Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum prepares for her last service at the Masonic Hall in New York on June 28.Andres Kudacki / AP
For more than three decades, Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum has led the nation’s largest LGBTQ synagogue through the myriad ups and downs of the modern gay-rights movement — through the AIDS crisis, the murder of Matthew Shepard, the historic civil-rights advances that included marriage equality, and mostly recently the backlash against transgender rights.
She is now stepping down from that role and shifting into retirement. The New York City synagogue that she led for 32 years — Congregation Beit Simchat Torah in midtown Manhattan — will have to grapple with its identity after being defined by its celebrity rabbi for so long.
Her retirement also comes at a challenging moment for the LGBTQ-rights movement. Same-sex marriage is legal nationwide, but conservative politicians are enacting restrictions on transgender healthcare, restricting LGBTQ curriculum in schools, and proposing bans on the performances of drag queens.
“I’ve been blessed and privileged to have the opportunity to use the gifts I have, on behalf of God’s vision for the world,” Kleinbaum said in an interview. “I’m very, very lucky that I’ve been able to do this. I just feel like now is the time to make room for a younger generation.”
Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum sings during her last service at the Masonic Hall in New York on June 28.Andres Kudacki / AP
Embraced by her congregation and left-leaning politicians, Kleinbaum, 65, taught an unapologetic progressive vision for Judaism that resonated beyond the enclave of Manhattan and liberal Judaism. When Donald Trump was elected president, Kleinbaum had the synagogue do outreach to Muslims. The congregation also built an immigration clinic to help LGBTQ refugees in hostile parts of the world get asylum in the U.S.
“It is a religious calling to help the immigrant. I see that it is just as deeply important for (the synagogue) as it is leading Friday night services,” Kleinbaum said.
Congregation Bet Simach Torah, better known as CBST, has roughly 1,000 paying members. About 4,000 Jews, from nonreligious to Orthodox, show up to the temple’s High Holy Day services, historically held in New York’s Jacob Javits Convention Center on the West Side of Manhattan.
The temple’s regular congregants have been a Who’s Who of media and LGBTQ historical figures. Edie Windsor, who sued and won to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act, was in regular attendance while she was alive. Andy Cohen, of “Real Housewives” fame, is there regularly. Joan Rivers showed up for Yom Kippur. Kleinbaum’s wife is Randi Weingarten, the head of the nation’s biggest teachers union.
Appointed in 1992, Kleinbaum spent much of her first year burying members of her congregation, many of them dying from AIDS. The need for a salaried rabbi to provide pastoral care was among the biggest reasons for CBST to hire its first rabbi. One of her first funeral services was for a member of the search committee that hired her.
The 1990s brought the increased visibility of gay and lesbians in the public sphere, but also brought the passage of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as between only a man and a woman.
“She really was doing rabbinical triage work at the beginning, working with a community that ultimately saw (a third) of its members die of AIDS,” said William Hibsher, a member of CBST for several decades who was there when Kleinbaum was appointed.
Hibsher was not an observant Jew in early 1990s, but he said he felt inspired by Kleinbaum’s work as well as the care she provided to his partner, who died from AIDS in the mid-1990s. He later became heavily involved with the synagogue, including serving on its board of directors and helping raise millions for its current location on West 30th Street.
When New York legalized same-sex marriage in 2013, Kleinbaum stood in the park across the street from the marriage bureau and performed same-sex weddings outdoors. Among the couples she married in 2014 were two men who had spent 20 months planning their wedding, which was held in a former Broadway theater.
Kleinbaum hasn’t specified what she plans to do in retirement, but said she’s likely to continue doing social justice work or working in Democratic politics. CBST has given her the title of “senior rabbi emerita” to show a level of connectedness as she steps down, but the bimah at CBST will no longer be hers.
Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum reads with her daughter during her last service at the Masonic Hall in New York on June 28.Andres Kudacki / AP
Even people who would be considered her ideological adversaries have found common ground to collaborate with her on issues of religious freedom and human rights.
When President Joe Biden appointed Kleinbaum to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, which monitors and researches freedom of religious expression worldwide, she served as a commissioner along alongside Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council. The council opposes the LGBTQ-rights movement.
“She’s able to step back and see where (two with strong ideological differences) can meet on core issues, and realize here’s where we can find common ground,” said Fred Davie, an administrator at Union Theological Seminary and a longtime friend of Kleinbaum.
Kleinbaum served two terms on the USCIRF. Her first term ended early in 2020 when she decided to focus attention on her congregation amid the COVID-19 pandemic. For her and the congregation, it was familiar territory after the AIDS crisis.
“We knew immediately many of the elements that we had to deal with: isolation, loneliness, fear,” Kleinbaum said. “There were differences, of course, between AIDS, but many things were enough similar that it almost felt like muscle memory.”
For the congregation, there seems to be a degree of uncertainty of what the synagogue will be without her. CBST, like many congregations, skews toward older members; many have been with Kleinbaum since the beginning.
The synagogue named Jason Klein as new chief rabbi earlier this year; he will start on July 1. But the consensus among members seems to be that Kleinbaum is simply irreplaceable.
“I think people, in their heart of hearts, wanted to find a Kleinbaum 2.0 to replace her,” Hibsher said. “There’s a landscape of wonderful progressive synagogues throughout Manhattan. So part of the question for the congregation will be: Is there a need for an LGBT synagogue in the year 2024? I think there is.”
While Kleinbaum laid out her plans to leave CBST a year ago, there were audible gasps at Yom Kippur services last September among the attendees when it was mentioned that CBST would no longer be headed by her. Her second-to-last Shabbat service, held June 21, was a sold-out event. The keynote speaker: New York Attorney General Letitia James.
“Most importantly, she has given us a space,” James said, using her hands to point to the synagogue and its standing room only crowed. “This space. Where we can be safe. Where we can be free.”
Several churches have made the decision to leave one of the oldest Christiandenominations in the United States after the delegation voted to hit members who support LGBTQ+ worshipers with a “limited suspension.”
The Christian Reformed Church in North America (CRCNA), which has approximately 200,000 members, voted 134-50 last week to disaffiliate congregational leaders and institutions that go against the church’s beliefs on same-sex relationships by publicly embracing the queer community. The decision comes two years after the synod voted to include “homosexual sex” in its definition of “unchastity,” which also includes adultery, polyamory, and pornography.
The synod did not vote to designate same-sex relationships as a “salvation issue,” instead determining that it “does not meet the high standards of definition and articulation needed for declaring a heresy.”
Rev. Ryan Schreiber, a pastor from Michigan, attended the meeting to speak in support of LGBTQ+ members. He said he intends to disaffiliate his Grand Rapids church following the synod’s vote, which he expects to negatively affect church membership and even threaten the denomination’s longevity.
