7, 1938, in Ashburnham, Massachusetts. He got his M.A. degree from Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts.  Michael moved to Los Angeles in 1961...   Read More

Jeremy Marks

Jeremy Marks was born in London, UK in 1952, the oldest of three children. He was brought up in the Anglican Church, a tradition he rejected for a time after witnessing the hypocrisy and spiteful judgement meted out...   Read More

Rev. Elder Debbie Martin

The Rev. Elder Debbie Martin retired from a 19-year career as a law enforcement officer in Santa Rosa, California, and heard the call to ministry in the Metropolitan Community Church. She was ordained as a minister...   Read More

Rev. Ken Martin

Rev. Ken Martin was appointed Elder of Metropolitan Community Church’s Region One in 2006.  At that time he shared his journey that led to that moment.   “I came into this world knowing why I am here. My...   Read More

Phyllis Lyon & Del Martin

Del Martin was born Dorothy L. Taliaferro in San Francisco, California, on May 5, 1921, to Jones and Mary Taliaferro. She was salutatorian of the first graduating class of George Washington High School in San...   Read More

Allan Masur

Allan Masur, founder of Congregation B'nai Olam on Fire Island and one of the early leaders of Congregation Beth Simchat Torah in New York City, was a native New Yorker. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from City College...   Read More

Ron Mattson

Ronald Edward Mattson was born on May 1, 1936, in Princeton, Minnesota, to Jennie L. Orrock and E. Lloyd Mattson. Along with Terry and Thomas, he was one of three sons in the family. Ron earned a bachelor's...   Read More

Patrick McArron

Patrick Terence Gabriel McArron was born March 7, 1947, in San Diego, California, to Terence and Rosemary McArron. His father was Protestant and his mother Roman Catholic, but his roots and connections to the...   Read More

Jay McCarty

Several hundred persons filled the sanctuary of Trinity U.M. Church in Kansas City on July 6, 1994, for "A Service of Joy and Thanksgiving for the Life of James 'Jay' McCarty," long-time Reconciling Congregation...   Read More

Rev. Dr. Don McGaw

Don McGaw moved to Boston in 1964 to attend Boston University School of Theology. While at  seminary he began his activism by choosing to focus on religious and homosexuality. He found good support from...   Read More

Dr. Ted McIlvenna

The Rev. Dr. Robert Theodore McIlvenna was born on March 15, 1932, in Epping, New Hampshire. At an early age, he moved with his family to the Pacific Northwest where his father, an itinerant Methodist minister,...   Read More

Brian McNaught

As a conscientious objector to the war in Vietnam, Brian McNaught began his alternative service in 1970 at The Michigan Catholic, weekly newspaper of the Archdiocese of Detroit. He worked there as a...   Read More

John J. McNeill

For more than twenty-five years, John J. McNeill, an ordained priest and psychotherapist, has been devoting his life to spreading the good news of God's love for lesbian and gay Christians. One year after the...   Read More

Robert I. McQueen

Robert I. McQueen was a prominent gay Mormon missionary, editor and activist.  With the help of the Affirmation Los Angeles Chapter (organized on 28 January 1978), the first major publication...   Read More

Dr. Michael Mendiola

Michael Manuel Mendiola was associate professor of Christian ethics at Pacific School of Religion (PSR) from 1994 to 2008. He was born in Globe, Arizona, in 1952. In the Roman Catholic tradition, he received received...   Read More

Rev. Dr. Jim Merritt

The Rev. Dr. Jim Merritt was ordained in the Southern Baptist tradition in 1981 and transferred to the Metropolitan Community Churches in 2003. He received his Bachelor of Church Music degree from Stetson...   Read More

Abbott Richard Mickley, O.S.Ae., Ph.D.

Richard Raymond Mickley, oldest of 10 children of Raymond and Clara Mickley, knew that he was called to be a priest by the time he was 13. He had grown up on the farm in what he calls "the beautiful rolling hills of...   Read More

Louis "L.J." Mitchell

Louis “L.J.” Mitchell was born and raised in Los Angeles, California, and comes from a long line of people who believe that community building and community service are important Christian...   Read More

Rev. Rick Mixon

Randle R. "Rick" Mixon boarded a train in Boise, Idaho, in September 1965, bound for New York City and Columbia College. He rode with a half-dozen other boys recruited from Idaho. Along with the new metal trunk that...   Read More

Rev. Dr. Sid L. Mohn

Rev. Dr. Sid L. Mohn was ordained as a clergyperson with the United Church of Christ in 1976, the first openly gay person ordained in the Illinois Conference of the United Church of Christ and the second openly...   Read More

Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, Ph.D.

