The time for LGBTQ equality is now

Idon’t always agree with Sen. Pat Toomey, but as a Pennsylvania faith leader I am hoping we can find commonground on ensuring fairness and equality for all Americans. For decades, Congress has kicked the can down the road on protecting the LGBTQ community from discrimination — but with both parties now offering proposals to get that job done, 2021 could finally be the year. I am looking to Sen. Toomey to work with his Democratic colleague Sen. Bob Casey to help hammer out the details of this crucial legislation.

I have served for 37 years as a Presbyterian minister, and first became acquainted with members of the LGBTQ community when I attended seminary in San Francisco. From my earliest interactions, I came away impressed with the commitment I witnessed in folks living authentically, true to themselves as God made them.

Since 2014 I have enjoyed the privilege of serving as pastor of the Sixth Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh. Ours is a “More Light” congregation that welcomes LGBTQ individuals and their families into the full life of our faith community. Given the struggles that so many of our LGBTQ congregants have faced, I am deeply impressed — and also humbled — by the inner work they have done to integrate their sexual orientation or gender identity into their faith.

Each year since arriving in Pittsburgh, I have marched in my clergy collar in the city’s Pride Parade, bearing witness to God’s inclusive love for all. Many in the crowd — especially young people visiting the city for the day from outlying areas where they struggle for acceptance and often just to be visible — stop me to ask for a hug. Some never before experienced a welcoming embrace in a faith community.

Sixth Presbyterian’s work with the LGBTQ community is part of our broader commitment to be a positive force in Pittsburgh’s diverse civic life. We are located in Squirrel Hill, just blocks from the Tree of Life Congregation that fell victim to the horrific 2018 anti-Semitic mass shooting that killed 11 of its members. On that awful day, our congregation gathered to show solidarity with our Jewish friends from the neighborhood and across the city.

Sixth Presbyterian also works closely with Pittsburgh’s Black and Latino communities to make the city a more welcoming and equitable place for everyone.

The challenges I’ve learned about from my LGBTQ congregants are not unique to their lives. I’m well aware that discrimination has profoundly damaging consequences for LGBTQ Americans nationwide. One in three, according to a 2020 survey, experienced discrimination — in public spaces, on the job, in schools and in their own neighborhoods — in the previous year.

That number rises to 60% among transgender people, who experience exceptionally high levels of unemployment, poverty and homelessness. They are also stalked by violence, with a record 44 hate-motivated-murders nationwide last year.

Black and Latino LGBTQ folks face greater poverty rates than communities of color generally. Less than half the states protect the community’ s youth from bullying in school and even fewer offer non discrimination protections. And elders often find themselves having to re-closet themselves, with nearly half of same-sex couples reporting discrimination in seeking senior housing.

LGBTQ Pennsylvanians still enjoy no statewide non discrimination protections, and there is no law protecting youth from school bullying or harassment either.

Thankfully, there is now hope that Congress might finally act. For the first time, both Democrats and Republicans have put forward measures that add LGBTQ protections to our nation’s civil rights laws. The major disagreement between the two parties involves balancing the urgent need to protect LGBTQ people with the religious freedoms we all cherish as Americans.

Finding a path to getting that job done is what legislators do when committed to solving problems, and Senators Toomey and Casey can look to the 21 states — including our neighbors Maryland, New Jersey and New York — that have adopted laws prohibiting anti-LGBTQ discrimination without compromising religious freedoms.

Washington can do the same, with senators reaching across the aisle to end the divisive pattern of pitting religious liberties against the rights of LGBTQ Americans — precisely the type of issue resolved in every major civil rights advance, from the 1964 Civil Rights Act to the Americans With Disabilities Act.

Senators Toomey and Casey: The half million LGBTQ Pennsylvanians, their families and their friends are counting on you.