Queer and Christian: Initiative seeks to unite on Pride weekend

In their first year of ordained ministry, two local clergy members are bringing together 30 faith communities to celebrate Toledo Pride.

The Revs. Megan Allen-Miller and Melanie Forrey were ordained in December and January, respectively, and are both new to the area. After attending Pride last year as spectators, the two decided to build something bigger. They came up with the Better Together: Faith Communities United for Pride initiative.

“We were seeing these amazing [faith] communities, but kind of like here and there and there and there,” said Reverend Allen-Miller, who serves at both St. Andrew’s and All Saints Episcopal churches. “What would it look like, instead of having all of these individual communities representing love and inclusion separately, representing it together?”

Pastor Forrey estimates 300 people will join the effort to march in the Pride Parade, representing at least nine different faith traditions.

“People have been hungry for a way to participate in a bigger way or a new way,” said the new associate pastor at Zoar Lutheran Church. “It’s hard to engage in something this big and exciting with small numbers, so people have been very encouraged for a space where we can come together and they get to celebrate.”

Equality Toledo will kick off Toledo Pride with its annual multifaith worship service at 7 p.m. Thursday at St. Lucas Lutheran Church, 745 Walbridge Ave., Toledo.

At his first Toledo Pride in 2019, Anthony Davis experienced a section of people who didn’t support the message of the event.

“I was on a float, and all the people are just cheering us on and they’re loving us,” recalled the drag performer who goes by the name Solo Jackson. “Next thing you know, we get in an area where there’s just quietness, and I’m still screaming, ‘Happy Pride,’ and someone said, ‘God bless you,’ but the way she said it was like she was disgusted of me.”

Every Pride event since then, Jackson has felt nervous about who might come to hate on participants, but said he won’t let them stop him.

“They could have been at Bible study or something other than focusing on us,” he noted. “They’re always there to try to stop our joy.”

Back to church

Jackson wasn’t raised in a church but had early experiences with unaccepting pastors who visited his sick grandmother, which helped define his view of religion. The pastors would make comments suggesting their views on gender roles and masculine versus feminine interests, as well as appropriate ways to dress.

“I never lost the feelings that you get when I think of God and I think of everything he has done for me,” said Jackson, who also serves as the deputy director of the Toledo Queer Black Collective. “But it’s Christianity, the people who praise him, who have different points of view, who have very much changed my point of view.”

While he said he hasn’t been to a church that was welcoming, he would “most definitely” be open to exploring faith in the future, as long as there is total inclusion and acceptance.

“I don’t come across many Christian LGBTQ+ people, unless they were ingrained in it and never left the system,” Jackson said. “Or if they are, they’re fighting something within themselves.”

Joanna Whaley knew the response she would get from people when she came out as transgender, but also knew how important faith was to her. So, her gender transition was a primarily theological process.

“I prepared myself theologically for the rejection of my Christian friends before I came out,” Whaley said. “I thought maybe 10 percent about the physical — the body and what I would wear, the makeup and all that — but I would say 90 percent of the time was me working through and processing, ‘How am I going to hold this when everyone that says they love me, suddenly they hate me?’

“I kept my faith because I centered it in my spirituality.”

Whaley is a musician, podcaster, chaplain, and advocate in southeast Michigan. She had worked at some mega churches there until her identity was not accepted, but she eventually found a home at First United Methodist Church in Royal Oak, Mich.

After noticing that many LGBTQ people missed worship music, she decided to make her own, but from a queer perspective.

“I make music that queer people can listen to without harming themselves theologically,” Whaley said. “I try to redeem some of the things people heard [that] was weaponized against them. … I sing those songs and give them re-ownership of that language.”

Meanwhile, Tammy McInerney, program manager at Equality Toledo, has taken a step back from church in recent years.

She left the Lutheran church in the early 2000s when her congregation’s leadership decided not to become inclusive. She then stepped away from her United Methodist congregation in 2019 as the denomination argued over its stance on homosexuality.

“They said, ‘Everybody’s welcome here,’” McInerney said. “OK, well, everybody’s welcome here, but there’s a huge ‘but’ after that: You won’t get married here. You can't be a pastor.

“That doesn’t feel comfortable to me anymore. So, we stepped away.”

Years of denomination-wide debate led to more than 7,500 congregations splitting from the United Methodist Church, which this year changed its teaching on homosexuality to be more inclusive.

“I am very grateful that they are changing. I just am not sure if I can go back to that kind of culture again,” McInerney said, noting that she is in a “weird church limbo” and figuring out where religion falls in her life.

With the absence of church, she does feel like something is missing, but she has found a sense of community elsewhere that embraces her and her family, McInerney said.

Reverend Allen-Miller said she hasn’t met someone who had an easy time walking away from the church.

“Most of them have taken steps to heal the hurt that has been done,” she said. “And for some people what that looks like is finding the divine in a non-religious space.

“Even for a lot of folks that come back, it can take them time,” she continued. “And sometimes the time is not necessarily learning to trust God — it’s learning to trust the people around you, because that’s really where the harm comes from.”

Reconciling

Advocates said they don’t expect to see complete change in their lifetime, but offered suggestions for faith communities to become more welcoming.

They encouraged congregations to be less judgmental, expand their viewpoints, not have a hidden agenda to change people, work LGBTQ into their religion, and seek out safe space and allyship trainings.

“I can say that we’re welcoming and supportive and inclusive,” Reverend Allen-Miller said. “But that doesn’t necessarily mean that someone who walks in our door receives what we are calling as that.”

So, placing a Pride flag or other visible messages of inclusion are important for visitors — and church members — to know they’re in an affirming space.

“I guarantee you, if Jesus was here now, he wouldn’t like what’s going on. There’d be some flipping of tables,” McInerney said. “Jesus loved everybody — I hate to say people that have sinned, since I don’t believe this is a sin — but he embraced everybody, even the sinners.”

Whaley added that it’s important for queer Christians to be represented in conversations with church leaders, for congregations to hold their pastors accountable, and to lovingly engage in conversations with people of differing beliefs.

“To anyone who’s reading, if they are LGBTQ, just know that they absolutely can still hold their faith and be who they are and love who they love,” Whaley said.

“And to the person that’s reading and is mad at me right now for being queer and being Christian, my hope is that you can look beyond your offense and see the human being who is created in the image of God, just as you are.”