In the mid-1970's, while still closeted personally, Mollenkott began to advocate at church conferences in behalf of lesbian and gay Christians. In l978, with Letha Dawson Scanzoni, she published Is the...   Read More

Rev. Irene Monroe

The Rev. Irene Monroe is a religion columnist, public theologian, and motivational speaker. Monroe was recently featured on the Caroline Myss's Show "The Journey" (February 2002) as women you "got the power", and in...   Read More

Rev. Megan More

Rev. Megan More, M.Div, is a graduate of Claremont School of Theology/Claremont Lincoln University, and is presently clergy on staff at Metropolitan Community Church in the Valley (MCCV), North Hollywood,...   Read More

Paul Mortensen

Lowell Paul Mortensen was born in 1941 as a fourth generation Mormon and was raised in Riverton, Utah. In 1960, he went on a Mormon mission to the Eastern Atlantic States, an experience that he would later...   Read More

Andre Musskopf

André S. Musskopf is a lay theologian, raised in the Lutheran tradition in Brazil from Sunday school to seminary. He has been denied ordination by the Evangelical Church of Lutheran Confession in Brazil. He has...   Read More

Rev. Richard Lee Nash

The Rev. Richard Lee Nash (August 5, 1935 - August 30, 1997) was a founder of the Unitarian Universalist Gay Caucus (now called Interweave) at the General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association held...   Read More

Dr, James B. Nelson

Dr. James B. Nelson was born on May 28, 1930, in Windom, Minnesota. He received a B.A. degree from Macalester College and B.D. (1957), M.A.(1959), and Ph.D. (1962) degrees from Yale University. He was ordained as...   Read More

Jack Nichols

Jack Nichols co-founded The Mattachine Society of Washington (1961) and The Mattachine Society of Florida (1965). Starting in 1963, he chaired the Washington Society's Committee on Religious Concerns and ...   Read More

Szymon Niemiec

Rev. Szymon Niemiec, Polish photographer, gay rights activist, journalist and clergy, was born 5 October, 1977, in Warsaw, Poland. Szymon was raised in a Roman Catholic family and was strongly drawn to the...   Read More

Rev. Dr. Penny Nixon

Rev. Dr. Penny Nixon grew up in a conservative Baptist tradition in rural New Hampshire in a working class family, where there was a profound lack of space to talk about LGBT people. When they were...   Read More

Canon Richard T. Nolan & Robert C. Pingpank

Born three days and 120 miles apart, Dick Nolan and Bob Pingpank celebrated their 50th Anniversary in 2005. Both cradle Episcopalians, Bob is a Connecticut native, and Dick is from Massachusetts. Their life...   Read More

Rev. June Norris

June Norris was born in Colorado on June 30, 1922, and raised in the Baptist Church in southern Illinois.  She was married at 15 and had three children by age 20.  “Back in those days, kids did get...   Read More

Rev. David K. North

Rev. David K. North was born on July 4, 1955, the fifth of six children, into a devout, Christian family in Alton, Illinois. His family was very active in St. John Baptist Church. He was licensed to preach the...   Read More

Father Robert Nugent

Father Robert Nugent is a Roman Catholic priest and a member of the Religious Order, the Society of the Divine Savior. He was born, educated in Norristown, Pennsylvania, and ordained for the Archdiocese...   Read More

Connell Hill O'Donovan

Connell Hill O'Donovan was born in Syracuse, Utah in 1961, son of Claude Hill O'Donovan (of Paso Robles, Calif.) and Patsy Kaye Beazer (of Syracuse, Utah).  Raised in Fairbanks, Alaska, where his...   Read More

Rep. Jeanette Mott Oxford

Jeanette Mott Oxford grew up in 1950's Elizabethtown, Illinois, the daughter of Raymond and Marie Oxford. After selling their general store when Jeanette was five, they worked as farmers outside of the town....   Read More