“I am deeply concerned about the Christian Reformed Church, and especially those that I’m leaving behind, gentle conservatives and moderates,” Schreiber told Religion News Service, adding, “There is a coalition of churches in the Christian Reformed Church that is turning the polity of the Christian Reformed Church into a steamroller.”
Schreiber isn’t alone — synod delegate Trish Borgdorff was one of several Reform leaders in Michigan that told local station News 8 her church also intends to disaffiliate itself. Ultimately, she expects the majority of the nearly 30 supportive churches in her area to follow suit, saying: “There isn’t room for us anymore in the denomination I love.”
“What grieved my heart the most was that we were separating over conflict,” Borgdorff said. “In a broken world where we so long for peace, that even under what we know to be God’s call on our lives, we couldn’t find it with each other. And so it was a call to all of us to acknowledge that the problem we are facing, we all contributed to. It’s not any one person, not any one side.”
At the bottom of the first page of the program for Spelman College’s Baccalaureate Service held on May 18, 2024, at the Georgia International Convention Center in College Park, a southwest suburb of Atlanta, is the last sentence in baccalaureate speaker Bishop Yvette A. Flunder’s bio, and perhaps for some the most jarring. It reads: “Bishop Flunder is a proud mother and grandmother and recently celebrated 40 years of commitment and marriage to her partner in ministry and life—Ms. Shirley A. Miller, a renowned Gospel music artist.” It is not unusual for queer people to exist in conservative Black religious spaces, whether parishioners or clergy. However, it is rare to encounter a faith leader like Flunder who has repeatedly chosen to tell the truth about her sexual orientation when, at the bare minimum, Black church politics can often demand adherence to a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell policy.’
A San Francisco native and third-generation preacher, Flunder is ordained in the United Church of Christ and the Metropolitan Community Church. Flunder founded the City of Refuge United Church of Christ in 1991 and is also the Presiding Bishop of The Fellowship of Affirming Ministries, a multi-denominational fellowship of 110 primarily African American Christian leaders and laity representing 56 churches and faith-based organizations from all parts of the United States, Mexico, and Africa.
“You have to understand that when I come, I bring my whole self,” Flunder said as she settled into her seat across from me in the large conference room inside the Convention Center following her baccalaureate address.
Bishop Yvette A. Flunder enters the Georgia International Convention Center for Spelman College’s Baccalaureate Service on May 18, 2024. (Image: Darian Aaron)
The selection of Flunder by Spelman College to preach during a religious ceremony traditionally held the day before commencement, for some, is a radical choice in conservative Historically Black College and University (HBCU) culture. Spelman has a organized presence of queer students on campus including its LGBTQIA organization Afrekete! and various sexual orientations and gender identities were represented in the 2024 graduating class. But Spelman’s invitation to Flunder is not just a reflection of Spelman campus diversity, it is also about elevating the experience of LGBTQ students at Spelman and other HBCUs. Flunder spoke directly to the queer Spelman woman who will face the triple discrimination of racism, sexism, and homophobia.
“Embrace yourself—your understanding of your importance and the fact that you were born with this incredible gift that only a percentage of people in the world have is itself, in my thinking, a gift,” Flunder told me. “This community is overrepresented with gifts and skills— music, art, food, decoration—the ones who dress the pastor’s wife and beautify the churches,” she added.
A renowned gospel singer as well, Flunder provides lead vocals on Walter Hawkins and the Family and the Love Center Choir’s 1990 classic, “Thank You.” She sang with the Spelman College Glee Club before delivering her baccalaureate address. Flunder tells GLAAD that Gospel music wouldn’t exist without LGBTQ people.
Bishop Yvette A. Flunder sings Walter Hawkins classic “Thank You” with Spelman College Glee Club during Baccalaureate Service. (Image: Screenshot via YouTube)
“Half of the tenors, a quarter of the altos—Gospel music wouldn’t exist—absolutely would not exist without the contributions [of LGBTQ people],” she said. “And I think that it begins with our thanking God, thanking our understanding of the divine to have been chosen because not everybody can handle this.”
A home for ourselves
Flunder is clear that God has appointed and anointed her to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And while the Black church still wrestles internally with sexism, misogyny, patriarchy, and homophobia, other religious denominations have formally embraced LGBTQ members and clergy within its community. The United Methodist Church recently voted to repeal its decades-long ban on LGBTQ clergy and same-sex weddings. Flunder, who co-created the Fellowship of Affirming Ministries 22 years ago, tells GLAAD the same is possible for the Black church.
“We have to have the courage to create something of our own,” she said. “One of the first things we did was create a home for ourselves. We all went to seminary and theological school, so we would know what we’re talking about.”
In the early years, Flunder also tells GLAAD that the Fellowship of Affirming Ministries simultaneously connected to affirming organizations, like the United Church of Christ. However, they were predominantly heterosexual, and the worship experience was far from her Pentecostal roots.
“I thank the Lord for them, but they clap on the one and the three, and I clap on the two and the four, and I just can’t,” Flunder said jokingly. “And I like good gospel music that sounds like jazz but with church lyrics.”
Using a more serious tone, Flunder discusses why she encourages people to attend affirming churches.
“Spend some time around theological education. It’s too many books out there now that are written by people who are either gay-affirming or gay,” she said.
“Nobody has an excuse now not to read and understand what is in the text. Just like the Bible says, ’slaves obey your masters.’ You don’t bit more believe that than the man on the moon. And the Black preacher who told you you’re going to hell for being gay, well, you’re going to hell ’cause you’re not a slave. Because the Bible says, ’slaves obey your masters.’ How come you can leapfrog over that? But you can condemn me? How is that conceivably possible? Obviously, some things have to do with a certain time and culture. They shift and change. Take the girdle off the Bible,” she said. “You don’t take everything literally. Just the stuff that you want.”
Some so-called Christians may believe that by elevating the perceived “sins” or shortcomings of others, in this case, LGBTQ people, their sins will be overlooked. It’s a harmful practice rooted in toxic theology that encourages bondage instead of freedom through Christ—a pill prescribed to Flunder that was too bitter for her to swallow.
“When they realized that I was gay in the church, one of the missionaries came to me, she said, ‘Now baby, we see you. We know who you are.’ She said, ‘You just need to get you a little husband,’” Flunder recalls. “She’s trying to tell me if I’m going to move [up] in the church, I need to find a pliable, reasonably obedient man. Not only do I not want to do that to myself. I don’t want to do that to him. I don’t want to pick a man and say, all I need you for is window dressing,” she said. “I’m in love with my partner. The air she breathes. And that’s the truth. You don’t stay with somebody for 40 years if you don’t mean it. That’s the kind of love I want. I don’t want to play house or church. And I told her, hell no, I’m not doing that.”
