Listen to our new podcast on LGBT and Faith with Salzburg Global Seminar
Cover art for LGBT & Faith alongside a photo by Jukka Aalho on Unsplash
ILGA Asia and Salzburg Global LGBT* Forum co-produce new audio series featuring voices from Global Online Forum on LGBT* and Faith
ILGA Asia and Salzburg Global Seminar are delighted to launch a new audio series amplifying the voices of those who participated in the Global Online Forum on LGBT* and Faith.
This program, held in 2020 by the Salzburg Global LGBT* Forum, brought together members and leaders of faith communities from within Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism, as well as agnostics, atheists, anthropologists, and cultural believers.
Worldwide, LGBT people are increasingly insisting on their inclusion in faith communities and cultural traditions. In response, many religious congregations have begun to interpret their own beliefs in more inclusive ways.
An output from this program was a blog series featuring 16 reflections that help others understand the changes happening in LGBT and faith communities.
To make these experiences and reflections more accessible, ILGA Asia and Salzburg Global have partnered to transform each blog into an audio feature.
Henry Koh, executive director at ILGA Asia, said, “The notion that faith and discussions on sexuality and gender should not be conflated is untrue — and it contributes to further misunderstanding and perpetuates stigma on all sides of the conversation.
LGBTI people often face harmful impacts when this occurs and it becomes clear that we need to engage issues of faith and religion through progressive methods and discourses in order to advance the conversation on acceptance and rights for LGBT people.
For this reason, ILGA Asia is excited to collaborate with the Salzburg Global Seminar’s richly diverse fellows through producing this meaningful podcast series — where we explore life-changing and affirming conversations on how LGBT & faith can and must co-exist.”
Klaus Mueller, founder and chair of the Salzburg Global LGBT* Forum, said, “Our new platform is documenting that a respectful, humane and global conversation on LGBT equality and inclusion in and across faith communities is not only possible, but indeed has already begun in many places.
The audio features are wonderful. Listening to our Fellows makes their deeply personal vision on faith and LGBT even more palpable. Fellows share their journeys of faith with great honesty, the obstacles and opportunities they’ve faced and are facing, their ideas for change, and whether they experience progress or backlash.
LGBT people grow up within their families and often are raised within faith communities. They are not coming ‘from the outside.’ We understand faith communities that are unresponsive to the needs of their LGBT members counteract their core values of love, inclusion, and community.”
ILGA Asia and Salzburg Global LGBT* Forum will release one episode every three weeks, starting with Brenda Rodriguez Alegre, whose piece is titled, “As a Child, I Would Pray to God ‘to Make Me a Woman One Day.’ This podcast is now available on Anchor and Spotify.
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* LGBT: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender. We are using this term as it is currently widely used in human rights conversations on sexual orientation and gender identity in many parts of the world, and we would wish it to be read as inclusive of other cultural concepts, contemporary or historical, to express sexuality and gender, intersex and gender non-conforming identities.
