Kai found Jesus as a teenager. A person of white and Hawaiian descent, Kai now goes by gender-neutral pronouns and identifies as “māhū,” the traditional Hawaiian term for someone in-between masculine and feminine. But when they first became Christian, the high-schooler identified as gay – and was committed to celibacy. Kai – a pseudonym to […]
Category: Faith
Pope Francis, who changed Catholic approach to LGBTQs, dies
This article originally appeared in Bay Area Reporter. Pope Francis, who made the Catholic Church less hostile toward LGBTQ+ people, died Monday in Rome. He was 88. For most of his life, he was Jorge Mario Bergoglio, and at the time he was elected the church’s 266th pontiff, he was the cardinal archbishop of Buenos […]
“But the Bible says!”: How one mistake accidentally sparked today’s anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric
This article originally appeared in Philadelphia Gay News as part of the LGBTQ+ History Month series. After months of deliberation, David Sheldon Fearon wrote a letter in 1959 to the committee responsible for developing the Revised Standard Version (RSV) of the Bible. Fearon, recently deceased, was then a 21-year-old seminary student in Canada who hoped […]
What Pope Francis’ new declaration means for LGBTQ+ Catholics
Pope Francis released a declaration Monday regarding the blessing of same-sex couples. In “Declaration Fiducia Supplicans On the Pastoral Meaning of Blessings,” Francis addresses the act of performing blessings on same-sex couples, a practice that the Catholic Church has not previously sanctioned. Francis, who has addressed LGBTQ+ issues in unprecedented ways, has taken a path […]