Bishop Yvette A. Flunder pictured with her wife of 40 years, Mother Shirley A. Miller. (Image: Instagram)
Mother [Shirley A. Miller], often travels with Flunder but did not accompany her to Atlanta for Spelman’s baccalaureate service due to mobility issues.
“We are the othered ones, but the spirit has called the othered ones,” Flunder told the graduates towards the end of her baccalaureate address. “Change the direction of religion. It’s not supposed to be a private social club. It’s time for the disinherited, the demeaned, the excluded, the diminished to stand up, speak up, and move up to the table—it’s time.”
On Thursday, Pope Francis presided over a ceremony that laid out his vision for the coming 2025 Jubilee, a once-every-quarter-century event that will bring tens of millions of Catholic pilgrims to Rome. The papal bull, delivered in the atrium of St. Peter’s Basilica, laid out a vision of hope for the coming Holy Year, asking for gestures of solidarity with the poor, prisoners, migrants and Mother Nature.
Since he rose to the papacy in 2013 and famously declared, “Who am I to judge,” hope for those neglected, disenfranchised, and ostracized people has been central to his tenure. Lately, those people have included a group of trans sex workers who have earned the pope’s attention.
Over the last several years, Francis has earned the enmity of conservative Catholics for welcoming LGBTQ+ people with his approval of blessings for same-sex couples and a declaration that “being homosexual is not a crime.” Concurrently, Francis has welcomed dozens of transgender women, many of them sex workers, to the Vatican for blessings and audiences and even a lunch that brought a busload of them accompanied by the press.
One was Laura Esquivel, a trans sex worker from Paraguay.
She described herself as tough and made of iron.
“Soy hecho de hierro,” the 57-year-old would say. She had worked the streets since she was 15, did time in an Italian jail for cutting another sex worker in a fight, and apologized to no one, including the pope.
But somehow, the pope now knew her name.
“It’s almost like Laura has become a friend of the pope,” Rev. Andrea Conocchia told The Washington Post. Conocchia, also known as Don Andrea, is a priest in the seaside village of Torvaianica where Esquivel plied her trade.
Don Andrea had helped Esquivel and her fellow trans sex workers in the small town, 20 miles south of Rome. The town is a destination for men who increasingly bought the workers’ particular brand of company. However, as the pandemic raged in Italy, business dried up, and food and money became scarce for these women in the small town.
Some assistance for the town’s sex workers came directly from the Vatican.
Don Andrea suggested they write to the pope and thank him. He replied with a handwritten note, telling one of Esquivel’s compatriots, “Thank you very much for your email. … I respect you and accompany you with my compassion and my prayer. Anything I can help you with, please let me know.”
When vaccines became available, the women were welcomed to Paul VI Hall in the Vatican for shots, unavailable in the rest of the country to undocumented workers like them.
“They saved our lives,” Esquivel said.
At her first audience with Francis, accompanied by Don Andrea and a small group of trans women and a same-sex couple on a warm summer morning in 2022, Esquivel blurted in Italian, “I’m a transsexual from Paraguay.”
The pope smiled and told her, “You are also a child of God.”
Esquivel asked for his blessing, and he touched both her shoulders.
“God bless you,” he said.
“You, too,” Laura responded.
Francis laughed and said, “We should speak Spanish, we’re South American,” acknowledging their shared identity.
Visits with women like Esquivel became regular events.
“Groups of trans come all the time,” Francis told fellow Jesuits in Lisbon last August. “The first time they came, they were crying. I was asking them why. One of them told me, ‘I didn’t think the pope would receive me!’ Then, after the first surprise, they made a habit of coming back. Some write to me, and I email them back. Everyone is invited! I realized these people feel rejected.”
Ten days before that Vatican lunch with trans women, among a thousand underprivileged and homeless people of Rome — and the first public acknowledgment that Francis was engaged with the trans community — the Vatican had released guidance that transgender people could be baptized and serve as godparents.
Esquivel was seated directly across a table from the pontiff. The talk over plates of cannelloni was light.
“Pope Francis never criticized me or told me to change my life,” Esquivel said.
Not long after, Esquivel was diagnosed with colon cancer. Don Andrea and the Vatican took Esquivel under their wing, helping her establish residency to enroll in the National Health Service, and providing lodging in Rome while she underwent chemotherapy.
The pope asked Don Andrea often about her health.
In thanks for his help and concern, Esquivel brought homemade empanadas to the papal household, accompanied by Don Andrea. As the guards let her in, she turned to him and said, “I feel like someone.”
United Methodist delegates on Thursday removed a 52-year-old declaration from their official social teachings that deemed “the practice of homosexuality … incompatible with Christian teaching” — part of a wider series of historic reversals of the denomination’s long-standing disapproval of LGBTQ activity.
The historic vote came as delegates also approved a new definition of marriage as a covenant between “two people of faith” while recognizing the couple may or may not involve a man and a woman. That replaces an exclusively heterosexual definition of marriage and followed a debate that exposed tensions between some U.S. and international delegates.
The 523-161 vote to approve a section of the church’s Revised Social Principles took place at the General Conference of the United Methodist Church in the penultimate day of their 11-day legislative gathering in Charlotte.
It came a day after the General Conference removed its long-standing ban on “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” from being ordained or appointed as ministers. Step by step, delegates have been removing anti-LGBTQ language throughout their official documents.
But the marriage definition was approved only after debate and a compromise amendment — one of the few instances of open debate during this otherwise overwhelmingly progressive conference.
“God designed marriage to be between a man and a woman,” said Nimia Peralta from the Northwest Philippines. While the conference earlier approved a regionalization plan enabling different parts of the global church to adapt rules to their local contexts, “God’s word can never be regionalized,” she said.
The Rev. Jerry Kulah of Liberia held aloft a Bible as he said: “We do not have another Bible apart from this Bible. … The Bible is very emphatic that we have marriage between a man and a woman.”
But the Rev. James Howell of Western North Carolina applauded the new language as being able to “embrace everyone.”
“Cynics and young adults will not listen to us talk about Jesus if we say we do not condone people they love and care about,” Howell said. “Friends, it’s time.”
The Rev. Kalaba Chali, based in Kansas, said the principles are general enough without forcing people in different cultural contexts “to do things the same way.”
The approval came only after an amendment offered by lay delegate Molly Mwayera of East Zimbabwe, who noted that many African countries do not allow for same-sex marriage. After extended wordsmithing, the assembly settled on an amended item that affirmed marriage as a sacred covenant bringing “two people of faith (adult man and woman of consenting age or two adult persons of consenting age) into union.”
