Jessica Joseph

Award-winning copywriter

This is not a "who had/has it worse than whom" or a "which trait is more deserving of equal rights" contest. This exploration is about the systematic tactics employed by racists and homophobes to instill a negative self-perception in others and how strikingly similar they are.

Marianne T. Duddy-Burke

Executive Director, DignityUSA

While Catholics in general are supportive of LGBT people, the church is still perceived as unwelcoming. This seems to indicate that the church is so identified with the positions assumed by its leadership that the reality among "rank-and-file" Catholics is rendered meaningless.

Christian Piatt

Author, editor, speaker

If all it takes to be seduced over to the gay "dark side" is to earn a merit badge together, certainly we are all susceptible to the gay mojo. So I guess it's time for us to face the facts.

David Briggs

Writer, Association of Religion Data Archives

That a large number of Americans appears to face particular anguish related to the proliferation of pornography merits dialogue and understanding, not ridicule.

Alexander Goerlach

Founder and Executive Editor, The European

Pope Francis allegedly said that the Vatican is filled with gays, with queer networks and with a culture of granting professional favors to each other. Yet the pope has decided to clean up his shop. He is quoted as saying, "the carnival is over."

Rev. Malcolm Boyd

Bestselling author, Episcopal priest, and gay elder

As a gay man and an Episcopal priest, I'm frankly extremely confused by the Vatican when it comes to the entire gay question. Am I loved by anybody there?

Rev. Martha Spong

United Church of Christ Pastor

I live my day to day life in a home, church and workplace where my status as a woman married to a woman is taken for granted. So it's not that we wanted to be on camera at a baseball game a couple of years ago, but it bothered me that we wouldn't even be considered a possibly romantic couple, simply because we are both women.

John Shore

Award-winning author; blogger at JohnShore.com

If God wanted Christians to follow a simple, clear set of rules, then the New Testament would be a simple, clear set of rules. But it's not.

Serene Jones

President, Union Theological Seminary

As we await the Supreme Court rulings on these matters, let us people of faith thank the LGBTQ movement for helping us love God and neighbor better and move ever more closely to a gospel of justice.

Joseph Ward III

Director, Believe Out Loud

If we care enough, we can give ourselves permission to journey into the shoes and lives of others we don't understand; we can open our arms to hold and listen to the LGBTQ people of our world.

Logan Nakyanzi Pollard

findcreatejoy.com

The culture war in Uganda over LGBT rights is a double-binded problem: a struggle over the hegemony of fundamentalism and a fog behind which a power grab for the nation's oil reserves and natural wealth can take place.

Michael Pettinger

Professor of literary and religious studies, Eugene Lang College/The New School

How would it change the way we talk to each other, if we took the Resurrection seriously, not just as a promise to be fulfilled in some distant future, but in the way we live here and now, as we make our way into the Kingdom of God?

Joel L. Watts

Scholar, Author, and Blogger

Let us pause and consider all of the things Jesus could have possibly said -- and yet didn't -- to the Centurion who loved his pais enough to debase himself in front of the traveling Galilean prophet.

Chris Stedman

Author of 'Faitheist', Humanist Chaplain, Atheist and Interfaith Activist

Atheists are already in the minority in most parts of the country, constituting a small fraction of the religiously unaffiliated in the U.S., but it seemed I was to be an especially odd one out at this event. Or, as my mother once said: "It's kind of hip to be a gay atheist [in Cambridge]. Not so much most everywhere else."

The Rev. Jacqueline J. Lewis, Ph.D.

Senior Minister, Middle Collegiate Church

On Sunday at Middle Church, my white husband and I will celebrate Loving Day and the landmark case that gave us the right to marry and live with each other. We will celebrate in hope that the Supreme Court will once again change the story, that it will rule on Prop 8 and DOMA in such a way that all couples have the right to marry in every state in our union.

Zach J. Hoag

Author & Freelance Minister

After Rob was peppered with questions and challenges regarding his view of culture shift and homosexuality, were his answers sufficiently biblical, or did they simply accomodate the culture?