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Boston Church Wants to Be a Home for LGBTQ+ Folks During the Holidays

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   Boston Church Wants to Be a Home for LGBTQ+ Folks During the Holidays

                                      The ADVOCATE
https://www.advocate.com/religion/2022/12/20/boston-church-wants-be-home-lgbtq-folks-during-holidays

By JD Glass
December 20 2022 12:20 PM EST

Excerpts Below:  (Click NEWS Link above to view the entire story)
Christmas Eve conjures for many a combination of the religious, spiritual, and familial. But for LGBTQ+ people, this can also mean being separated from either the tradition they and their family have followed or the queer aspect of themselves.

The senior minister of Boston’s Arlington Street Church, the Rev. Kim Crawford Harvie, told The Boston Globe, “I think a lot of queer people go to church because that’s kind of what you do in the holidays — you have this strange homing instinct to go to a candlelight service or a Christmas Eve service.”

She continued, “But if you’re queer, you don’t bring all of yourself to most of those places.”

Harvie told the paper that some holiday services can force people back into the closet or make them avoid "practicing" their sexuality — "whatever that means."
"But I think saying: ‘no, we want all of you here, we want you to bring your whole self’ is so important," she explained.
“My deepest conviction is to be sure that no one is alone, who doesn’t want to be alone, for the holidays.”

Arlington Street Church is Unitarian Universalist, a denomination known to be accepting of LGBTQ+ people. The church even has a celebratory service before Boston Pride and the city's AIDS Walk — and has been ringing its bells as Pride passes for years, according to Harvie.

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