It’s the UMC’s first legislative gathering since 2019, one that features its most progressive slate of delegates in memory due to the departure of many conservatives from the denomination. More than 7,600 mostly conservative congregations in the United States — one quarter of the denomination’s American total — disaffiliated because the UMC essentially stopped enforcing its bans on same-sex marriage and LGBTQ ordination.
Those churches left under a window that enabled American churches to leave with their properties, normally held by the denomination, under more favorable than normal terms. While the conference voted against extending that window to international churches, the liberalization measures approved by the conference could still prompt departures of some international churches through different means — particularly in Africa, where conservative sexual values prevail and where same-sex activity is criminalized in some countries.
The progressive momentum of the General Conference was evident from the vote Thursday. They voted on the last of a series of approvals of a wholesale rewrite of the denomination’s Social Principles — a non-binding but influential compendium of the denomination’s social stances on everything from war and peace to the environment and family relations.
The new version no longer includes this language from the previous one: “The United Methodist Church does not condone the practice of homosexuality and considers this practice incompatible with Christian teaching,” while it also urged members not to condemn gays and lesbians.
The old version said sexual relations are “affirmed only with the covenant of monogamous, heterosexual marriage.”
The new version omits this phrase and describes “human sexuality as a sacred gift” and a “healthy and natural part of life that is expressed in wonderfully diverse ways.” It doesn’t say anything about restricting sexual activity to marriage. It does say people have the right to consent to sexual activity and condemns sexual harassment and exploitation and opposes pornography and its “destructive impact.”
The new version calls for human rights for all, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity and other racial, ethnic and gender categories.
Thursday’s change is particularly significant because the statement of homosexuality being “incompatible with Christian teaching” dates back to the beginning of the 52-year-old debate on LGBTQ issues within one of the nation’s largest Protestant denominations. The phrasing was adopted on the floor of the 1972 General Conference via an amendment proposed by a delegate, added to the original draft statement that had said “persons of homosexual orientation are persons of sacred worth.”
The denomination had been revising and adding to the Social Principles for decades; this amounts to the first wholesale rewrite in many years. Other sections of the rewrite were approved earlier this week.
The drafters of the revision chose more general language because the denomination spans countries and cultures around the world, said John Hill, interim general secretary at the Board of Church and Society, at a news conference earlier this week.
“We have a church whose local contexts are dramatically different,” he said. “And so our hope was that statements that could speak theologically to these matters, but not to any specific context, could then be applied across the context of the church.”
The United Methodist Church on Wednesday removed a ban on gay clergy that was in place for more than 40 years, voting to also allow LGBTQ weddings and end prohibitions on the use of United Methodist funds to “promote acceptance of homosexuality.”
Overturning the policy forbidding the church from ordaining “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” effectively formalized a practice that had caused an estimated quarter of U.S. congregations to leave the church.
The New York Times notes additional votes “affirming L.G.B.T.Q. inclusion in the church are expected before the meeting adjourns on Friday.” Wednesday’s measures were passed overwhelmingly and without debate. Delegates met in Charlotte, N.C.
According to the church’s General Council on Finance and Administration, there were 5,424,175 members in the U.S. in 2022 with an estimated global membership approaching 10 million.
The Times notes that other matters of business last week included a “regionalization” plan, which gave autonomy to different regions such that they can establish their own rules on matters including issues of sexuality — about which international factions are likelier to have more conservative views.
Rev. Kipp Nelson of St. Johns’s on the Lake Methodist Church in Miami shared a statement praising the new developments:
“It is a glorious day in the United Methodist Church. As a worldwide denomination, we have now publicly proclaimed the boundless love of God and finally slung open the doors of our church so that all people, no matter their identities or orientations, may pursue the calling of their hearts.
“Truly, all are loved and belong here among us. I am honored to serve as a pastor in the United Methodist Church for such a time as this, for our future is bright and filled with hope. Praise be, praise be.”
Rev. Andi Woodworth has been co-pastor of Neighborhood Church, a United Methodist congregation in Atlanta, since 2016. This year, on March 11, she became the first out trans clergy member to address the Georgia House of Representatives during its morning prayer. She had been invited by her state rep, Democrat Saira Draper.
“My hunch is just being there humanized me and humanized my community,” Woodworth says.
Georgia lawmakers had been considering several pieces of anti-LGBTQ+ and specifically anti-trans legislation, mostly tacked on to other bills, she notes. The most concerning ones included a trans athlete ban, restrictions on sex education, parental notification on library books children check out, and a ban on puberty blockers for trans minors (a Georgia law being challenged in courtprohibits other gender-affirming treatment for youth). But the session closed March 28 with none of them passing.
“I want to say this had something to do with my presence at the capitol,” Woodworth says, but she gives primary credit to all the activists and citizens who worked against this legislation.
While at the capitol, she had a good conversation with House Speaker Jon Burns, a Republican. “We found some commonality,” she says.
She points to what’s long been known — if you know a person who is a member of the LGBTQ+ community, you’re more likely to be supportive of their rights.
Woodworth has been representing for trans people since her transition in 2020. “My church has been incredibly accepting, and we have grown,” she says. “We’re finding a new connection with the LGBTQ community.”
She was one of the founders of the church, and the goal was always for it to be an LGBTQ-affirming, anti-racist congregation. She eventually realized that when she said, “All of who you are is welcome here,” she was talking not just about others but about herself.
Her co-pastor is Rev. Anjie Woodworth, to whom she was married before transitioning. The change in their relationship went smoothly, however. “The way we think about it is if we weren’t married, we’d still be best friends,” Andi Woodworth says. And they Andi Woodworth are.
Andi Woodworth had been a minister for seven years before helping to found Neighborhood Church. She always loved thinking about God, she says, and she was a religion major in college. “I just ate it up,” she recalls.
The United Methodist Church has been seen arguments over LGBTQ+ inclusion for several years. Its Book of Discipline has explicitly excluded noncelibate gay and lesbian people from the ministry since 1972, and the church doesn’t allow same-sex marriages. But the rules don’t address trans people, so that loophole has let Woodworth continue in the ministry with no problem.
The denomination has often debated lifting these antigay rules, and many progressive congregations ignore them. With the expectation that delegates to the church’s General Conference this year will end these policies, many conservative congregations have left the denomination. Neighborhood Church will keep its United Methodist affiliation, Woodworth says.
There was an uproar among right-wing Christians over Transgender Day of Visibility falling the same day as Easter Sunday this year — March 31 — and President Joe Biden recognizing it. But being Christian, or a faithful adherent of any religion, doesn’t have to mean being anti-trans, Woodworth points out. Her church used the coincidental date in its message that day, noting that Easter is when Jesus “came out” of his tomb.
