From NALT’s co-founders
From NALT Christians Project co-founder John Shore:
In case you’re not familiar with the phenomenal It Gets Better Project, this is from the “About” page of its website:
In September 2010, syndicated columnist and author Dan Savage created a YouTube video with his partner Terry Miller to inspire hope for young people facing harassment. In response to a number of students taking their own lives after being bullied in school, they wanted to create a personal way for supporters everywhere to tell LGBT youth that, yes, it does indeed get better.
The It Gets Better Project™ has become a worldwide movement, inspiring more than 50,000 user-created videos viewed more than 50 million times. To date, the project has received submissions from celebrities, organizations, activists, politicians and media personalities, including President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Adam Lambert, Anne Hathaway, Colin Farrell, Matthew Morrison of “Glee”, Joe Jonas, Joel Madden, Ke$ha, Sarah Silverman, Tim Gunn, Ellen DeGeneres, Suze Orman, the staffs of The Gap, Google, Facebook, Pixar, the Broadway community, and many more. But, as it says on the IGB website, “Every video changes a life. It doesn’t matter who makes it.”
Two months after Dan and his husband Terry made the video that launched the It Gets Better Project, on his blog Dan was asked this question by a reader:
What is the biggest barrier to the acceptance of gay marriage in the U.S.?
To which Dan in part answered:
[The problem is] all those quiet, timid, and cowardly NALT Christians out there who support marriage equality but have allowed their conservative co-religionists to hijack Christianity. (“NALT” stands for “not all like that,” the phrase you hear from liberal Christians whenever you [complain] about conservative Christians, i.e., “We’re not all like that!” Yes, yes, NALTs—we know. You’re not all like that. Don’t tell us. Tell Tony Perkins, tell the pope, tell Maggie Gallagher, et al.)
Ouch. If you’re an LGBT-affirming Christian, that hurts.
But Dan was right. For much too long now, anti-LGBT Christians have used the Bible and the pulpit to bully, malign, and shame LGBT people. And not enough LGBT-affirming Christians have stood up to boldly and clearly say how terribly wrong that is—to say that’s not what Christianity is, that the Bible doesn’t condemn homosexuality, that “Christian” leaders like Tony Perkins and Maggie Gallagher do not speak for us.
It’s time for us true NALT Christians—the ones who genuinely aren’t like that—to speak up and be heard, to affirm LGBT people as loudly and clearly as anti-LGBT Christians condemn them. We must stand up for young LGBT people, who are so vulnerable to being bullied into feelings of worthlessness and despair. We must eradicate the culturally inculcated moral underpinnings that serves to support such bullying. And we must bring to the fore a renewed Christianity that, instead of standing for anti-gay bigotry, stands for the integrity and love that Jesus Christ himself so radically stood for.
The NALT Christians Project is like a massive orchestra consisting of players who simply walk in, take a seat, and begin adding to a symphony so insanely beautiful that to hear any isolated strain within it—any solo instrument, any solitary voice—is to be heartened and uplifted, no matter who you are. This is the infinitely rich music that LGBT-affirming Christians have been yearning to make and hear ever since anti-gay Christian “leaders” bullied their way onto center stage, ordered the spotlight shined upon themselves, and began their braying chorus of sour, over-amped, painfully off-key bigotry.
If you’re an LGBT-affirming Christian, there is a seat waiting for you in the orchestra of The NALT Christians Project. If you’re a Christian who either believes that God condemns homosexuality, or has not yet decided where you stand on the gay issue, please give our NALT Christians song a listen. It is a song—it is a movement—inspired by Christ’s Great Commandment that all of his followers—that all of us—love our neighbors as we love ourselves.
John Shore
Co-Founder, NALT Christians Project
