UUFM LGBTQ Coming Out and Solidarity Statement of Principle

 

Adopted by a unanimous vote of the congregation April 13, 2025

As the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Manhattan, this is a coming out statement.  On one level we are “coming out” to collectively celebrate and defend our LGBTQ2  siblings, elders, young people, future partners, neighbors, and fishing buddies. We want  to say with our full chest that we have a deep love for our queer kin. On another level,  we are coming out as the very LGBTQ2 people being targeted by various laws, policies,  and logics aimed at erasing us. We are lesbians. We are gay. We are bisexual. We are  transgender. We are queer. We are Two-Spirit. We are non-binary. We are gender  expansive. And together, we are working for our collective liberation! 

Our congregation is a community created through a mutual belief in “the inherent worth  and dignity of every person” (1st Principle). We believe this means that sexual  orientation, gender identity, and gender expression are all deeply powerful parts of  every human’s authentic self. To deny a person the dignity of moving through the world  how they/she/he understands their authentic self would be a profound violation of our  duty to recognize the dignity of our fellow humans.  

However, seemingly everywhere we turn, such violations keep amassing: 

  • Outing trans folks on government identity documents by legally requiring gender markers to align with the sex they were assigned at birth
  • Reinstating and expanding the ban on transgender service members in the  military 
  • Encouraging the criminal prosecution of teachers who affirm LGBTQ students 
  • Banning trans women, trans girls, and likely intersex folks from women’s sports 
  • Prohibiting the use of state funds for gender affirming care, but only for trans  youth, and still formally endorsing the abuse of intersex youth 
  • Banning medical providers from supporting trans and gender expansive youth 
  • Denying same-sex parents presumptive parentage 
  • Requiring K-12 and college employees to use the name and pronouns that align  with a student’s biological sex and birth certificate; functionally requiring  deadnaming, misgendering, and bullying of trans students 
  • Deleting trans people from the telling of our own histories 
  • Eliminating guardrails on government surveillance of queer folks when it is just based on our gender identity or sexual orientation, suggesting we are an inherent threat to national security for being who we are 
  • And, the ever-climbing tally of anti-LGBTQ hate crimes that take our siblings, and  terrorize those of us left behind 

It is unconscionable. These legal attempts to invalidate queer existence are just that,  attempts. Queer people exist. Queer people are sacred. We are queer.

As a congregation, we celebrate the creative and expansive ways people can be human.  We believe in a gender and sexual universe rather than a mere binary. We support  exploration and innovation. As both the targets of these legal maneuvers and as allies,  we stand together and alongside you in this fight. 

Unitarian Universalism is committed to radically inclusive religious work that organizes  for intersectional justice. We believe that racial justice, feminism, civil rights, Indigenous  liberation, Immigration justice, and LGBTQ struggles are all bound together.  

Liberatory politics are at the core of who we are. Love is what we do. And, as Cornel  West taught us, “Justice is what love looks like in public.” 

We are here. Many of us are queer. And, we are in this together.

 

Statements by our larger Unitarian Universalist faith community