Lecture at St. Ignatius: A Long Way From Home: Homeless LGBTQ Youth, Parental Rejection and God’s Merciful Love

Presenter: Mr. Carl Siciliano, Founder of the Ali Forney Center, the nation’s largest and most comprehensive housing program for homeless LGBTQ youth

Surely one of the cruelest disparities faced by LGBTQ people is the unequal access too many have teens have to their parents’ love and support. Carl will discuss the frequent tethering of parental rejection of LGBTQ youths with religious belief and how that contributes to a child welfare crisis in which an LGBTQ youth is far more likely to suffer from homelessness than a straight youth. He will examine this in light of Jesus’s revelation of God’s all-merciful love in the Gospels, and explore how religious communities might intentionally witness to God’s love for vulnerable LGBTQ youths.