James K. Wellman Jr. is a professor of American religion, culture and politics and chair of the comparative religion program at the University of Washington in Seattle. He has written on homosexuality in American churches and the question of gay ordination.

William B. Lawrence is a professor of American church history and dean of the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. He is an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church and has expressed concern that the debates over homosexuality could lead to lasting schisms.

Charles Eric Mount Jr. is a professor emeritus of religion at Centre College in Danville, Ky., and an ordained Presbyterian minister. His expertise is in community ethics and theology.

Lesley Armstrong Northup is an associate professor of religious studies at Florida International University in Miami. She wrote “Homosexuality in the Evolution of American Christianity,” a chapter in the volume Religion & Sexuality: Passionate Debates, edited by C.K. Robertson.

Corinne G. Dempsey is an associate professor of religious studies at Nazareth College and the author of The Goddess Lives in Upstate New York: Breaking Convention and Making Home at a North American Hindu Temple, a profile of a South Indian community in Rush, N.Y.

Loriliai Biernacki is an assistant professor of religious studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her research interests include Hinduism in the diaspora, and the interface between religion, science, and gender.

A Jan. 25, 2011, blog post at Christianity Today‘s website detailed how a number of church-based anti-trafficking groups planned to combat the sex trade during the run-up to Super Bowl XLV in Dallas. The groups included Traffick911 and Love 146. And Christian Brothers Investment Services, an investment firm that works with 1,000 Catholic institutions, pressured Dallas hotels to help battle the sex trade.

Read a Dec. 29, 2010, Baptist Press story, “Groups target Super Bowl sex trafficking,” about Traffick911 and Love 146.

Read an Aug. 24, 2010, interview with singer Natalie Grant about her new album, a commentary on human trafficking. The article appeared in Christianity Today.