The Faith Divide: LGBTQ find unexpected hope - On Faith at washingtonpost.com

LGBTQ find unexpected hope

Today's guest blogger is Robert Chlala, a Campus Engagement Associate at Interfaith Youth Core. He has worked with youth community organizations from Los Angeles to Chicago for over ten years and is an active youth leader with the Soka Gakkai International Buddhist organization.

News had recently broke about the suicide of yet another LGBTQ youth in the U.S., the latest in a rash that has brought to light the exclusion and violence that continues to plague those marked "different."

Speaking to a top conservative leader and member of the Young Republicans on her campus, Lily Connor calmly relayed her story of how she has worked to create a space for interfaith dialogue in the social justice campaigns she leads. She pauses for him to share his experiences, but he is unsure where he fits in. As she guides him he lights up as he realizes that he too has a story: that he is living interfaith cooperation in that very moment.

This could be your typical story of a growing interfaith student movement, one that we hear at Interfaith Youth Core almost daily. But I'm leaving out a few important details:

• Lily is transgender, and the leader of Feminist Voices and several other campus action groups.
• The campus is Southwestern University, located in the small, conservative commuter town of Georgetown, Texas.

In the face of a more-than-uphill struggle, Lily could have stayed home that day and forgotten she had ever heard the word "interfaith." She could have chosen not to brave the possibility of awkward glances, retreated from trying to give LGTBQ people a voice in growing social movements.

Instead, as Lily explained in her application to IFYC's Interfaith Leadership Institute in Washington, DC - which she will attend this weekend with some 300-some college students, faculty and staff from across the country - she knew she could not just stay home. She wrote, "My faith informs the social work I engage in, just as other people's religious or secular values inform theirs... In short, social justice and interfaith cooperation need each other."

So she came to the table.

As did the several members of Auburn University's LGBTQ organization, who worked with with two dozen multicultural and faith-based student leaders on a beautiful fall Sunday last month to understand how interfaith cooperation is integral to all their efforts at the Alabama public university.

As did Ted Lewis, the Assistant Director for Sexual and Gender diversity at University of North Carolina - Charlotte, who participated in an intensive interfaith workshop we held last Friday. Glowing, he shared how he was inspired by several local churches' efforts to build bridges with LGBTQ communities.

Ted and his fellow staff, listening to the stories of young students from across the South that IFYC has encountered in the last few months, beamed with the understanding that the interfaith movement isn't just something that happens in remote big cities up North or on the West Coast. It is already happening in neighborhoods and on campuses a stone's throw away.

At a time when perhaps we have never needed it more, this growing movement is creating a space for young people - from Kentucky to California - to articulate their values and truly come as they are, towards creating a better world.

This weekend, hundreds of these dedicated college students and faculty, of all religions, ethnic and racial backgrounds, sexual orientations, and gender identities, will gather to take this vision to the next level.

As part of IFYC's Interfaith Leadership Institute, they will gain tools to take interfaith cooperation home to their campuses, towards tackling some of the most pressing social issues of our time. As part of the Better Together campaign kicking off this fall, they will change the conversation on faith and values.

What they may not realize is that - by sitting in the room together - they are already moving the course of history. They will confront their fears and prejudices. They will ask questions they were long afraid to confront.

And they will understand that they are poised to overcome the verbal and physical violence that drive young people to hopelessness, to defeat the virulent xenophobia and intolerance that colored this last summer, and to build a world where we are truly better together.

The content of this blog reflects the views of its author and does not necessarily reflect the views of either Eboo Patel or the Interfaith Youth Core.

By Eboo Patel | October 19, 2010; 11:00 AM ET | Category: Interfaith Issues , Morality , Personal Religion , Religion & Leadership Save & Share:
Previous: Ayodhya verdict demands forward-looking focus | Next: Let's not be like Juan