LOVEboldly in the Queen City

We have exciting news about plans to rekindle and expand LOVEboldly’s mission in the Cincinnati area! We want to invite you to join us Tuesday, August 26th at 6pm for a virtual informational meeting where we can share the vision and answer questions you might have. We are thrilled for you to join us in our efforts to create affirming community for LGBTQIA+ people of faith.

RSVP Here

If you can't attend, but want to learn more, please RSVP and we'll make sure you get a recording of the meeting.

Want to help us promote the meeting? Awesome! Click here to download printable fliers and posts for social media.

Have questions? Great! Reach out to either cincinnati@loveboldly.net or admin@loveboldly.net.

Marriage

Monday, August 18, 2025

Happy Monday, my friends! Several weeks ago, I was supposed to attend the wedding celebration for two close friends. Having dated and been engaged long enough that many of us just assumed they were already married, they decided to do a small ceremony and then hold a much larger party for friends and family at Slammers, Columbus’ prominent lesbian dive bar. For this couple and their many connections, a who’s who of Central Ohio LGBTQIA+ people, a night full of dancing, pizza, beer, and other fun just made sense. Despite convincing myself I needed to stay home for health reasons; I experienced major FOMO[1] that night.

The next morning, Siobhan and I recorded an episode for season two of “Coming Out Christian”[2] and, having gone to the same wedding, she decided to focus a bit of that episode on weddings and wedding celebrations. I admit that I’ve had my wedding planned out since I was five. Yes, the gender of my partner has changed, and the scale and scope of the celebration has become more realistic, but what hasn’t changed is my focus on the ceremony. Sure, the reception will have great food and be totally Queer, but the music, worship arts, liturgy, and preaching will be fire (hopefully my eventual partner will agree. To that end, if you are or know a good Queer man who is also looking for a good Queer man, send him my way! My mom says I’m a catch.).

From outside the LGBTQIA+ community, marriage equality probably appears to be a top priority, but inside the community there are strong opinions about whether marriage should be something Queer people pursue. Does marriage serve a purpose for Queer people? More moderate, conservative[3], and some liberal members of the LGBTQIA+ community argue, yes, legally recognized marriage is important for Queer folks because it ensures that same-sex couples have access to the same rights, privileges, and benefits as male-female couples. However, other LGBTQIA+ liberals and more radical Queer people argue that marriage forces Queer people into a system of heteronormative coupling and reinforces patriarchal and largely false Christian or biblical ideas of marriage and spousal power dynamics. As marriage equality returns to the news and the courts with at least one member of the US Supreme Court openly questioning its legality and states rushing to either sure up their laws against marriage equality or actively trying to overturn laws prohibiting marriage equality, the marriage debate has returned to the LGBTQIA+ community.

A hopeless romantic, I still believe in marriage and plan to have a wedding one day. Whether that marriage is ultimately sanctioned by the state or carries any legal, financial, or tax benefits is secondary to declaring publicly and before God that I’ve made a commitment to a person and they have made a commitment to me. Though I don’t think it’s for me, I completely support and believe that commitments between more than two partners are not only blessed by God, they’re also supported by scripture. That said, I understand the objections to pushing marriage equality within the Queer community. There is a very real concern that making marriage equality a priority further marginalizes people in the community who are facing issues far more pressing including poverty, hunger, health disparities, erasure, and death. Marriage equality and all the joy that surrounds marriages and weddings has been used as a tool of largely white Queer leaders to mask, deprioritize, and oppress other members of our community.

For my part, I believe in people making loving, equal, and consensual commitments to each other. I’m less concerned about whether those unions are state sponsored as long as they are equitable across genders, sexualities, sexual orientations, and the configurations of people in those unions. I’m still excited to plan my big church wedding with great music, amazing preaching, and the whole congregation blessing us along with the celebrants.[4] After the service and communion, which my partner and I will offer, the reception will follow at the Columbus Museum of Art or a similar venue with a local bookstore onsite. Each guest will get a ticket for one free book. If that sounds like fun, y’all need to help me find the man!

How do you think about marriage? What do you want in your wedding or what was special about your wedding?

