Adrian St. Vincent calls the faith community to action, as a transgender youth, as someone who has been homeless, and as someone deeply hurt by the faith community. The Koleinu LGBT Rights Action Team answers his call. Building off the Shelter of Peace Weekend of Prayer and Learning, which engaged congregations across the city to raise awareness on this issue, Shelter of Peace is going to Albany on Valentines Day to lobby for love in action: enough beds to ensure that none of our youth are on the street.

Strengthen our voice in Albany, sign our petition calling on ...

Creating Change, a national LBGTQ movement building conference hosted by the National Gay and Lesbian Task

Force took place in Baltimore this past week, and I was lucky to be able to represent CBST as part of the Practice Faith, Do Justice track, as well as a participant in the Jewish Movement Building working group. A few brief dispatches from a conference in three steps: reflect, teach and build together.

Step 1 - Reflection: We are part of a broad and deep movement for justice, both racial justice & queer liberation. On the agenda? Access ...

On Friday, January 20, CBST's Shabbat service kicked off the Shelter of Peace Weekend of Prayer and Learning. That Friday night, we welcomed many of our partners from the Campaign for Youth Shelter. We heard moving words from Rabbi Kleinbaum on our connection to homelessness and diaspora as Jews and our responsibility to take action. We also invited Jeremiah Wright, an Ali Forney Homeless youth advocate, to the bima to share some words of inspiration. He sent us home with the message to “keep spreading the love,” and to keep  signing the petition!

Across across the ...

Parsha Vayechi, is the last parsha of Genesis. I find this parsha interesting, because it continues and ends the story of the families of our tradition…largely dysfunctional. I consider this good, because it reflects real life, and gives us a lot to discuss. Some of this is reflected in Vayechi, as well as forgiveness and destiny.

I want to focus on something else in the  parsha.

Vayechi, means “he lives”… referring to the fact that Jacob lives in Egypt. What is interesting is that much of what is discussed in the parsha is the deaths of both Jacob and Joseph.  Jacob asks ...

This past December I had the pleasure of attending the World LGBTQ Youth Leaders Summit, hosted by Israel Gay Youth in Tel Aviv. This was the first summit of its kind, a conference to focus on young (20 to 30 years old) lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer youth from all around the globe. We shared our personal advocacy experiences, participated in workshops, watched a debate about whether courts or legislatures were the best course for advancing LGBT rights, and met members of the Israeli government at several different levels, including the Mayor of Tel Aviv-Jaffa, Ron Huldai, who hosted ...

I am a physician, and for several years in the mid-late 1980's, I volunteered in the evening walk-in clinic of the

Community Health Project (now Callen Lorde) at the Gay and Lesbian Community Center, as it was known at the time. While I was there, the HOTT program  was initiated, a project which provides medical care to youth ages 18-21. The Community Health Project had a van, and two doctors, and a social worker who drove around the ...

"I don’t want to go back into the closet when I grow old."

"He had no medical proxy in place.  His parents, who were ashamed of his “lifestyle,” moved him out of New York, away from the friends who visited him daily.  A week later, on his 35^th birthday, he died."

"Because I wasn’t the biological parent, I was always afraid that if something happened to our daughter, I wouldn’t be authorized to make medical decisions for her." ...