Woodworth and the church spread a wide-ranging message of inclusion. “I’m not publicly partisan, but I’m certainly political,” she says, explaining that her mission is to “work for liberation of all humans.”
“We’re going to point to what is right, particularly for the marginalized and the poor,” she says. “We do a lot of anti-racism work, reproductive justice, gun reform. … We’re showing up to advocate for policies that lead to a better life for everybody.”
Regarding this year’s presidential election, “I want to be extremely hopeful and optimistic,” she says. “The election represents a chance for us to remember who we are.” And the vast majority of Americans are pro-LGBTQ+, she adds.
She’ll continue reminding people of that, and she takes joy in being an out, proud, and outspoken trans Christian. “I’m out here and really enjoying my life,” she says. “I feel blessed.”
The Vatican has issued a declaration listing “gender theory,” gender-affirming care, and even surrogacy as “violations of human dignity” alongside war, poverty, human trafficking, and other actual atrocities.
On Monday, the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, the department in charge of religious discipline for the Catholic Church, released its “Dignitas Infinita.” The 20-page document has been in the works for the past five years and was approved by Pope Francis in March, according to the Associated Press. It calls for unconditional respect for human dignity regardless of “the person’s ability to understand and act freely,” reiterating Catholic teachings opposing abortion and euthanasia.
Notably, it denounces “as contrary to human dignity the fact that, in some places, not a few people are imprisoned, tortured, and even deprived of the good of life solely because of their sexual orientation.” It quotes Pope Francis’s 2016 “Amoris Laetitia” (“The Joy of Love”), in which he stated that “every person, regardless of sexual orientation, ought to be respected in his or her dignity and treated with consideration, while ‘every sign of unjust discrimination’ is to be carefully avoided, particularly any form of aggression and violence.”
At the same time, it quotes a January 2024 address in which Francis described “gender theory” as “extremely dangerous since it cancels differences in its claim to make everyone equal.”
“Desiring a personal self-determination, as gender theory prescribes,” the document asserts, “amounts to a concession to the age-old temptation to make oneself God.” It also claims that “gender theory” denies “the greatest possible difference that exists between living beings: sexual difference.”
It quotes Francis’s “Amoris Laetitia,”, stating, “It needs to be emphasized that ‘biological sex and the socio-cultural role of sex (gender) can be distinguished but not separated,’”
In a section on “Sex Change,” Monday’s declaration asserts that gender-affirming care “risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the moment of conception.” However, it endorses surgical intervention for intersex people, which it describes as people “with genital abnormalities.”
As for surrogacy, it claims the practice violates a child’s “right to have a fully human (and not artificially induced) origin,” and “also violates the dignity of the woman, whether she is coerced into it or chooses to subject herself to it freely,” because she “is detached from the child growing in her and becomes a mere means subservient to the arbitrary gain or desire of others.”
LGBTQ+ Catholic groups have already slammed the declaration.
Francis DeBernardo of New Ways Ministry told the Associated Press, “While it lays out a wonderful rationale for why each human being, regardless of condition in life, must be respected, honored, and loved,” the document “does not apply this principle to gender-diverse people.”
“The suggestion that gender-affirming health care — which has saved the lives of so many wonderful trans people and enabled them to live in harmony with their bodies, their communities and [God] — might risk or diminish trans people’s dignity is not only hurtful but dangerously ignorant,” said Berlin-based activist Mara Klein. “Seeing that, in contrast, surgical interventions on intersex people — which if performed without consent especially on minors often cause immense physical and psychological harm for many intersex people to date — are assessed positively just seems to expose the underlying hypocrisy further.”
With Republican lawmakers across the U.S. continuing to push restrictions on access to gender-affirming care, Klein slammed the Vatican’s declaration at a time of “rising hostility towards our communities.”
Churches, synagogues, and other places of worship have found themselves in the crosshairs while in the pursuit for LGBTQ rights and safety. According to new findings from GLAAD and the Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism, from June 2022 – January 2024, researchers documented at least 66 incidents in which religious institutions were targeted over their perceived support for and inclusion of LGBTQ people in the US. These incidents included arson, property theft and destruction, and threatening letters, emails, and phone calls — illuminating that religious institutions are not immune to the alarming rise of anti-LGBTQ hate sweeping the US.
Places of worship from all faith traditions, including churches, synagogues, mosques, gurdwaras, and Buddhist temples, are increasingly showing supportfor LGBTQ equality. These same acts – from the flying of rainbow banners, to Pride month services, to LGBTQ youth groups – are also garnering the attention of anti-LGBTQ extremists, making supportive religious institutions a target right alongside drag shows and health care clinics that serve transgender people .
GLAAD and ADL’s new findings include a number of high-profile cases, including the recent 18-year sentencing of Aimenn Penny, an alleged associate of the white supremacist “White Lives Matter” network, for his attempt to firebomb a church in Chesterland, Ohio in March 2023. According to police reports, Penny was angered by the church’s upcoming drag shows and sought to “save the children,” echoing familiar and false anti-LGBTQ tropes.
The rising number of attacks against affirming religious institutions reflects growing research about the ways longtime extremist groups are attempting to expand their reach by targeting LGBTQ people and allies. These particular acts of extremism do not reflect a larger reality in faith communities. Research shows people of every faith support LGBTQ people, and a majority of LGBTQ people consider themselves religious. In recent weeks as well, Pope Francis has spoken up for LGBTQ people and relationships to be recognized, and stated that transgender people can be baptized, be godparents, and witness weddings. The Pope has also urged Catholic parents to accept their LGBTQ children.
“For years, anti-LGBTQ activists relied on the stereotype of LGBTQ condemnation from religious figures,” said Ross Murray, Vice President of the GLAAD Media Institute and ordained deacon.
“Now that religious communities are faithfully coming to the conclusion that the LGBTQ community should be safe from violence and welcomed into faith communities, anti-LGBTQ activists are turning to violence and intimidation on those faith communities. Faith leaders cannot back down or allow their voices to be silenced by a radical fringe, but must continue to stand for the safety and welcome of LGBTQ people.”
Here are a few examples of incidents tied to extremist groups targeting LGBTQ-inclusive religious institutions:
March 2023: A synagogue in Nashville, Tennessee, reported that individuals associated with the white supremacist Active Club network placed anti-LGBTQ stickers on their doors which read: “F*ggots not welcome.”
June 2023: 11 individuals associated with the antisemitic extremist group Goyim Defense League (GDL) demonstrated outside Temple Beth Israel in Macon, Georgia. Protestors shouted antisemitic and racist slurs, distributed flyers spreading false conspiracy theories about Jewish power and control, and even hung an effigy of a gay Jewish man outside the temple.
