Rumi is a 13th-century Persian poet and Sufi mystic whose love for another man inspired some of the world’s best poems and led to the creation of a new religious order, the Whirling Dervishes. He was ...

FannyAnn Eddy was an LGBTQ rights activist in Africa. She was murdered on Sept. 29, 2004. She told the United Nations, “Silence creates vulnerability,” and founded the Sierra Leone Lesbian and Gay Ass...

Good King Wenceslas might be gay. Yes, the king in the Christmas carol. The king and his page Podiven are real historical figures who loved each other in 10th-century Bohemia. Sept. 28 is the feast da...

Euphrosyne / Smaragdus (Emerald) of Alexandria is a 5th-century saint who left life as a woman to become a monk in an Egyptian monastery. The future saint ran away from home at age 18, changed her nam...

Virginia Ramey Mollenkott was a trailblazing feminist Bible scholar and queer theologian whose 13 books liberated countless LGBTQ lives. She died on Sept. 25, 2020 at age 88. Mollenkott shook the reli...

Bullied into killing himself, gay teen Tyler Clementi brought international attention to suicide of LGBTQ youth by jumping to his death on Sept. 22, 2010. Anti-LGBTQ religious and political leaders he...

John McNeill was a pioneering gay priest, psychotherapist, author, theologian and Jesuit scholar who inspired countless LGBTQ people of faith and allies. He wrote the groundbreaking 1976 book “The Chu...

Henri Nouwen was a priest and bestselling author who wrestled with his homosexuality in an intolerant church. He died on Sept. 21, 1996. His struggle with being gay may have added depth to his writing...

Hildegard of Bingen is a medieval German mystic, artist, composer and scientist who loved another nun named Richardis and wrote with ecstasy about Mary. Her feast day is Sept. 17. Hildegard celebrated...

To Have and to Hold: Same-Gender Marriage in the Household of God [Griffin, Horace L.] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. To Have and to Hold: Same-Gender Marriage in the Household o...

Gay hero Mark Bingham lost his life while fighting back against terrorist hijackers on Flight 93 on Sept. 11, 2001. He and other passengers worked together to prevent the hijackers from crashing the p...

Mychal Judge, chaplain to New York firefighters and gay saint, died helping others in the attack on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. He rose to sainthood by popular acclaim because he gave hi...

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Rainbow icons of Mary highlight her compassionate connection to the LGBTQ community -- evoking both controversy and celebration. Various rainbow Mary images by contemporary artists and activists are p...

Carl Bean was the founding archbishop of the Unity Fellowship Church Movement in the Black LGBTQ community, an early AIDS activist and Motown singer of the 1977 gay-liberation anthem “I Was Born This ...

Maurice and Theofredus are third-century martyr-saints and soldiers of Thebes with a homosocial bond. They are shown as a same-sex pair in Renaissance art. The men gaze lovingly into each other’s eyes...

Free newsletter on LGBTQ spirituality & the arts. Visit Q Spirit to see a sample and sign up. Readers call it inspiring, informative and “always fabulous.”

Trudie Barreras enriched LGBTQ Christian life in many ways as an artist, author, philosopher of divine love, incisive social commentator, wise woman of deep faith, long-time member of Metropolitan Com...

After a sexually active and probably bisexual youth, Augustine of Hippo became an influential early Christian theologian who was sex-negative but argued that God created intersex people. This contradi...

A queer black man was welcomed as an early Christian convert in Biblical times. The Ethiopian eunuch was a triple outsider -- a gender-variant foreigner from a racial minority -- when Philip baptized ...

The Black Madonna of Czestochowa, whose feast day is Aug. 26, is the model for a Haitian Vodou goddess who protects lesbians. Traditional images of Erzulie Dantor, the Vodou defender of lesbians, are ...

Marsha P. Johnson was an African American transgender woman activist who was present at the Stonewall Rebellion that launched the modern LGBTQ liberation movement. A bold black trans street activist a...

Bayard Rustin was a black gay activist and the genius behind the civil rights movement. He organized the 1963 March on Washington where Martin Luther King gave his historic “I Have a Dream Speech.” Pu...

Bernard of Clairvaux was a medieval French abbot who wrote homoerotic poetry about Jesus and had a passionate same-sex friendship with Irish archbishop Malachy of Armagh. His feast day is Aug. 20. His...

