From: Interfaith Working Group Subject: IWG Statement Responding to Fred Phelps Date: Sat, 30 Jan 1999 18:36:50 -0500 (EST) IWG Statement Responding to Fred Phelps Philadelphia, January 30, 1999 The Interfaith Working Group is here today because a man felt the need to drag his family across the country to preach hate and inequality. But we are not here to preach hate in return; we know that you must counter hate with love. We know that when someone uses their right to free speech to say something that we disagree with, we must exercise our free speech, and our freedom of religion, to stand together as people of many faiths, to counter statements of hatred with acts of love, policies of exclusion with open doors, and support for institutionalized inequality with a relentless cry for justice. There are religious people in the Philadelphia area who work to promote recognition of the legal and religious equality of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people, and there are congregations and religious support groups that welcome all as they are, encouraging faith and action, and standing together in times of joy and times of sorrow. We ask everyone to remember that religious people do not speak with one voice, and we encourage those of who have felt a need for a religious home, but have seen too much hate and rejection, to accept the invitation to visit a welcoming congregation, whether it is American Baptist, Catholic, Conservative Jewish, Disciples of Christ, Episcopal, the Ethical Society, Evangelical Lutheran, Quaker, Interfaith, the Metropolitan Community Church, Non-Demoninational, Presbyterian, Reconstructionist Jewish, Reform Jewish, Unitarian Universalist, United Methodist, or United Church of Christ. All of these faith traditions are represented in the Interfaith Working Group Welcoming Congregations Brochure, and most of them plus a few more are represented on our letterhead. All of these people of faith have different theologies; some radically different from each other. And yet, all of these people, with their different starting points, have still come to the same conclusion: that sexual minorities deserve the same civil rights as everyone else. -- Interfaith Working Group Religious organizations, congregations http://www.libertynet.org/iwg and clergy supporting gay rights, iwg@libertynet.org reproductive freedom, and the voice: 215-235-3050 fax: 232-0829 separation of church and state.