October 2023: Individuals from a variety of white supremacist groups — including GDL, the Order of the Black Sun (OBS), and the American National Socialist White Workers Party (ANSWWP) — protested outside the Cathedral of Hope United Church of Christ in Dallas, Texas. Protestors waved swastika-covered flags, held signs reading “Protect white children” in rainbow lettering, and declared: “Sodom and Gomorrah were your warning,” referencing a Biblical passage many believe condemns homosexuality.
Places of worship have also reported a number of threatening incidents from individuals with no known connections to extremist groups. For instance, in October 2023, an unknown person drove their car through six rainbow-colored doors displayed as part of a Pride exhibit in front of the United Christian Church in Renton, Washington. In another such example, someone set fire to a Pride flag hanging outside a Buddhist temple in Pasadena, California in April 2023 — destroying a hand-painted banner that flew undisturbed for years to represent the temple’s “fundamental commitment to nondiscrimination.”In June 2023, unknown individuals stole two Pride flags and a Black Lives Matter flag from the Veradale United Church of Christ in Spokane Valley, Washington. That same day, the church’s reverend found the words “Lev 2013” written in diesel fuel on the church’s lawn, making reference to a Bible verse in Leviticus which has been used to condemn homosexuality. That same month, the First Baptist Church in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts reported anti-LGBTQ graffiti on the church’s steeple, which stated that all LGBTQ people “should die.”
These incidents come amidst a previous report by GLAAD and ADL that documented over 700 anti-LGBTQ hate and extremism incidents in the year following the tragic attack at Club Q in Colorado Springs.
The full Anti-LGBTQ+ Incidents Targeting Religious Institutions data set can be requested here.
The research in this article was made possible thanks to a partnership between ADL and GLAAD focused on countering anti-LGBTQ extremism and hate. Learn more about this critical partnership.
Experts say LGBTQ people experience religious trauma at disproportionate rates and in unique ways. Justin J. Wee and Evan Jenkins for NBC News
Kellen Swift-Godzisz, 35, said he doesn’t go on dates, struggles with erectile dysfunction and is hesitant to trust people. For more than 20 years, he’s experienced intense bouts of anxiety and depression that have had a “major hold on his life.”
“Imagine being told by everyone you trusted that you’re going to hell because you like men,” Swift-Godzisz, a marketing project manager living in Chicago, told NBC News.
At just 11 years old, Swift-Godzisz recalled, he would sit in his bedroom every night praying or writing letters that said, “Please God, remove my affliction of same-sex attraction,” and would then store each letter in an overflowing shoebox in his closet.
Kellen Swift-Godzisz said he struggles with severe ADHD and “PTSD-like feelings” due to the religious trauma he experienced in his youth. Evan Jenkins for NBC News
Swift-Godzisz, who grew up in an evangelical Baptist church in rural Michigan, believed Bible verses like Matthew 21:22 — “And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith” — would help him “pray the gay away.”
As he entered his teens and realized his feelings of same-sex attraction were only intensifying, Swift-Godzisz finally accepted that God would not be answering his prayers. Things went downhill from there, he said.
Swift-Godzisz is among the 1 in 3 adults in the United States who have suffered from religious trauma at some point in their life, according to a 2023 study published in the Socio-Historical Examination of Religion and Ministry Journal. That same study suggests up to 1 in 5 U.S. adults currently suffer from major religious trauma symptoms.
Religious trauma occurs when an individual’s religious upbringing has lasting adverse effects on their physical, mental or emotional well-being, according to the Religious Trauma Institute. Symptoms can include guilt, shame, loss of trust and loss of meaning in life. While religious trauma hasn’t officially been classified as a mental disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), there is debate among psychiatrists about whether that should change.
Experts say LGBTQ people — who represent more than 7% of the U.S. population, according to a 2023 Gallup poll — experience religious trauma at disproportionate rates and in unique ways. Very little research has been done in this field, but a 2022 study found that LGBTQ people who experience certain forms of religious trauma are at increased risk for suicidality, substance abuse, homelessness, anxiety and depression. And as political animus toward the LGBTQ community intensifies ahead of the 2024 presidential election, many queer people say their pain is resurfacing.
‘It’s basically a mind rape’
The concept of religious trauma has been around for centuries, and, according to experts, it can have serious consequences that can last a lifetime.
“In its worst manifestations, it’s basically a mind rape,” said Marlene Winell, a psychologist who coined the term “religious trauma syndrome” in 2011. “These doctrines that are taught to you over and over are so damaging and so hideous and so hard to weed out. In many cases, you have been violated, you have been abused or you have been shamed, and the impact is very deep and can be everlasting.”
Dr. Jack Drescher, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University who specializes in LGBTQ populations, agreed, noting that growing up gay or transgender in a nonaccepting religious environment could have serious mental health consequences.
Kellen Swift-Godzisz said his parents sent him for conversion therapy after he was unable to “pray the gay away.”Evan Jenkins for NBC News
“When you hide or morph your behavior in an effort to conceal your queer identity, you wind up hiding other things about yourself,” he said. “There may be strengths or aspirations you have that you never access because you’re afraid they’re associated with your gender identity. This can affect your self-esteem, it can affect your confidence, and even your capacity to be realistic about what you can do and achieve.”
At 14, when Swift-Godzisz accepted that he could not “pray the gay away,” he confided in his youth pastor, who in turn told his parents and the entire church leadership.
“My mom was hysterical and ashamed and wanted us to pack up and move to a new town,” he said. “My parents very much viewed it as a sin and a choice that I made that we were going to fix.”
For the next three years, Swift-Godzisz said, he was grounded indefinitely. He said his parents controlled the friends he was allowed to hang out with and enrolled him in so-called conversion therapy, a discredited practice that aims to change a person’s sexual orientation. For this type of therapy, Swift-Godzisz said, his parents forced him to speak with various people from the fundamentalist Christian group Focus on the Family, which is widely known for its anti-LGBTQ advocacy.
“They weren’t trying to understand me,” he recalled of his sessions with the Focus on the Family leaders. “All of their advice was just, ‘Practice abstinence,’ or ‘Don’t do that; that’s against God’s wishes.”
Swift-Godzisz’s mother, who declined to address her son’s allegations, told NBC News that while she and her son “differ on some things,” she would give her life for him in a moment. “I’m proud of my son, I love him and I’m glad the Lord gave him to me,” she said.
Focus on the Family did not reply to a request for comment.
“The church has been the villain in my life story,” Swift-Godzisz said, adding that he’s been traumatized by his family and religious leaders. “Anything I’d do that’s ‘gay’ was considered a sin.”
