Inclusive Message for Mother's Day

A coalition of pro-gay religious and secular groups is celebrating Mother's Day with a campaign encouraging Christians to be welcoming and fully inclusive of LGBT people in their congregations.

The campaign by Believe Out Loud includes a video released this week showing a young boy and his two mothers walking down the aisle of a church. Some of the people in the pews look at them skeptically, but finally the minister says, "Welcome -- everyone."

"To celebrate the diversity of all families, we chose Mother's Day to kick off this campaign," Sung Park, program director of Believe Out Loud, said in a press release. "Mothers teach us to value everyone equally, to treat others the way we would like to be treated. Jesus also taught us that. What better day than Mother's Day to remind people of this universal value."

The campaign aims to get a million people to speak out for LGBT equality in churches. It launches just as the Presbyterian Church (USA) is about to ratify a resolution allowing ordination of LGBT clergy. The church's national legislative body adopted the resolution at its 2010 meeting, and regional church bodies, called presbyteries, are in the process of ratifying it. Presbytery votes scheduled for Tuesday in Minnesota and California are expected to push the favorable votes over the 50% mark, making the resolution official Presbyterian policy.

Believe Out Loud includes gay-supportive groups from the Presbyterian, United Methodist, Episcopal, and many other Christian denominations, plus secular organizations such as the Human Rights Campaign, Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, and National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. It is a project of Intersections International, a multicultural, ecumenical initiative of the Collegiate Church of New York.