By Rev. Dr. Durrell Watkins

From the mid-twentieth century Kinsey reports to Evelyn Hooker’s research in the 1950s, to the American Psychiatric Association removing homosexuality from its list of disorders in 1973 to the American Psychological Association taking similar action in 1975, to the American Counseling Association and National Association of Social Workers doing the same, to the World Health Organization removing homosexuality from its list of disorders in 1990, we know that LGBTQIA+ identity is not a mental health disorder. 

Additionally, regarding LGBTQIA+ identities and religion, Queer and LGBTQIA+ affirming theologians and bible scholars have been doing incredibly liberative work for decades. 

Religious scholars like Carter Heyward, Marcella Althaus-Reid, Irene Monroe, Ken Stone, Pamela Lightsey, Patrick Cheng, and Mark Jordan (to name a very few) may not be familiar to the average lay person, but their work to salvage sacred texts and traditional doctrines from cruel and life-damaging anti-LGBTQIA+ prejudices has literally changed (and possibly saved) lives. Their writings can be found in mainline seminary libraries and classrooms throughout this country and beyond. 

In case you haven’t heard this recently (or ever), let me assure you that your gender identity and your sexual orientation are part of your wholeness, part of the rich diversity of the world; they are not illnesses and they are not sins. As we say at Sunshine Cathedral: “You are God’s miracle, not God’s mistake.”