Chris Paige

Chris Paige is a transgender identified lesbian who seeks justice through her work as a writer, organizer, and educator. Baptized in a Christian Reformed Church in Lansing, Michigan, in 1971, Chris was confirmed...   Read More

Joseph Palacios

Joseph Palacios was born in 1950 in Glendale, California to Joe and Martha Palacios. His father, a sixth-generation Texan with a strong social consciousness, worked as the grounds manager at a golf course in the...   Read More

Stephen Parelli & Jose Ortiz

Rev. Stephen R. Parelli, formerly an ordained evangelical Baptist minister who pastored in the states of New York and New Jersey, became the Executive Director of Other Sheep in 2005. Other Sheep (...   Read More

Armando Pastor

Angel Armando Pastor Nolasco is coordinator of the social action and HIV/AIDS ministry among the Latino community, operated by St. Matthew's Lutheran Church in Union City, New Jersey.  Armando grew up in a...   Read More

Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik

Dr. Devdutt Pattanaik is the first person to acknowledge, compile and comment on Queer ideas in Hindu metaphysics and mythology. Devdutt (born 1970) was the third child of Prafulla and Sabitri Pattanaik,...   Read More

Rev. Fred Pattison

Fred Pattison, founder of The Evangelical Network (T-E-N), has written this first-person account of his life journey and the history of T-E-N.    I came into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ...   Read More

Rev. Sylvia Pennington

The Rev. Sylvia Pennington was an early pioneer in the Christian GLBT community as an ordained heterosexual woman sharing God’s all-inclusive love with "whosoevers" all over the world.   Sylvia began life...   Read More

Rev. Elder Troy Perry

The Rev. Elder Dr. Troy D. Perry founded Metropolitan Community Churches with 12 people in his living room in Los Angeles on October 6, 1968. Since that time, the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community...   Read More

Rev. Michael Piazza

Michael S. Piazza is a spiritual visionary, author and social justice advocate who currently serves as Dean of the Cathedral of Hope, the world’s largest liberal Christian church with a primary...   Read More

Rev. Dr. Stephen Pieters

The Rev. Dr. A. Stephen Pieters was born on August 2, 1952, and was raised in Andover, Massachusetts, where his father chaired the Mathematics Department at Phillips Academy. Steve attended Phillips Andover in...   Read More

Rev. Ronnie Pigg

Rev. Ronnie Pigg was born third of five children and raised in a  small rural southeastern Oklahoma town. There, at the age of 12, he surrendered his life to Christ and, at age 14, accepted the call to the...   Read More

Robert C. Pingpank & Canon Richard T. Nolan

Born three days and 120 miles apart, Dick Nolan and Bob Pingpank celebrated their 50th Anniversary in 2005. Both cradle Episcopalians, Bob is a Connecticut native, and Dick is from Massachusetts. Their life...   Read More

Dr. W. Norman Pittenger

(William) Norman Pittenger (July 23, 1905 - June 19, 1997) was a foremost 20th century pioneer in the exploration of human sexuality within a Christian context. His 1967 Time for Consent: A Christian's...   Read More

Rev. Richard Ploen

The Rev. Richard Ploen was the first ordained minister to offer help to Rev.Troy Perry when he started Metropolitan Community Church. Ploen grew up in southern California. From childhood he attended the Culver City...   Read More

Rev. Loey Powell

The Rev. Loey Powell has been out and in active ordained ministry for more than 25 years.  She earned her M.Div. degree at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California, in 1977 and was called to serve...   Read More

Rev. Martin Preston

Martin Preston was one of the founding members of the Gay Christian Movement (now Lesbian & Gay Christian Movement) in the U.K. He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, and Regent's Park College, Oxford,...   Read More

Emery Prickett

Emery Lee Prickett was born August 23, 1948 in Torrance, Los Angeles County, California, to Leroy and Norma Prickett. He committed suicide on January 14, 1985 in Covina, California.   Emery lived much of...   Read More

Rev. Dusty Pruitt

Rev. Dusty Pruitt was born on July 19, 1946, in Ballinger, Texas, the firstborn of three sisters, one 15 months younger and the other 12 years younger. Dusty grew up in Bronte, Texas, a town of just under 1,000...   Read More

Chris Purdom

Christopher William Purdom is an amateur Philadelphia poet, graphic artist, and self-proclaimed heretic who was a steering committee member of the Fight the Right Network from 1994 to 1997, co-coordinator of the...   Read More

John Rash

John P. Rash was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in May 1942. He was an only child in an academic family--his father, with a Ph.D. in petroleum geology from Yale, was VP of research at Esso Corporation (now...   Read More

Rev. Adrian Ravarour, Ph.D.

