We’re Coming Out with Faith for Pride 2022!

Here at Rainbow Faith and Freedom we are beyond excited to be participating in Pride Toronto for the first time. Pride is celebrated across our nation and around the world. It originally began in New York City after police raided a local gay bar leading to the infamous Stonewall Riots in 1969. Toronto Pride was officially founded in 1981 in response to “Operation Soap”, a brutal Toronto police raid of numerous bathhouses where hundreds of men were publicly humiliated. Today, Pride Toronto aims to support the 2SLGBTQ+ community by providing a space where those of all gender and sexual orientations can be seen, accepted, and embraced for the beauty they bring to our city. 

We are thrilled to join forces with Pride Toronto to help bring our message of reducing and eliminating religious-based homophobia and transphobia to a wider audience. We feel it is important for us to be an active and visible part of our community to effectively combat this homophobia and transphobia. Faith is an important part of many 2SLGBTQ+ people’s lives. We are working hard to help all 2SLGBTQ+ folks feel free to be who they are within their religious communities and openly love who they love. We believe that no matter what faith you subscribe to (even if that is no faith at all), you are deserving of a safer space in which to interact with your community and practice what you believe in. All people are equal under their Creator. 

If you are interested in helping us on our mission of reducing religious based homophobia and transphobia at Pride, we have lots of volunteer spaces open! Whether you’ve been involved with us before or are looking to try something new, you are always welcome at Rainbow Faith and Freedom. We would love to have you march with us at the Pride Parade on June 26th or help us at our Pride Festival booth. At our booth we will be informing people about RFF’s mission, recruiting volunteers and sign-ups for our email list, as well as accepting donations. Visit our volunteer page at https://rainbowfaithandfreedom.org/volunteer-1 to sign-up and learn more. 

If you would like to support our efforts at Pride monetarily you can find our fundraiser at https://rff.salsalabs.org/comingoutwithfaith/index.html. Your contribution will help us support both religious institutions who want to become more welcoming to the 2SLGBTQ+ community and to 2SLGBTQ+ individuals looking for religious belonging. Any donation over $20 is tax-deductible. 

After two years of virtual Pride events we hope to see you in-person at Pride Toronto this year. Whether it’s volunteering with us at our booth, marching alongside us in the parade or coming out to cheer in the crowds, thank you for continuously being a part of the RFF community.

Meeting with Dignity Network Steering Committee

Dignity Network Steering Committee

Dignity Network (DN) is a network of 48 organizations across Canada that are involved in international LGBTI work. Doug Kerr is the Founder. Because of the work we'll be doing confronting religious based homophobia around the world, Rainbow Faith and Freedom (RFF) is involved with this organization.

DN has an annual round table meeting for member organizations each year and is governed by a Steering Committee which meets monthly. RFF is a member organization and Rev. Dr. Brent Hawkes, Founder and Executive Director of RFF, serves on the Steering Committee. On November 6 & 7, 2019, the Steering Committee met in person for the first time (we usually have monthly meetings by phone or Zoom) to review our past work and plan for the year ahead, and in particular to further develop the structure of the organization. We met at Egale’s office - thanks to Egale for their hospitality and thanks to Doug for getting us to this stage. There’s also a smaller Executive committee that helps with the day-to-day operations.

DN has been crucial in helping RFF develop expertise, relationships and contacts for international work. As we raise funds, RFF needs to become a member with the Global Interfaith Network (GIN) and the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA), 2 organizations that will be crucial for our future work.

We’d love it if you would make a monthly pledge or you could sponsor RFF’s involvement in either DN, GIN or ILGA.

Click the ‘Donate’ button at the top of the page if you want to support the work of RFF: www.rainbowfaithandfreedom.org

Panel: Can sexual orientation and religious beliefs be reconciled?

Rev. Dr. Brent Hawkes participated in a panel on reconciling sexual orientation and religious beliefs.

In Ontario, Canada, a new curriculum for sexual and health education was released a few years ago. This curriculum had not been updated in nearly 20 years and was overdue for an overhaul. The new curriculum addressed such issues as healthy bodies, dating, sexting, cyberbullying and other things that young people today need to be aware of to stay safe. The curriculum also finally addressed what many know to be reality: that there are gay, lesbian, trans and other identities and ways of being in the world, and they belong, too.

Different religious groups have responded in diverse ways, from urging parents to take their kids out of schools until the new curriculum is repealed, to an open, outright welcome and endorsement of the curriculum.

Here’s the description of the panel:

“If you're struggling to embrace your lesbian colleague's sexual orientation for religious reasons. Or, your son comes to you and says he wants to marry a man -- and you think ‘blasphemy!’ Or, you are an LGBT person of faith but struggling, thinking your religion will not accept you. Or you're someone who believes being gay is a sin, but you do not want to discriminate.

This panel is for you! Come to dialogue, gain insight and develop understanding.

LGBT rights in Canada have come a long way since the police bathhouse raids of 1981 in Toronto. Today, gay couples can get married and have children. Their rights are enshrined in legislation and human rights codes. Toronto’s annual Pride Month attracts hundreds of thousands to the city to celebrate, show pride and stand in solidarity.

One hurdle, a large one, remains in the path to full equal rights: religious belief. To many, their culture’s interpretation of religion defines being gay as a sin. The large controversy over an updated sex-ed curriculum in Ontario in 2015 (that specifically recognized gender fluidity) demonstrated how a number of religious groups continue to be conflicted about the subject. And LGBT individuals who are religious have often suffered in attempting to reconcile these two sides of their identity.

But religions can often be interpreted in many ways, and none is a monolith. Many religious people have found interpretations that are inclusive of sexual minorities. But the battle between inclusive and exclusive continues in what is now the final frontier in gay rights.“

“I think it’s wonderful that we’re having these discussions,” said Rev. Dr. Brent Hawkes. “It’s time to help prepare young people to understand that there are many ways of being, and not just one, and that if you’re not being like that one way, then you’re fine just the way you are, exactly as God created you.”

Symposium: Confronting & Diminishing Religious-Based Homophobia

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