Part 2 of 2. Interview with a gay Christian trans man in Houston Texas. We discuss the church and related activist communities he's been involved with, his history with conservative and liberal Lutheran churches, the Seminex movement and the schism within American Lutheranism, accepting the harmful status quo or proactively changing things for the better, his shift toward involvement in the Episcopal Church, and how his faith grew from being accepted as a gay trans man.

I also talk a little bit about a Quaker organization's early and very open acceptance of gay people during the height of the AIDS/HIV crisis in the mid-to-late 80s.

We further discuss other individual welcoming/affirming denominations in Houston and their struggles with their governing bodies, AIDS/HIV hospice care by churches, how pastors pushed back on gay marriage restrictions, struggles with welcoming churches not being public about LGBT+ acceptance, the Integrity USA movement within Episcopal churches, participating in Pride events and being asked about why he's a Christian, the harm of quietism, how well-to-do, liberal Christians sometimes hide out and don't do progressive activism even when it's desperately needed, and how the Religious Right effectively pushes their regressive anti-gay and anti-trans agendas.

We also discuss privilege, diversity, and opening up the trans group he helps lead (TMAH, see link below) by directly addressing issues of race and ethnicity, the difficult topic of being a "white savior", and sharing power and leadership with POC.

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Links to topics in part 2.

LCMS - Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (conservative)

https://www.lcms.org/

ELCA - Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (liberal)

Seminex movement in the Lutheran Church

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seminex

St. Stephens Episcopal Church

https://ststephenshouston.org/

Bering UCC (United Church of Christ)

Trinity Episcopal

https://www.trinitymidtown.org/

Integrity USA movement within the Episcopal Church

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrity_USA

Saving our Sisters United (SOSU)

https://sosuinc.org/

Saving Our Brothers

https://sosuinc.org/new-houston-social-org/

Houston Activists Launch New Organization for Transgender Men of Color

Trans Masculine Alliance of Houston, TMAH

https://transmasculinehouston.com/

The Montrose Center

https://montrosecenter.org/

Houston LGBT history timeline, the 2000's (mentions formation of the STAG group)

https://www.houstonlgbthistory.org/timeline2000.html

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Other Conversations is an independent, informal oral history project by Shane Brodie, a multi-issue activist and sculptor. This project is on hiatus as of Fall 2023 as I continue to slowly upload previous interviews, but it may continue later on in 2024 or thereafter. If you are interested in being interviewed sometime in the future, please email me (see below) and we can talk about that privately.

In this project, I've striven for thoughtful content from a variety of points of view. I also haven't allowed comments because I want to limit harassment of my interviewees. This means that my project is barely treading water in the tsunami of anti-trans content on social media. If you've found these interviews interesting, please "like" and share them.

In this project, I interviewed transgender, nonbinary, gender non-conformist, agendered, neutrois, and intersex people who are anarchist, independent, conservative, egalitarian, progressive, free speech and gun rights enthusiasts, rural, religious, atheist, voluntaryist, mutualist, apolitical, skeptical, constitutionalist, classic liberal, libertarian, small political party members, socialist, DSA, communist, radical, revolutionary, or have a mixture of right/left views etc.

If you want to contact Shane, please email him at [email protected]

Thanks!