Adrian Ravarour, Ph.D., is a priest, spiritual artist, and social activist who co-founded Vanguard in San Francisco with Billy Garrison in  the fall of 1965. His early ministries were with Bishop Mikhail...   Read More

Right Rev. Derek Rawcliffe

Derek Alec Rawcliffe, the son of a tobacconist, was born in Manchester, England, on July 8 1921. When the family moved to Gloucester he attended Sir Thomas Rich's School and also the cathedral to which he was...   Read More

Ernie Reaugh

Earnest O. Reaugh was born January 12, 1923, in Iowa. He was a bomber pilot in World War II. He graduated from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and worked in the retail clothing business. He moved to...   Read More

Mark Rees

Mark (nee Brenda) Rees, the sole survivor of premature twins, was born in December 1942 in Tunbridge Wells, Kent. A sister was born in 1946. Although their parents were not active church members, the children were...   Read More

Dr. Sylvia Rhue

Sylvia Rhue is a writer, activist, filmmaker, and producer. She is a native of southern California where she was raised as a 4th generation Seventh Day Adventist. She was reared in a middle-class environment with...   Read More

Edgar Richards

Edgar G. Richards was born January 25, 1962, in Kingston, Jamaica, to Estelle Richards and Edgar Richards, Sr. At the age of five, after the death of his father, his mother moved Edgar and his brother...   Read More

Walter C. Righter

Walter C. Righter was an Episcopal bishop who in 1996 was brought to trial and acquitted of a charge of heresy for ordaining an openly gay man to the priesthood. Righter was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on...   Read More

Falcon River

Falcon River was born in 1952, and lived in Columbus, Ohio, until the early 1960s, when her family moved back to the rural mountain country of West Virginia. During this interview, she described her family...   Read More

Jade River

Samantha Jade River was born in 1950 in Bellefountaine, Ohio. Her family moved to Louisville, Kentucky in 1952 where they owned and managed businesses and were devoted Presbyterians. Until she graduated...   Read More

Rev. Frank Edson Robertson

The Rev. Frank Edson Robertson may be the first religious educator to be hired as an openly gay person to a position in a church as Minister of Religious Education. He was open about his sexual orientation to...   Read More

Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson

Vicki Gene Robinson was born in Fayette County, Kentucky, on May 29, 1947. His name honors his parents Victor and Imogene, and he has refused to make it more elegantly masculine by changing it. His parents worked as...   Read More

Rev. Elder Nori Rost

The Rev. Elder Nori Rost was elected to serve on Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Church’s Board of Elders at the 1999 General Conference in Los Angeles. She became a licensed clergyperson in UFMCC in...   Read More

Rev. Armando Sanchez

Rev. Dr. Armando Sanchez Bermudez was born in Nicaragua (Central America) in 1966. He has theological and humanistic formation--since entering formation for clergy and religious consecration in the Roman...   Read More

Rev. Elder James E. Sandmire

James Sandmire was raised in northeastern Oklahoma. His family, descended from Mormon pioneers, and most of his relatives are still devout, active Mormons. His family was a close and loving one, and during his...   Read More

Rabbi Elizabeth Tikvah Sarah

Rabbi Elizabeth Tikvah Sarah is a radical feminist and writer/editor, who was active in the Women’s Liberation Movement in Britain during the late 1970s and early 80s. She was a member of the Lesbian Line...   Read More

Rev. James Schexnayder

The Rev. James Schexnayder was born in 1937 in south central Louisiana to Leon & Ethel Schexnayder. He was the youngest of four children, having a sister and two brothers. The Southern Cajun culture of Lafayette,...   Read More

Pastor Bradley Schmeling

Pastor Bradley Schmeling is a Lutheran minister who led the push for acceptance of LGBT clergy with partners in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. He was a native of Ohio and attended undergraduate...   Read More

John Schott

John H. Schott III, long-time leader of Dignity USA in Philadelphia and nationally, was born on June 25, 1938, in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania into a family with two sisters and two brothers. He was active with Boy...   Read More

Rev. John L. Selders, Jr.

