The Rev. James Martin is a Jesuit priest and editor at large at America magazine in New York. His books include Building a Bridge: How the Catholic Church and the LGBT Community Can Enter Into a Relationship of Respect, Compassion and Sensitivity. 

Caroline J. Simon is the John H. and Jeanne M. Jacobson Professor of Philosophy at Hope College in Holland, Mich. She specializes in the topics of virtue, moral knowledge and sexuality and wrote The Disciplined Heart: Love, Destiny & Imagination.

The Muslim Women’s League is a nonprofit organization that works to improve the status of women in the American Muslim community. Part of its mission is to create awareness about domestic violence within the American Muslim Community. It is based in Los Angeles.

Read a June 14, 2012 Guardian article about South African transgendered runner, Caster Semenya, who won the women’s 800m run in the 2009 word championship which caused much debate in the media.

Paul Knitter is the Paul Tillich Professor of Theology, World Religions and Culture at Union Theological Seminary in New York. He is an expert in religious pluralism and can talk about how the election can affect the nation’s religious dynamics.

Serene Jones is president of Union Theological Seminary in New York and Roosevelt Professor of Systematic Theology. She can discuss the ways in which Obama’s presidency could move the religious focus from hot-button issues of sexuality to social justice issues, such as poverty and homelessness.

A June 26, 2011 Chicago Tribune article on clergy in Illinois who defied church on same-sex unions.

A May 31, 2011, story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette about splits in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America after its 2009 decision to allow some openly gay clergy. According to the story, the ELCA says that 444 parishes voted to leave after the decision but that the ELCA has also started more than 300 new churches.

The Human Right’s Campaign has a run-down of LGBT issues in the Episcopal Church.