After Leelah Alcorn’s suicide: time to act

After Leelah Alcorn’s suicide: time to act

Open and Affirming Coalition Executive Director Andy Lang at Friday’s vigil for Leelah Alcorn in Cleveland: “It’s critical for Christians and Jews and Muslims and other people of faith who know that the transgender community are made in the image and likeness of God not to keep that knowledge to themselves, but to step out, to be bold, to participate in events like this, so religion will not take another life.” The Coalition urges ONA churches throughout the country to witness publicly to our faith in a God who accepts all transgender people just as they are—made in God’s image. Contact your local LGBT Community Center and your state’s LGBT advocacy group for ideas on how you can help. Our goals include passage of municipal, county and state ordinances to protect trans residents from discrimination and to assure their access to public accommodations. And now’s the time to stand up against “reparative therapy”—the bogus medical treatment that seeks to “repair” gender and sexual non-conformity. Reparative therapy has been repudiated by every professional association in health care, but is still legal in 48 states.