The Right Rev. John L. Selders, Jr., is an ordained minister serving the United Church of Christ (UCC) as the organizing pastor of Amistad UCC in Hartford, Connecticut. John was born and raised in an extended...   Read More

Vanessa Sheridan

Vanessa Sheridan is a pioneering author in the field of transgender Christian theology.  Since 1991 she has been speaking, writing, researching, consulting, and providing training on transgender issues for...   Read More

Rev. Jeffrey Michael Shirilau

Deacon Jeffery Shirilau (1953-1993) was the co-founder of the Ecumenical Catholic Church along with his husband Mark. The ECC is a Christian denomination combining the theology and liturgy of the Church Universal...   Read More

Archbishop Mark Steven Shirilau

Archbishop Mark Shirilau is the founder of the Ecumenical Catholic Church, a Christian denomination combining the theology and liturgy of the Church Universal with a liberal approach to social issues. ...   Read More

Fr. Zachary Shore

Fr. Zachary Shore was born Joseph Michael Shore in 1937 to William and Birdie Shore, along with his two brothers in an observant Catholic household. His involvement with the church began early on in attendance to...   Read More

Rev. Dr. Robert E. Shore-Goss

Robert E. Goss was ordained a Jesuit priest in 1976, and he resigned the Society of Jesus as an unlaicized priest in 1978. He served as a chaplain for Dignity Boston until 1982. Goss was co-founder of Food...   Read More

Rabbi Sheila Shulman

Rabbi Sheila Shulman was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1936 into a largely Yiddish-speaking environment, though many folk in her parents’ generation were so anxious to become "American" that they ended up in a...   Read More

Rev. James Siefkes

James Siefkes was born in Iowa into a fourth generation Lutheran clergy family. His early childhood was spent in a parsonage in Ohio. His teen years, secondary and college education were completed in San Antonio,...   Read More

Bill Silver

Bill Silver (September 8, 1947- May 26, 2007) was the first openly gay candidate for the ministry of word and sacrament in the United Presbyterian Church in the USA (now the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)). When his...   Read More

Archbishop Bruce Simpson

Bruce Simpson was born and raised in Audubon, New Jersey. At the age 18, he enlisted in the United States Air Force during Vietnam and was assigned to nuclear security. Upon receiving an honorable discharge,...   Read More

David Sindt

David Bailey Sindt (1940-1986), founder of the major Presbyterian lesbian and gay organization, was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on December 8, 1940, and grew up in the Twin Cities area.    As a youth,...   Read More

Rev. Elder Freda Smith

The Rev. Elder Freda Smith is the former Vice-Moderator of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches; a political activist in California; and an advocate for women's and minority concerns. She...   Read More

Richard Smith

Rev. Dr. Richard Smith, openly gay priest serving at the Episcopal Church of St. John the Evangelist in San Francisco, was asked by a parishioner to relate his life journey.  This is what Richard wrote: ...   Read More

Dr. Sharon Smith

Dr. Sharon Smith (1962-2011) passed away on 13 March 2011, following a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. A dear and trusted colleague, Sharon was the author of an outstanding PhD thesis entitled Buddhism,...   Read More

Rev. Willie Smith

Willie Smith was born in Yuma, Arizona, where he was raised as a member of the Seventh Day Adventist Church. He was a part of the technical department as a teenager at the Seventh Day Adventist General...   Read More

Rev. Matthew Smucker

The Rev. Matthew J. Smucker was the first openly gay person ordained in the Church of the Brethren. In April 2002, the Michigan District Board recognized his call to ministry at Chicago Theological Seminary, where...   Read More

Randi Solberg

Randi Oklevik Solberg was born in September, 1963. She grew up by her loving parents in the town of Halden in southeast Norway, near the border with Sweden. Randi's childhood and adolescent years were...   Read More

Rev. Jorge Sosa

 The Rev. Elder Jorge Sosa was the second of a three children family, the only son with two wonderful sisters. Sosa received a ministry call early in life and wanted to join the Missionaries of Our Lady of...   Read More

Ken South

Ken South considers himself one of the first of the Baby Boomers; he was born in December of 1945, shortly before the official start date of 1/1/1946 for that generation.

