Julie is a writer, speaker, and advocate for LGBTQ people in Christian communities. She has served as an advisor to religious leaders, college administrators, and LGBTQ students at Christian colleges. She has also survived the culture war. You can read selected articles and watch some of her speeches here.
Julie connects with those seeking a fresh vision for inclusive communities as we become more diverse (and often more divided). She speaks with humor and candor in a variety of settings, including universities, LGBT events, women’s events, business conferences, and leadership conferences. Sometimes conversations about sensitive topics are more fruitful in smaller settings, so Julie also consults with a variety of organizations to discuss practical ways they can nurture the kinds of communities where everyone feels wanted.
I want to start by honoring the heart-wrenching journey you've been on over the last few decades. You describe the experience of so many LGBTQ Christians: you desperately wanted to be a good Christian and a good son. You would have married a woman or white-knuckled your way through celibacy or entered the priesthood if it would have put you in good standing before God and your faith community. ...
05 January, 2018
I’m excited to launch a new series of conversations here! I’m calling them Family Chats because I want them to feel like the conversations we have with our people, where we can ask difficult or embarrassing questions and entertain nuanced responses. It’s also a family chat because...
01 December, 2017
I'm delighted to share a recent interview I did with Emerge Magazine! Emerge is a new digital publication designed to serve as an inclusive medium for LGBTQI Christians of all walks of life. From pulpits to think pieces, people tend to forget that a significant percentage of the LGBTQ community are people of faith. I'll post some excerpts from the interview below...
26 October, 2017
A new website called Church Clarity launched today with the goal of encouraging churches to be clear about their policies about LGBTQ people. They don't advocate for churches to be affirming of same-sex relationships or non-affirming; they simply want churches to be transparent about their policies. Here's why this is so important....
18 October, 2017
I don't know a single person who isn't exhausted by our political crisis at the moment. Everyone I know (conservative, progressive, and moderate) hopes we live for a time when we won't feel the threat of nuclear war or racially-motivated violence every day. We are grasping for strategies to preserve our mental health without disengaging from critical conversations that have enormous consequences in our communities....
29 September, 2017
Students are back in school now and, as always, LGBTQ students are on my mind. College is an exciting and terrifying time. These are the years when you admit things to yourself that you had to suppress before. It's when we question everything we previously assumed to be true and discover new language for our principles. For some of us, the college years were a time when we thought we were the only person in our entire dorm who was too depressed to make it out of bed for afternoon classes....
22 September, 2017