#83: Religion and the LGBT Community - Can't We All Just Get Along? [Podcast]

#83: Religion and the LGBT Community - Can't We All Just Get Along? [Podcast]

Jenn T Grace:  You are listening to the Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional Podcast, episode number 83.

 

Introduction:  Welcome to the Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional Podcast; the podcast dedicated to helping LGBTQ professionals and business owners grow their business and careers through the power of leveraging their LGBTQ identities in their personal brand. You'll learn how to market your products and services both broadly, and within the LGBTQ community. You'll hear from incredible guests who are leveraging the power of their identity for good, as well as those who haven't yet started, and everyone in between. And now your host. She teaches straight people how to market to gay people, and gay people how to market themselves. Your professional lesbian, Jenn - with two N's - T Grace.

 

Jenn T Grace:  Well hello and welcome to episode number 83 of the Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional Podcast. It is about the end of April in 2016, and if you are paying any attention to the news whatsoever, you are certainly seeing that there is just a lot of activity as far as the religious freedom bills go in regards to kind of spreading across our country, and it's kind of a mess these days if you will. So we all had the beauty and the joy of having marriage equality passed in June of 2015, and since then it's just kind of been bill after bill after bill kind of being introduced into different communities to do everything in their power to do something that takes away protections for LGBT individuals.

Now today's episode is not going to focus on talking about all of the nuance of that, because I am by no means an expert in any way, shape or form. So I bring this up today, and it's not because I have intentions of going into detail on any of these particular laws or bills, or anything like that, because I am the furthest from an expert. I stay on top of the news, and I have a general sense of places to avoid doing business in currently, such as North Carolina or Mississippi, but I don't know the ins and outs. So perhaps at some point I can get an expert on the show to talk in better detail on what all of that means. And if you are listening to this and you happen to be that expert, please reach out to me and let me know, because I'd love to have you on, and just kind of explain all the lay of the land to my listeners.

But what's been on my mind lately, and I was driving the other day and for some reason this just kind of was in my head, of it seems like such an unfortunate state of affairs in regards to how many people that are coming from religious backgrounds are getting lumped into this group of hate mongers, and I feel like it's completely unfair to so many people who have religious beliefs who do not believe what the media is hyping about, and I just feel like it's completely unfair to both sides; to the LGBT side who are getting discriminated against left and right, but additionally from the side of people who do have religious beliefs, and they aren't these hate-filled people, but now they're being cast as such because of a minority of people who are using religion as kind of a weapon if you will.

It's just been on my mind, and I am not going to go into great detail on just the politics of religion or anything like that, but I was thinking about an old interview that I had done with Candice Czubernat who founded The Christian Closet. I believe it was back in late 2012 she founded this organization, and it's still doing well, it's still thriving. I just noticed that she has started a new podcast which is in iTunes now, and if you just type in Candice Czubernat- if you go into iTunes you can certainly find that information, also I'll put it in the show notes. I haven't talked to Candice in a while, but I was just recalling an interview that I d