His childhood years were...   Read More

Rev. Dr. Jane Adams Spahr

The Rev. Dr. Jane Adams Spahr, Janie, as she prefers to be called, describes herself as a lesbian, feminist, Presbyterian minister committed to justice issues for the lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender community,...   Read More

Rabbi Julie Spitzer

Rabbi Julie Ringold Spitzer was born in Jacksonville, Florida, graduated from Wolfson High School, the University of Florida (Alpha Epsilon Phi) and received her Masters of Hebrew Letters and Masters of Jewish...   Read More

The Rt. Rev. John Shelby Spong

John Shelby (Jack) Spong was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1931. He was raised in a working-class household in the segregated South. His father passed away when he was twelve years old, and...   Read More

Kevin R. Steen

Kevin Russell Steen attended Abbey Prep School in Richardton, North Dakota, a Benedictine boarding school. He graduated from there in 1957 and joined the religious community, making temporary vows as a Benedictine in...   Read More

Virginia Stephenson

Virginia Stephenson was born in Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1951. She was named William at birth and adopted at six months of age by a Southern Baptist minister and his wife. The family lived in Salisbury,...   Read More

Marsha Stevens-Pino

Marsha Stevens-Pino was born Marsha Carter in Pomona, California, in 1952. She grew up in a troubled household that was impacted by alcoholism. At age 16, she found solace and new life at a beachside evangelistic...   Read More

Rev. Canon Janine Stock

Reverend Canon Janine Stock, the daughter of a Hispanic immigrant and a Mohawk Indian, was raised to be the “non-traditional traditionalist” that most of her friends know her to be. Adamant that everyone has a place...   Read More

Rev. James Stoll

The Rev. James Stoll was born in 1936 in Connecticut. He studied at the Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts, at San Francisco State University and at the Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley,...   Read More

Rev. Sheikh Jamshed Ken Storer

Kenneth Mark Storer was born into a hard-working Mormon family of A & W Root Beer stand proprietors on March 19, 1940, in Idaho Falls, Idaho. Some of the very first sweetness he served came in a mug. His first...   Read More

Bishop David Strong

Bishop David C. Strong is a native of Cairo, Illinois. He was born to the family of the Rev. Elder Melvin & Mrs. Bertha Strong. He is the grandson of Ida Julius and Mattie Julius Brown, who raised him and...   Read More

Beth Stroud

Beth Stroud served as an ordained United Methodist pastor for six years before losing her clergy credentials in a 2004 church trial. In the trial, Beth was found guilty of “practices declared by the United...   Read More

Dr. Elizabeth Stuart

Dr. Elizabeth Stuart, was the first theologian in the United Kingdom specialising in lesbian/gay/queer theology to be appointed to a professorial chair when she was appointed Professor of Christian Theology at...   Read More

Dr. Diana Swancutt

Diana Swancutt is an award- and grant-winning author, teacher, and scholar who served as faculty in New Testament and Christian origins at Yale Divinity School for twelve years, from 2000-2012. She earned the...   Read More

Rev. Dr. Erin Swenson

Erin Swenson broke new ground within mainstream Christian Protestant faith groups on October 22, 1996, when the Presbytery of Greater Atlanta, by a vote of 186 to 161, sustained her ordination as a Presbyterian...   Read More

The Rt. Rev. William Swing

Bishop William Swing was born in Huntington, West Virginia in 1936. He grew up involved with a sense of awe towards the outdoors, and his appreciation of the majesty of nature would inform his faith in the coming...   Read More

Rev. Hong Tan

The Rev. Hong K. Tan was elected to the Board of Elders of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches in 1993 during his term as District Coordinator of the European North Sea District.  Rev....   Read More

Rev. Neil Thomas

Rev. Neil Thomas is currently the Senior Pastor of the Metropolitan Community Church, Los Angeles, the founding church of Metropolitan Community Churches. As a native of Bournemouth, England,  Thomas grew up in...   Read More

Mark Thompson

Mark Thompson, author and editor, was born and raised on the Monterey Peninsula, California, during the 1950s and '60s. In 1973, Thompson helped found the Gay Students Coalition at San Francisco State...   Read More

Rev. Leanne McCall Tigert

The Rev. Dr. Leanne McCall Tigert is a fellow in the American Association of Pastoral Counselors, licensed pastoral psychotherapist, adjunct faculty in pastoral care and counseling at Andover Newton Theological...   Read More