Kellen Swift-Godzisz.Evan Jenkins for NBC News
Now, decades later, Swift-Godzisz said he struggles with severe ADHD and — though he’s never been officially diagnosed — what he described as post-traumatic stress disorder, or “PTSD-like feelings.” He also said growing up queer in an ultrareligious household has led to persistent issues in his romantic life, including erectile dysfunction.
“When you’ve spent decades of your life reinforcing not getting a boner around another guy, and now even though you are ready to do that sort of stuff, your brain still kind of goes like, ‘I don’t know, we’re not supposed to do that,’” he explained.
He also said he avoids romantic relationships altogether.
“Still, to this day, one of my biggest fears is that I’ll get married to a man, have children and get old with him, and on my deathbed I’ll denounce it all because I’m afraid that I might go to hell,” he said. “So I just don’t do it.”
Winell said many of her patients’ trauma response is so active from what they experienced as a child that their brain gets confused about what’s past and what’s present, which causes the fear response to fire up in situations where they are doing something related to their sexuality or gender identity.
“Sometimes there’s a real split between what you think in your head — your intellectual understanding of everything — and your gut-level emotional condition and response to situations,” she explained. “So someone like Swift-Godzisz might be comfortable with his identity but can still have this gut-level fight-or-flight response in the amygdala to all the trauma from the past, and if that happens constantly, that can really screw you up.”
She added that people experiencing this can also develop physical symptoms like digestive problems and headaches.
The effect of familial and community rejection
Religious trauma for LGBTQ people may be particularly intense, because it “goes to the very essence of who the person is,” according to Winell.
“There’s so much condemnation in conservative kinds of churches about being LGBTQ, that the trauma is felt as a direct attack on them,” she said.
LGBTQ people experiencing religious trauma may also be met with instant rejection when they come out or when their queer identity is discovered, she said, noting that they could lose connection with family, friends, church leadership and other forms of community overnight.
“In a biological way, we all want to belong, and we are attached to our parents — we’re dependent on them and need their approval. So if you have their love growing up and then one day, boom, they reject you for something you can’t control, that can create long-lasting anxiety and trauma,” Winell said. “The icing on the cake is that you might simultaneously be losing friends, mentors or entire communities.”
Jamie Long said she lost most of her support system because of her LGBTQ identity.Justin J. Wee for NBC News
Jamie Long, 40, is among those who quickly lost her support system due to a clash between her LGBTQ identity and her religion.
“Religion has obliterated my life,” she said.
Growing up in Greensboro, Alabama, where her father was the deacon and Sunday school teacher of her Pentecostal church, Long — who was assigned male at birth but now often uses she/her pronouns — remembers feeling different about her gender and sexuality as early as kindergarten. She spent her youth “in hiding,” doing everything to beg God to give her the power to change the feelings she had about her gender and her attraction to men.
“I would pray for hours nonstop,” said Long, who, decades later, is still trying to figure out her gender identity. “Nothing worked. It was terrifying.”
As time went on, it became harder for Long to hide her effeminate behavior. So she came out as a gay man and started hooking up with men on “the down-low,” which she said is omnipresent among men who have sex with men in the Black church.
“The pressure to subscribe to heterosexuality and masculinity is so intense, so there’s this culture in the Black religious community of guys keeping their hookups on ‘the low,’” she added.
As people close to Long started to find out she had come out as gay, the rejection ramped up. Her choir director — whom she described as a prominent figure she looked up to — pulled her aside after a Sunday service and said, “We can’t have a homosexual singing in the choir. I’m going to work with you to get that evil spirit out of you,” Long recalled. Her mom, who had been her “biggest supporter,” broke down in tears and said, “You will burn in hell,” and her brother berated her and called her anti-gay slurs for the duration of a 30-minute drive through Alabama, she recalled.
Jamie Long.Justin J. Wee for NBC News
Long’s brother told NBC News that he “doesn’t remember” that car ride and — using male pronouns for his sibling — said that while he loves Long, he does not respect the path Long has chosen. “I don’t believe in gay; I believe it’s a spirit,” he said. Long’s choir director did not respond to a request for comment.
Now, years after losing most of her support systems because of her LGBTQ identity, Long has been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and major depressive disorder.
“I blame 100% of my identity crisis, of who I am as a queer person, on my religious upbringing,” Long said. “I had to create a mask and suppress my feelings all because of how I was brought up in the church. I was conditioned to believe my life was wrong.”
When religion meets politics
In addition to feeling isolated or rejected by family and community, many LGBTQ Americans say the current political climate is exacerbating their experience with religious trauma.
In 2023, a record-shattering 510 anti-LGBTQ bills were introduced in state legislatures, with more than 80 of them passed into law, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. Transgender people’s access to health care was a key talking point in the Republican presidential primary debates, and, before he was in Congress, recently elected House Speaker Mike Johnson called same-sex marriage a “dark harbinger of chaos” and suggested it could lead to people wedding their pets.
“For me, the religious aspect is almost inextricable from the political aspect,” said Amberlyn Boiter, a business analyst for a software development company, who lives in Spartanburg, South Carolina.
She remembers attending a 1,500-person megachurch just months before she came out as trans where the entire audience applauded after the pastor went on a 10-minute “transphobic rant.”
“I had to go up and play the bass in the church band after that, and I remember hating every second,” Boiter, 36, said.
Amberlyn Boiter applies mascara, left, and walks down the stairs of the South Carolina State House after a day of lobbying and speaking with lawmakers about LGBTQ rights.McKenzie Lange / The Greenville News via Imagn
Shortly after that, she came out to her family and they rejected her, stating that she was “betraying God and in turn she had betrayed them.”
“I think the biggest hurt is seeing our family members choose mythology over a relationship with their own flesh and blood,” she said.
Boiter cited the 20 anti-LGBTQ bills that were introduced in South Carolina’s state legislature in 2023. Some bills would strip trans people of gender-affirming health care, while others would criminalize them if they use public bathroomsthat match their gender identity. Many of the bills were backed by Christian legal groups and think tanks like the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Heritage Foundation and the Family Research Council.
“Being able to tie the policy to religious sources, it makes me feel doomed,” Boiter said. “There have been some pretty dark days, some of which have gone into the territory of suicidal ideation, where I’m worrying about whether I am going to have to uproot my wife and my child and move them from a place that I was born and raised.”
Boiter said she has ancestral ties in Spartanburg that go back to the 1780s.
“I have more than once spiraled into a place of thinking, ‘I might not only need to move to a different state, I may need to consider moving to another country.’ When people like Mike Johnson — who I would call a religious fanatic — are elected to higher and higher positions and even federal office, what am I supposed to think? More than a couple of times, I’ve looked at Canada’s refugee policies. I legitimately and truthfully worry that a day may come where my family and I are refugees.”
Swift-Godzisz shares those sentiments.