Let us pray: God, we’ve been told that you instituted marriage as a divine blessing of certain unions and commitments between certain people. Often those configurations have felt less like your design and more like the will of governments and churches acting in their own interests. Empower us to see through those narratives and find your plan for marriage and families in all their diverse and beautiful forms. Help us navigate the arguments for and against marriage equality and grant us the clarity and vision to never place marriage above or in place of life-and-death issues in our community. We ask this in the name of your son, our liberator, Jesus. Amen.

Blessings on your weeks, my friends! Please let me know if there is anything I can do for you.

Faithfully,

Ben +

[1] “Fear of missing out.”

[2] Season One is out now and Season Two will premiere on Sunday, September 7, 2025). Get caught up or start listening today at www.loveboldly.net/comingoutchristian or wherever you get your podcasts. Also visit our Instagram page @comingoutchristian_podcast.

[3] Yes, there are moderate and conservative people in the LGBTQIA+ community. Remember that US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is openly gay and during his confirmation hearing, his husband and their two children were present in the hearing room.

[4] How we’ll pick a celebrant is anyone’s guess given that at least a third of my friends are clergy.

Make Sure You Tell the Bees

Sunday, August 17, 2025

The Rev. Dr. Marian Stewart (she/her)

Ohio Organizing Manager, Faith in Public Life

Queer Unitarian Universalist

Shhh. Don’t fly away. I’ve got something to tell you.

But first, the ritual. Prepare the bees. Get a cloth. Drape it over the hive. Or just rotate the hive away from the light. Either way, invite the bees into silence. Ask them to suspend the known and await the unknown. In the darkness, ask the bees to wait. Quietly. So they know.

Change is coming.

On this World Honeybee Day, which is always the third Saturday of August, I invite you to also go into the dark and sit. Wait. What do you need to tell the bees?

As a gay person growing up in the old South, I struggled coming out. It was dangerous. I ended up coming out several times. Parental responses of “How can I hold my head up in public” to “I hate you” cut me to the core. I went into deep silence. Unaddressed self-loathing underlaid the loss of future jobs, housing, and even my church. In the end, I also lost my biological family.

And yet, I found a way to survive. I grew into a delicate acceptance but mostly flew under the radar. I learned to be quiet. Hidden. Even from myself. Smiles and conversational mirrors let me escape focus. I got by. I was fortunate. I could pass.

My soul couldn’t pass though. And I was terrified to face the darkness. I knew, if I went there, the truth had to come out.

I had always admired people who lived their life in the fullness of who they were. Such bravery. Such brilliance. I learned over time though, that for some, the air of confidence hid their own version of self-deception or loathing. They too were afraid of the dark nights of the soul.

You could tell the people who had done their work though. Through hard times and good, there was always a light in them. It was from the inside. Like their souls were guiding the way. I wanted that too. But I knew, I had to first go into the dark.

Mystics, saints, and sages have always invited us into the dark. To be still. To be quiet. In his despair, Jesus went into the garden. He submitted, ‘Not my will, but yours be done.’ Jesus did not submit his spirit to the authorities; he kept his faith. In my world, my faith calls me to be true. In the dark of my soul, the truth shines a light.

Others might have known who I was before I owned it myself. To be public though, I had to first hold myself to the truth. I am who I am. I am a wonderfully created being out of the stardust that forms all of who we are.

Just as there are an estimated 3.5 trillion honeybees flying around the world, there are billions and billions of individual points of light who are our fellow human beings. No two are alike and each has their own gifts. I do too. So do you.

One thing I’ve learned is that our gifts grow and glow best with light.

Folk tradition tells us we, as beekeepers, our duty is to inform the bees when any major change occurs. Whether it be the death of a beekeeper and the announcement of a new caretaker, or the birth, marriage, or death of a loved one. We must tell the bees.

When we face our own crisis of identity, we are – for the moment – the bees. We go into the dark and wait. Who are we? What is our truth? When we are ready, we find the agency of self to pull back the drape away from the hive of our soul and dare to shine. We become the beekeeper and inform the world of our change. I have done my work, or at least enough of it, to claim my fullness and let my light shine. Hello world.

I invite you into the ritual of telling the bees. First, you must find a cloth…go into the dark…

When you acknowledge the light of your truth, you and I and everyone else will know, the bees – our family, by blood or love, and our friends – will not fly away.