Dr. James S. Tinney

Dr. James S. Tinney was a leading authority on the history of the Black press and on Black Pentecostalism. When he identified himself publicly as a gay man and founded a church for Black lesbians and gays, he was...   Read More

Dr. Mary A. Tolbert

Mary A. Tolbert is the George H. Atkinson Professor of Biblical Studies at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California (since 1994). Since the Fall of 2000, she is also the Founding Executive Director of...   Read More

Rev. Dr. Emilie M. Townes

The Rev. Dr. Emilie M. Townes is an American Baptist minister and womanist ethicist. A native of Durham, North Carolina, she earned her doctorate in the joint Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary and...   Read More

Jim Toy

Jim Toy was the first TBLGQ person in Michigan to come out of the closet publicly, during his speech at an anti-Vietnam War rally in Kennedy Square, Detroit, in April, 1970. At the rally Jim was representing the...   Read More

Leo Treadway

Leo Treadway is most well-known for his leadership of Lutherans Concerned/North America; the development of the Wingspan Ministry at St. Paul-Reformation Lutheran Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, and through that ...   Read More

Dr. Rembert Truluck

Rembert S. Truluck was born in 1934 and grew up in Clinton, South Carolina, a rural county seat with a Presbyterian college. His family was much involved in the Baptist Church and he followed their example....   Read More

Rev. Elias Tseng

Rev. Elias Tseng graduated from the Taiwan Theological College and Seminary with the degree of Bachelor of Arts in Religion in 1995. He is recognized as the first openly gay pastor in Taiwan. In June, 1999, Rev....   Read More

Larry Uhrig

Larry Jo Uhrig was born on April 18, 1945 in Reading, Pennsylvania, to Joe and Arlene Uhrig. His identical twin brother, Ronald, later became a police officer in Arlington, Virginia. He also had a sister Bonnie....   Read More

Yvo Manuel Vas Dias

Yvo Manuel Vas Dias was born on 11 June 1960 in Amsterdam. He is a transsexual man, a Buddhist with a Portuguese-Jewish background. A student of Ringu Tulku Rinpoche, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche and a member of the...   Read More

Anthony Venn-Brown

Anthony Venn-Brown was born in 1951 and raised in a family with a strong Anglican Church background (Anglo-Catholic).  His family were very committed to church life during his early years but as a teenager...   Read More

Dan Vera

Dan Vera is the managing editor of White Crane Journal and a founding director of White Crane Institute. White Crane Institute promotes the study of the role of unconventional or queer sexualities and...   Read More

Aasmund Vik

Aasmund Robert Vik was born April 17, 1947, on a farm in Fyresdal, a remote part of  Telemark, Norway. He was raised in a strict Lutheran village in Setesdal. He studied college at Bø, also in Telemark. During...   Read More

Richard Vincent

Richard Vincent was born January 29, 1924, in Kirksville, Missouri. Growing up and going to school there, he later moved to Los Angeles for a year and then joined the Marine Corps during World War II, serving in...   Read More

Rev. Rebecca Voelkel

 Rebecca Mary MacKenzie Voelkel was born in 1969 into a very Protestant and very politically-active family. At the time, her father, William R. Voelkel (Bill) was a United Church of Christ minister (the...   Read More

Joan Wakeford

Joan Wakeford was born in East London, South Africa, in 1928. Her mother had complications with her pregnancy so came to East London to be with her mother who was a midwife for Joan's birth. Joan's father...   Read More

Rt. Rev. Dr. Lynn Elizabeth Walker

Lynn Walker was born in 1952 in Orange County, New York, as an only child and first grandson in a large, extended (and not very devout) Roman Catholic family of mostly second-generation northern European...   Read More

Rev. Bernd Wangerin

The Rev. Bernd Herman Wangerin was born on August 5, 1940, in Hamburg, Germany. His parents were Fritz Wangerin and Hildegard born Ronnau. Life in Germany was difficult during the wartime and its aftermath: baby...   Read More

Rev. Howard Warren

The Rev. Howard B. Warren, Jr., affectionately known as "God's Glorious Gadfly," was born September 7, 1934, in St. Louis, Missouri. He was a graduate of McCormick Theological Seminary; and he held degrees from...   Read More

