Episcopal-Catholic-Episcopal, LGBTQ+ kids and love

Last updated on: January 27, 2025 at 11:27 am by Julie Nichols

Episcopal-Catholic-Episcopal, LGBTQ+ kids and love 2025-01-27T11:27:20-06:00 Julie Nichols

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I want to thank the many friends who have invited us to their various LGBTQ+ faith communities here in San Antonio. Grant and I have been attending St. Mark’s Episcopal Church of San Antonio since Christmas. I have a special arrangement with my local Catholic Archdiocese to also practice certain elements of Catholicism because part of me will always be Catholic. There are many things I will always love about the Catholic Church, like its long-standing commitment to migrants and welcoming foreigners. But when it comes to loving and supporting LGBTQ+ people, that’s a painful place for me as a mother and many Catholic parents who have LGBTQ+ kids.

For those of you who may not know this, I actually grew up in the Episcopal Church and have very fond memories of growing up there. I am thankful to those who loved me there, and I apologize for acting upon ignorance in the past. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, many Episcopalians did not understand why such progressive reforms were made in a fairly short period of time, and that included Grant and me with a young family deciding how to raise our children. During that time period, many Episcopalians didn’t understand why Episcopal Church leaders applauded a married bishop leaving his wife and children to marry a man. The reaction to these progressive reforms and actions “to preserve the faith” started the global Anglican Realignment movement which Grant and I were a part of until 2017 which is when I became Catholic. Our lived experiences in the Catholic Church starting in 2017 taught us why the progressive 1990s/2000s reforms of the Episcopal Church were so important at a life and death level to treat and uplift everyone with equal dignity, love, and respect. “Upholding the faith” at all costs, and especially when it is mixed with politics, leads to what we are experiencing now in America. The end result is the most rotten fruit imaginable and ultimately fascism. It’s the same ideology which led to Nazi Germany.

Parents who are raising your young children in conservative religious communities, particularly those families who have Autistic/Neurodivergent and or LGBTQ+ children, I cannot emphasize enough why it is so important to NOT raise your children in a faith environment who doesn’t love, embrace, uplift, and bless everyone even at the expense of “upholding the faith.” You cannot make the assumption that one of your children cannot possibly be LGBTQ+ simply because you are “raising them in the faith.” Our family did that, and we have multiple LGBTQ+ kids. Grant and I decided to love them for the way they are because family support is a life and death issue. When a child comes out LGBTQ+ in a conservative religious environment it can and is many times life-threatening. This is why LGBTQ+ friendly/affirming religious environments are so important. Any church who excludes others for any reason is saying, “God doesn’t love that person” which is totally false because everyone who walks this earth is equally created in the image of God. I have also come to understand that female leaders serve as affirming figures to gender and sexual minorities (LGBTQ+) and other women who have suffered abuses of different kinds. This is not about sexual ethics or feminism. This is about affirming the image of God in all people which is life-affirming. When minorities and vulnerable people do not feel loved and accepted by the church, they also can feel not loved and accepted by God. This is just not very serious and damaging at individual family levels, it’s serious and damaging at church body levels and global levels. The end result is what we are experiencing nationally and globally right now, the weaponization of religion and politics.

The role of the Church according to the highest office of Christian history (Pope Francis) is to provide pastoral care and support for those in need. Jesus says we are to feed the hungry, heal the sick, and clothe the naked. It’s not our job to condemn others and co-opt with the government to invoke a politicized brand of the faith. It’s our job to love God and love our neighbor as ourselves through word and deed, period.

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