It’s Tuesday, time for me to introduce you to another blog.
Many of you know that I’m disgusted by the way that a lot of churches (and a lot of individual Christians, sadly) treat LGBT people. Thankfully, I’m not alone in this. Kathy Baldock works tirelessly to bridge the gap between the Church and LGBT people.
I’m not entirely sure how I came across her web site. It was probably a Google search. At any rate, I’m glad I did. Prior to finding Ms. Baldock, I had only ever seen men doing this work. That was something surprising, actually. Women tend to be (in my experience) more open to inclusion, or at least acceptance. I suppose that I assumed I would mostly find women at the front of the movement.
Anyway, while I know that a number of people won’t agree with Ms. Baldock’s conclusions, I hope that what she has to say doesn’t fall on deaf ears. There should be at least some take-away when reading her blog. And it should be pretty clear that she’s done her homework. Although she herself has no close family who are LGBT, she has certainly developed many relationships along the way. She is a fine example of what I’ve also called for, listening with an open heart.
Ms. Baldock is particularly passionate about working toward restoration between the Church and LGBT Christians. More often than not, Christians’ idea of “outreach” to the LGBT community is to look for the people perceived as farthest from God. The thousands of gay Christians are ignored and marginalized, because many conservative Christians see “gay” and “Christian” as being mutually exclusive. Even when churches gather to celebrate diversity, with multiple faith traditions represented, there are still people left out of the equation. Even if we are uncomfortable, even if we aren’t sure that we agree, all Christians should be able to find common ground. Ms. Baldock’s efforts in this area are to be commended.
