Friday, February 12, 2010

LGBT-friendly religions

I was hanging out in a gay bar last night and we ended up talking about religion (yeah, I know, it's no great surprise when I'm around, as it's one of my favourite topics of conversation) and discussing which are the most LGBT-friendly religions and denominations. Some of the people had never heard of some of the religions.

So, in no particular order, here are some of the more friendly ones:

Unitarianism
  • The Divine has no gender.
  • Unitarians have ordained LGBT ministers since 1977, and passed a number of motions at General Assembly in support of LGBT equality.
  • Most Unitarian churches are willing to do same-sex blessings, and welcome LGBT members.
  • Find out more about Unitarianism
Metropolitan Community Church
Buddhism
  • All sex is liable to cause ego-attachments, so there's no particular prejudice against same-sex relationships
  • Buddhist sexual ethics do not preclude particular practices but rather promote considerate behaviour
  • Lots of androgynous statues
  • Find out more about Buddhism
Eclectic Paganism
Wicca
  • Sometimes heterocentric, but has the potential to be queered
  • Isolated covens can sometimes be homophobic, but the mainstream is not
  • Find out more about Wicca
Druidry
Polytheism
Quakers
Liberal Jews

See also

2 comments:

Kittredge Cherry said...

Nice summary!

I like your evaluation of Wicca: "Sometimes heterocentric, but has the potential to be queered." The same could be said of many situations in life...

Anonymous said...

Within the eclectic Paganism category, I would say that the Feri Trad stemming from Cora and Victor Anderson, along with its several cousin Trads, are at least LBGT-friendly. Probably LBGT positive. From the pantheon and core lore to practice.

I had not heard (or thought of) a Pagan Trad's potential to be "queered." But I get what you menan.