Some Ways to Support LGBTQQI Youth and Young Adults

• Wear white ribbons - there is a lgbt youth suicide every 5 hours in the US & Canada. White ribbons help raise awareness of lgbt youth suicide.

• Write to your Conference minister, and your state or city suicide commission to ensure lgbtqqi youth are included in the work of the commission

• Start an lgbtqqi youth support group in your church

• Use Safe Zone or Safe Space stickers in your youth room, clergy office, parsonage, narthex. (See the resources page.)

• Ask Conference youth retreat organizers to use Claiming the Promise in a youth retreat. This ecumenical resource, a Bible study on homosexuality, has a youth adaptation.

• March with your youth in the local Gay Pride Parade.

• Connect your local church & local Coalition chapter with your campus lgbtq group. Invite them to a joint event.

• Give your campus minister Coalition YYA fliers, even if your local campus is not a UCC-related school.

• Inform non-UCC campus ministers of the UCC Open and Affirming stance.

• Be out in your local church. If you are a couple, be out as a couple and be a role model of a healthy, same-gender relationship.

• Offer a listening ear to a youth or young adult who needs one.

• Offer you spare bed to the local runaway hotline or lgbt community center.

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• Inform your local church, association, and Conference youth & young adults about Coalition events, local ones as well as national ones.

• Make a presentation on lgbt issues at you local youth group, at your Association meeting, or your Conference meeting. If you have a display table for the Coalition at these meetings, include materials for youth and young adults.

• Show the videos When a Kid is Gay, or Gay Youth to your youth group or campus group, be it specifically lgbtq or not. (When a Kid is Gay is part of the ONA study packet).

• Invite a panel of lgbt youth/young adults to speak at your local church or campus ministry.

• Pass a Conference resolution to fund youth & young adult travel to the Coalition's National Gathering.

• Nominate and elect lgbt youth and young adults to positions of leadership in your local church, association, or conference.

• Be a voice for youth and young adults still in the closet.

• Advocate. Day & Night.

• Require your Conference to have Coalition representatives on its YYA & outdoor ministries groups where other diversity specified by the Coalition was omitted.

• Raise lgbt youth and young adult issues, including suicide, ecumenically: including the joint youth trip with the Baptists down the street and YYA ministries trainings

• Learn about and be able to articulate the experiences of the other parts of lgbt youth which you are not or were not.

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• Donate books & videos on lgbt issues to your local church youth library. If you have two copies to give, donate one to your Conference or Association resource center.

• As a United Church of Christ clergy person or lay person, encourage your local public school systems to be supportive. Meet with the principal. Make a donation to your local high school gay/straight alliance. If you're clergy or a health professional, volunteer to facilitate the group.

• Include your youth and young adults in your local church ONA study process.

Timothy Brown, Commissioned Minister
P.O. Box 428
Greeley, Colorado 80632-0428
970/330-8709 (phone)
970/330-8709 (fax)
YYACoord@ucccoalition.org

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