The symposium on Confronting and Diminishing Religious Based Homophobia on November 8, 2018 was an amazing day which far exceeded my [Brent’s] hopes!
This one-day symposium, which took place right after the Parliament of the World's Religions (PWR), brought together leading organizations and individuals involved in LGBTIQ2 human rights issues around the world.
Attendees came from Canada, United States, Jamaica, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, India, South Africa, Nigeria, Columbia and the Philippines. Among the group were the first openly gay Imam in North America, the first openly gay Orthodox Rabbi, representatives from the United Church of Canada, Metropolitan Community Churches, and Theology Professors. Five of the attendees were sponsored by RFFM to come to the PWR and our symposium. We are grateful to our sponsors, the United Church of Canada, Metropolitan Community Church of Toronto, and various individual donors.
In partnership with Egale, we spent part of the day in plenary with a group of local teachers who were on a professional development day focused on LGBTIQ2 issues in their classrooms and the education system.
The majority of the time, however, was spent in our break-out sessions, focused on the Rainbow Faith and Freedom Movement (RFFM), which I founded. The vision of RFFM is to improve the lives of LGBT+ people globally by confronting religious-based homophobia, and our mission is to work to inspire faith communities and families to be safe places for LGBT+ people by changing the hearts and minds of individuals around the world.
In our first breakout group we listened to perspectives on how we all see and experience the reality of religious-based homophobia and what is being done to address it. We spent the second breakout session in conversation about our various responses to our proposed approach and recommendations as to how we should proceed from here.
Twenty-five attendees discussed what’s going on related to religious-based homophobia, what’s working and what’s not working. The RFFM model was presented and feedback received on what they liked about the model and what suggestions they had to improve the model. Under excellent facilitation by MCC Toronto’s Jim Allen and Dietrich Heine, RFFM received phenomenal feedback which will substantially impact the planning, launch and ultimate success of RFFM.
There were many pages of feedback which need to be typed up and once that is done my assistant and I will review the notes (along with her detailed notes) and summarize the key recommendations for consideration by the Steering Committee.
A huge part of the success of the Symposium was about our partnership with Egale Canada. Egale and their staff, led by Executive Director Helen Kennedy, were all amazing. Egale led a separate track for educators across Ontario on Religion and LGBT. We closed the formal part of the day with a final plenary conversation with the teachers.
Blessings,
Rev. Dr. Brent Hawkes
#rainbowfaithandfreedom
