A Texas church has chosen a radically different path from many denominations nationwide. Instead of demonizing LGBTQ+ people, the Galileo Church in Fort Worth has opted to support and welcome the community.
The congregation is particularly disturbed by the state legislature’s recently enacted law that bans healthcare providers from treating trans kids and has launched a program to help families get their children the healthcare they need.
“Health care is a human right, and withholding necessary care for trans kids is state-sponsored cruelty. As neighbors to one another, we seek ways to help each other’s families flourish,” the church says on the website for the new program, the North Texas TRANSportation Network.
The church will assist families who need to travel out of state to get treatment for their children with a $1000 grant. Individual donors and organizations fund the group; no public money is used.
The not-for-profit doesn’t require religious beliefs or church participation from applicants. The only qualification is that families must live in the 19-county northern Texas area and have a trans or gender-diverse child.
“I’m a mother, I have three kids so and I have always been able to get the healthcare for my kids that they desperately needed,” Executive Director Cynthia Daniels told CBS News. “So to me it’s just being a good neighbor to a group of people who have been selected to not be able to receive their healthcare and to me that’s devastating.”
Grants are distributed as the funds become available.
A very slightly better one than you thought you went to sleep In?
Credit where it's due. I applaud the church for doing this and never thought I would read such a thing. Of course there's a bit of an orphan crushing machine kind of thing going on. But I'll take the microscopic ^^^^W
There is a diversity of Christian denominations and some are (socially) progressive. But we seldom hear about them as angry evangelical ones scream mich louder. But they are there, doing their work as they always have making little news unless you look for it.
For example the Metropolitan Community Church has ordained LGBT clergy since 1968 and United Church of Christ since -72. So there are very socially progressive denominations out there, just wish their voices were heard louder. Or that media reported on them more.
Thinking of it I would like more Christian schisms to be prevalent.
My partner was telling me that Tammy Faye Bakker was a queer ally during the AIDS epidemic, gave a victim of AIDS a hug when people were scared to touch them, told christians to be ashamed of themselves for turning their backs, and had one on her TV show (by satellite because all the crew were scared so it wasn't logistically possible). All these people are batshit crazy but like they say, even a broken clock is right twice a day
Thank you for highlighting this fact. For another example, the Episcopal Church has LGBT clergy, and performs marriages for LGBT people. It strongly emphasizes welcoming everyone with no exceptions, and supports lots of social welfare programs. They even oppose legal restrictions on abortion. Liberal Christians are out there but they don't make headlines in most cases.
People who are sick of Christian hegemony, who would like to see a functioning social democracy in the USA instead of religious welfare with Jesus Strings attached.
churches don't pay taxes and contribute to hatred & ignorance worldwide. it's a puppet show to convert ppl to their cult & doesn't solve the underlying issue of healthcare costs
This is the first Christian church I've ever seen that has been willing to respond to the violent rhetoric of other churches with something strong than "Oh, well, everyone is entitled to their beliefs". They need and deserve our critical support.
Eh, there are Christian denominations in my area flying pride flags and BLM flags. Granted, I live in a liberal area. But they're not all bad. And I say this being very turned off by the idea of religion in general.
but are they willing to go so far as to condemn the others? when someone gets behind a pulpit and says that we need to be murdered in the street, do they say "that man is not a christian" or "my brother and I don't agree on everything"? those are the ones I'm talking about, the people that believe what they believe, but find it more important to avoid conflict than to do what's right.
In general, the rural areas are red and the cities are blue. Austin, Dallas - Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio, all center to left leaning. Literally everywhere else is full of repuglicunts or ‘libertarians’.
A greater number of people in the state lean left rather than right, but a greater number of districts lean right rather than left. This is primarily because there are far more rural areas in the state than otherwise, but gerrymandered districts make the problem worse.
From my anecdotal experience growing up, Texas used to be a lot more chill when it came to civil rights. It was a lot more common to hear, "I don't agree with you, but it's your right to do it" than it was to experience truly hateful people. They still existed, but the average person tended to get annoyed or offended by the outspoken, hateful people, even if their views aligned. Somewhere along the way it started going downhill (before Trump), and then Trump gave it a big shove which is why Texas is where it is today.
Edit: also, something a lot of people forget is how massive Texas is as a state. Any single European country can comfortably fit inside of Texas with room to spare. There's a reason why Texans tend to talk about distance in terms of minutes or hours instead of yards or miles.
Listen to George HW Bush, from Texas, talking about immigration in a debate with Reagan (who also talks about “an open border both ways”). Reagan ruined a lot of things, but it still used to be different.
https://youtu.be/YsmgPp_nlok
One thing that tends to be overlooked is that the Californians and other people that move to TX tend to be hard R voters. In fact, according to the Dallas Morning News, native Texans voted for Beto 51-48 when he ran against Cruz, while people who moved here voted 57-42 in favor of Cruz.
Rural areas are very red and cities are largely blue. It was shocking to me that this was a church in Fort Worth, that city was a conservative stronghold through Obama's presidency. It's only been in the last few years that it has started turning purple and you could start to feel safe in a public space as LGBT.
There is massive gerry-mandering that helps keep R's in power. For example, downtown San Antonio and downtown Austin were in a dumbell shaped district that extended down I-35 to water down blue votes.
IIRC, TX was one of the first states to enact early voting, which they recently expanded. We have 2 weeks to vote and polls are required to be open for at least 9 hours the first week and required to be open at least 12 hours the second week and final day of voting. Polls can be open on weekdays from 6 AM-10 PM with different hours on Saturday and Sunday, though typically polls tend to be open from 7 AM - 7 PM through the second week. It's just infuriating that people won't go early vote on their way to/from work. I've lived all over the state and in all major metro areas beside San Antonio and have never waited more than 10-15 minutes in line to vote. Through most of the day, there is no line at all at polling places until the very last day when the procrastinators come to vote.
There's plenty of churches who have been doing food drives since forever, the one down the street has been around ages and has done them since before I was around, and I've never known a real shelter to ever turn someone down no matter who they are. Maybe other peoples stories are different though