Dear gay and lesbian couples who want to get married:

Congratulations on finding love. It's hard, you know, meeting a person who wants to be adventurous but will also play board games, a person who makes you laugh on a Wednesday night and isn't too proud to find the cheapest...

I used to be a transphobic gay man. In the fall of 2011, I was sitting in my car with a friend, parked in front of my yellow San Diego house, talking about dating and gay bars and all the new things I'd learned about myself since coming out the...

I'd never even heard the name James Baldwin until my first semester at Union Theological Seminary. As a white, middle-class American, I was the product of a predominantly white, middle-class education that didn't assign The Fire Next Time and Giovanni's Room, two of Baldwin's masterpieces, alongside 1984 and The Scarlet...

As March approaches and the Supreme Court of the United States of America prepares to hear monumental cases in the movement for LGBTQ equality, I have to make a confession: I don't think marriage equality is the ultimate answer. Before I'm ushered off the advocacy stage, lampooned as a heretic...

Two months ago, I jigsawed everything I owned into four modest suitcases and boarded a Southwest flight from San Francisco to New York City, successfully completing my first cross-country move to begin a three year masters program in divinity at Union Theological Seminary in Manhattan. At some point after my...

At 2:30 PM, Sunday, April 15, 2012, Katie Ricks was ordained at University Presbyterian Church, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and became the first out lesbian to be ordained for ministry in the Presbyterian Church USA (PCUSA) since an important change last year. Ricks has been serving as an Associate in...

At 5:50 a.m., like aural lava, my alarm started erupting from my bedside table and burning my ears. It was still dark, so I pulled my hand from under the sheets and reached left, searching for my phone. Apparently, it had fallen during the night, and wasn't where I'd left...

I was sitting in that red swivel chair I had in my office when I heard her knock. Her knuckles trampolined against the glass pane that was next to my door and sent bullets of sound ricocheting off pictures, and books, and the potted plant my boss had given me...

I've known something was different about me ever since I wanted to kiss Mr. Peterson in 8th grade. The son of two pastors in the Church of the Nazarene -- a small, evangelical Christian denomination -- I never thought I'd tell anyone about my little, rainbow-patterned secret: that I'd bury...