Rev. David Weekley

The Rev. David Weekley was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1951. He graduated from Cleveland State University (B.A. cum laude in psychology) and then completed graduate studies in the phenomenology of religion at Miami...   Read More

Rev. Howard Wells

The Rev. Howard Ray Wells was born in 1944 in Houston, Texas, to Virginia and Ray Wells. He attended Houston public schools and a Southern Baptist church. He earned a B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the...   Read More

Dr. Mona West

The Rev. Mona West was ordained in the Southern Baptist denomination in 1987 and transferred her ordination credentials to the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Churches (MCC) in 1992.  Mona earned her...   Read More

Rev. Melvin E. Wheatley

 Bishop Melvin E. Wheatley, Jr. a champion of equal rights in the United Methodist Church, died March 1, 2009,after a prolonged illness. He was 93 years old. Recognized in 2000 with a proclamation by the City...   Read More

Rev. Robert P. Wheatly

The Rev. Robert P. Wheatly (born September 17, 1919, died October 31, 2002) was the second Director of the Office of Gay and Lesbian Concerns of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) from 1977 to 1986. He...   Read More

Carol A. White

Carol A. White was born in December 1939 in Alexandria, Louisiana. Her parents enrolled her in Methodist Sunday School the day she was born and First Methodist Church was a huge part of her life until she left home...   Read More

Rev. Elder Jean White

Rev. Elder Jean White was born in South London (England) in 1941 and grew up in a Brethren family.  She received her training as a State Registered Nurse at the London Teaching Hospital, Whitechapel, London....   Read More

Rev. Dr. Mel White

The Rev. Dr. Mel White has been a Christian minister, author, and filmmaker all his adult life. Raised as a evangelical Christian, taught that homosexuality was a sin, he fought to overcome his own homosexual...   Read More

Rev. Paul Whiting

Paul was born into the Pentecostal Assemblies in Great Britain. As a child he remembers Donald Gee, a Pentecostal pioneer, as a visitor to the family home and as a student he became friends with Pentecostal...   Read More

Kay Whitlock

Kay Whitlock is the National Representative for LGBT Issues for the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker organization working for peace and demilitarization, human rights, social justice, economic...   Read More

Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman (1819-1892) biography written by Mitchell Santine Gould.   As Reverend Troy Perry recently pointed out, “Yes, Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass is beloved by all people and speaks to all people --...   Read More

Amara Das Wilhelm

Amara Das is a disciple of His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada in the Madhva-Gaudiya line of Vaishnava Hinduism. He joined the International Society for Krishna Consciousness in 1974 and received...   Read More

Rev. Dr. D. Mark Wilson

Rev. Dr. Doniel Mark Wilson was born the youngest of six children on September 27, 1960, to the proud parentage of a single mother, from whom he learned strong faith in God to dream beyond life’s apparent...   Read More

Rev. Elder Nancy L. Wilson

Rev. Elder Nancy L. Wilson has been a part of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches since 1972 when, at age 22 and in her third week of seminary at Boston University School of Theology, she...   Read More

Rev. Robert W. Wood

The Rev. Robert W. Wood, author of the first book published in the U.S. on Christianity and homosexuality, was born May 21, 1923, in Youngstown, Ohio, to Edith and Harold Wood. Robert enlisted in the army after...   Read More

Rev. Dr. Judith Hoch Wray

Rev. Dr. Judith Hoch Wray is a biblical scholar, a teacher, a homiletician, a writer and a carpenter. Coming out as lesbian in 1969, she has remained committed to integrating her own sexuality and spirituality,...   Read More

John R. Yoakam, Ph.D.

John (Jack) Yoakam was born on January 11, 1947, in Toledo, Ohio. He and his family attended Monroe Street United Methodist Church, where he was baptized and confirmed, sang in the Boys Choir, and participated in...   Read More

Bo Young

Bo Young is the publisher and editorial director of White Crane Journal, the Journal of Gay Spirit, Wisdom and Culture.   Formerly the poetry editor and associate editor for White Crane ...   Read More

Frank Zerilli

Frank Zerilli was born on December 2, 1944, in the Bronx, New York. His family moved to Queens when he was three years old and to East Meadow, New York, when he was eight. He was raised in the Lutheran Church. Frank...   Read More