The Rev. Paul M. Turner is pastor of Gentle Spirit Christian Church, an LGBT-focused church in metro Atlanta. The church actively supports and participates in local Youth Pride events.

Matt Comer is the editor of Q-Notes, an online watchdog magazine for the LGBT community in the Carolinas. His coming-out story is featured in Crisis: 40 Stories Revealing the Personal, Social and Religious Pain and Trauma of Growing Up Gay in America (2008). There is a video of his testimony about being young, gay and […]

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.

Alex Sanchez is a Florida-based author of several novels about being young, gay and Christian, including The God Box and Rainbow Boys.

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 […]

Mitchell Gold is the founder of Faith in America and editor of its book, Crisis: 40 Stories Revealing the Personal, Social and Religious Pain and Trauma of Growing Up Gay in America (2008).

Elizabeth A. Segal is a professor of social work at Arizona State University in Phoenix. She is a co-founding editor of Journal of Poverty and co-edited The Promise of Welfare Reform: Political Rhetoric and the Reality of Poverty in the Twenty-First Century (Haworth Press, 2006).