Rabbi Melissa B. Simon is director of lifelong learning at Shir Tikvah in Minneapolis. She was previously a rabbinical intern at Congregation Beth Simchat Torah in New York City, an LGBT-specific synagogue, where she led some of the congregation’s services for LGBT people. She is an advocate for LGBT rights.

Rabbi Laurie Green is the rabbi at Congregation Bet Mishpachah, a congregation for LGBT Jews and others in Washington, D.C.

John L. Selders Jr. is an ordained minister and bishop in the United Church of Christ and is the organizing pastor of Amistad United Church of Christ in Hartford, Conn.

The Rev. Rebecca Voelkel is a United Church of Christ minister and serves on the religion council of the Religion & Faith Program of the Human Rights Campaign. She is also program director for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s Institute for Welcoming Resources.

Leanne McCall Tigert is a United Church of Christ minister and pastoral psychotherapist. She is co-editor of Coming Out Young and Faithful and lives in Concord, N.H.

Oct. 19, 2009, Religion Dispatches column by Rev. Irene Monroe about black churches’ failure to embrace young LGBT people.

The Rev. Irene Monroe is a syndicated columnist and the coordinator of the African American Roundtable of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, Calif. She has written about the black church’s failure to embrace young LGBT people. She lives in Cambridge, Mass. […]

The Rev. Cindi Love is the founder of FamLo, a faith-based nonprofit that works for social justice for the marginalized, including LGBT people. She is the author of Would Jesus Discriminate?: The 21st Century Question and can discuss the issues and conflicts faced by teenagers coming out in evangelical and fundamentalist Christian communities. She is also […]

Bishop E. Roy Riley of the New Jersey Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America testified about welfare reform July 19, 2006, before the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee. He expressed concern about persistent poverty and a growing gap between rich and poor in America.