Robert Watson Wood was an ordained Congregational minister who started advocating for LGBTQ rights in the early 1960s. He died Aug. 19, 2018 at age 95. He wrote America’s first book on homosexuality a...

Mary is honored by churches Aug. 15 in a holiday with lesbian roots. The Feast of the Assumption comes from an ancient Roman festival for woman-loving virgin goddess Diana (Artemis). The midsummer hol...

A queer Christ figure is the main character in the classic novel, “The Well of Loneliness” by Radclyffe Hall. The book was banned for obscenity in England in 1928, not just because it portrayed same-s...

John of La Verna is a medieval Italian friar known for his visions of kissing and being kissed by Jesus. John had an intense relationship with a fellow friar. Franciscan scholar Kevin Elphick writes a...

Joseph, a popular figure in the Bible’s Book of Genesis, can be seen as a gender-nonconformist. Queer Bible scholars focus on how Joseph wore a rainbow-colored “princess dress” also known as a “coat o...

Delores Berry was a black lesbian clergywoman and singing evangelist whose music and ministry blessed many. She died on Aug. 8, 2017, at age 66. Berry was a Metropolitan Community Churches clergy who ...

La Paula Turner was a pioneering Black lesbian clergy who supported LGBTQ Christians since the 1970s. She passed away on Aug. 4, 2025, at age 88. She was one of the first African Americans ordained by...

When Jacob wrestled with the angel in the Bible, they embodied the struggle between sexuality and spirituality. Queer Bible scholars and religious leaders have grappled with the story and artists have...

Kuan Yin, the genderfluid spirit of compassion in Buddhism, is sometimes thought of as a queer Christ figure or LGBTQ role model. Other queer Asian Christ figures are also explored in today’s article....

Mary and Martha of Bethany were close friends of Jesus. The Bible calls them “sisters,” but maybe they were a lesbian couple. Their feast day is July 29. Mary and Martha formed a nontraditional family...

Was Lazarus the “beloved disciple” of Jesus -- and maybe even his same-sex lover? Some scholars say so. He may also be the unnamed “naked young man” who ran away when Jesus was arrested. Lazarus comin...

Boris is one of the most popular Russian saints, but his same-sex love story has been buried until recently. Boris and his servant George the Hungarian loved each other deeply. Boris confided in Georg...

Symeon and John, 6th-century Syrian monks, were joined in a same-sex union and lived together as desert hermits for 29 years. Their feast day is July 21. The blessing they received as monks is the pro...

Some see the prophet Daniel and the chief eunuch Ashpenaz as a same-sex couple or queer couple. In a hotly contested translation, the Bible describes the “favor and tender love” that he bestowed on Da...

Saint Wilgefortis prayed to avoid marriage to a pagan king -- and her prayers were answered when she grew a beard! This virgin martyr’s feast day is July 20. Wilgefortis has natural appeal for LGBTQ p...

Nancy Ledins made national headlines as the first transgender Roman Catholic priest after gender confirmation surgery in 1979. She died on July 18, 2017, at age 82 in North Carolina. Ledins left the C...

Glitter Prayers: Sacred Words for Queer Hearts and Shimmering Souls [Jones-Morton, Rev. Leo] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Glitter Prayers: Sacred Words for Queer Hearts and Shi...

Sally Miller Gearhart was a lesbian educator, theologian, activist and author of books including the 1974 classic “Loving Women / Loving Men: Gay Liberation and the Church.” She died on July 14, 2021 ...

The Bible story of the Good Samaritan shows how all people are really neighbors, including outcasts such as LGBTQ people. Some queer interpretations cast the traveler as an LGBTQ person who was bashed...

Steve Pieters was an influential gay clergyman and one of the longest-surviving AIDS patients. He died on July 8, 2023 at age 70. His ground-breaking 1985 interview with televangelist Tammy Faye Bakke...

One of the greatest love poems of all time, the Bible Song of Songs, may have been written as same-sex love poetry. Paul R. Johnson translated it as “a gay love poem” and Angela Yarber sees it as erot...

Early LGBTQ rights protests happened every Fourth of July from 1965 to 1969 in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Among the protesters was Robert W. Wood, the first member of the clergy to pi...