Interview
Meditation
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How we serve the lgbt communities

From Malkhaz Songulashvili

Video Interview Transcript

LGBTQA+ community has been a target of numerous attacks and abuse. And therefore we as a church could not possibly turn our blind eye to their suffering. Because we as Christians are called to be resource people who suffer because it is there where we meet our Lord. Therefore, when there was a first very dramatic outburst of hatred towards them, on May 17, 2013 we realized that we had to raise our voice in defense of those the representatives of the LGBTQ community. We made first statement immediately and then produced rather lengthy theological explanation as to why should we embrace sexual diversity among us which caused enormous turmoil within my church and outside my church. Some churches have setup an alliance against our church in order to fight what we stand for. And what we stand for is about loving acceptance of everybody be it heterosexual, homosexual, whomever they are. They are human beings and therefore they deserve to be treated with dignity, with love and respect. And I think this was yet another step for our church to go beyond the comfort zone and embrace diversity. And I should say that I'm very proud of our people. But even elderly people would say that we don't know this. We don't know how it works. We did know the theme at all but we trust that God has called you to serve everybody. And this is what we are doing. In the aftermath of the May 17th event, on the seventeenth of every month, we we celebrate Eucharist have been celebrating Eucharist in support of the LGBTQ community and all those who have been humiliated. And when very often when members of this community are abused and sometimes there are very sad cases where they are killed, we observe their memorial services in the church when even family members do not want to accept them even being dead. So this is yet another sidelined community in Georgia that we intend to serve along with many other communities.

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