“I’m keeping the lid on a pot that is ready to boil over,” he said, adding that Johnson’s anti-LGBTQ track record is “one of the scariest things that has happened in my perception of politics.”
Healing from religious trauma
Mental health experts say in order to heal, those suffering from religious trauma should work toward building a new, affirming chapter in their lives.
Dr. Harold G. Koenig, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University Medical Center, said building that next chapter may involve cutting off those who hurt you.
“You say, ‘I love you, I forgive you,’ and you take the initiative to move forward. That will help heal you,” he said.
Koenig added that LGBTQ people who have experienced trauma but don’t want to leave religion entirely should consider joining an affirming church where leaders may be able to help with the healing process.
“Christian acceptance of [the LGBTQ] community is growing,” he said. In fact, majorities of every major religious group favor laws that protect LGBTQ people against discrimination, according to the Public Religion Research Institute’s 2022American Values Survey.
To move forward, Drescher recommends rebuilding self-esteem by forming new relationships. “It’s important to find new communities, new friendships that are affirming and that can help you heal,” he explained.
Kellen Swift-Godzisz said the “church has been the villain” in his life story.Evan Jenkins for NBC News
For those who leave their religion — as Swift-Godzisz, Long and Boiter have all done —it’s “like the rug gets pulled out from under you,” according to Winell.
“Your life needs to be gradually reconstructed,” she said. “It’s a reconstruct of who you think you are and what you believe now. One of those new beliefs is that being LGBTQ is OK.”
In terms of treatment, Winell said she first helps her patients learn to take care of themselves.
“Instead of outsourcing all that care to God, I teach them how to be self-reflective and how to regulate their feelings from their own perspective, rather than from the Bible’s,” she said.
From there, she teaches skills that help with the trauma response, like writing down negative messages you grew up believing and changing them to something that can read as positive and hopeful.
“What used to be, ‘My life is a trial, and then I die and go to hell,’ can change to, ‘My life is an adventure and a journey,’” she said.
She also works with her patients on relaxation by teaching them breathing exercises and body scan meditations, among other techniques. In certain cases, she recommends combining these tools with medication.
A debate among mental health providers
As more LGBTQ people share their experiences with religious trauma, there is debate among mental health experts about how it should be characterized in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the American Psychiatric Association’s reference guide for coding, classifying and diagnosing mental disorders.
In the decades-old manual’s fifth and latest edition, the DSM-5-TR, religious trauma falls under the category “Religious or Spiritual Problem,” as a Z code, not an official mental disorder. Z codes are listed in the back of the DSM and are referred to as “other conditions that may be a focus of clinical attention.” Other examples include various forms of “Child Psychological Abuse,” “Unsheltered Homelessness” and “Victim of Terrorism or Torture.”
Koenig is now working with a group of public health experts and psychiatrists at Harvard Universityto expand “Religious or Spiritual Problem” as a Z code in the DSM to include “Moral Problems,” such as moral injury.
Moral injury, which is not currently listed in the DSM, may occur when an individual believes they have acted in a way that deeply conflicts with their morals and values, which produces guilt, shame or profound feelings of broken trust. It has been applied to war veterans and, more recently, to health care professionals who did not feel like they were able to provide appropriate care to those suffering during the Covid-19 pandemic.
“For centuries, people have been manipulating and weaponizing religion by condemning LGBTQ individuals,” Koenig said. “Moral injury — particularly for religious LGBTQ people — can create a whole life of shame and guilt. To live with it can result in mental health problems over time, like suicide, depression and anxiety, because that’s what moral injury does, and you can get stuck in it for years and decades.”
Koenig said it’s critical that the combination of “Religious or Spiritual Problem” and “Moral Problem” — which is currently under review by a DSM committee — finds a spot in the manual as a Z code. By adding moral injury, he explained, providers will be able to collect more specific data and prescribe more targeted treatments, such as whether it’s appropriate to recommend pastoral support for those suffering. They’ll also be able to more effectively document which part of the patient’s trauma came from their family’s or community’s religious beliefs and which part came from a separate worldview that being LGBTQ is immoral.
“For religious people who identify as LGBTQ, it’s not just Christianity at play,” he said. “It’s the whole moral fabric of the culture that’s been passed down through generations that has caused this condemnation.”
Getting a new disorder or code added to the DSM involves submitting an extensive proposal to the manual’s steering committee, which is then reviewed and forwarded along to the American Psychiatric Association’s board of trustees for approval.
“Having it as a Z code will validate and stimulate funding support, and then there’ll be more money for research, which will help us learn more about how we can treat folks experiencing moral injuries like religious trauma,” Koenig said.
A further step would be changing “Religious or Spiritual Problem” from a Z code to an official disorder in the DSM. While Koenig is unsure about his stance on this, as the process would be even more rigorous and could take years, Winell said she “definitely thinks it should be in there” as a disorder.
“Right now, most therapists don’t know much about it. They’ll do an intake with a new client and talk about family, schooling, substance abuse, but they won’t touch religion,” she said. “So if it was a real thing in the DSM, it would get covered and the millions of folks who are struggling with it across this country could get better help.”
Winell added that a disorder classification in the DSM would give religious trauma more credibility in the eyes of medical professionals and would give those experiencing this type of trauma the ability to name what they’re going through. She also predicted this would result in more research in the area and religious trauma becoming part of the curriculum in university psychology courses.
Drescher, who was part of the APA committee that in 2013 changed gender identity disorder to gender dysphoria in the DSM in an effort to remove stigma, disagrees with Winell on this matter.
“We don’t need diagnoses to understand what’s going on. … Medicalizing social issues is how homosexuality was originally labeled a mental disorder,” Drescher said, noting that homosexuality wasn’t officially removed from the DSM until 1973. “So the idea that now we’re going to turn anti-LGBTQ ideas into psychiatric diagnoses doesn’t sit well with me.”
This, he added, could enable a future generation to “just flip the switch” and pathologize homosexuality once again.
And while Drescher — who has been practicing psychiatry for over four decades — isn’t optimistic about changing the hearts and minds of today’s anti-LGBTQ church leaders who are “set in their ways,” he is still hopeful about the future.
“Younger religious people don’t think of LGBTQ people as their enemies. They know them as their friends, their neighbors and their fellow congregants,” he said.
“So as the new generation grows up, religious LGBTQ people will be met with greater acceptance rather than being stigmatized and having to hide who they are, and less hiding who you are means you can grow up feeling better about yourself and perhaps experience less anxiety, depression and other mental health struggles.”
If you or someone you know is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline or chat live at 988lifeline.org. You can also visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional support.
Spencer Macnaughton is an Emmy-nominated and Gracie Award-winning producer and an adjunct professor at New York University, where he teaches journalism with a focus on LGBTQ issues.