Affirm Diversity – Defend the Rights of Sexual Minorities: A Call for Indian Faith Communities
- We affirm our faith in the potential of our respective religious and faith beliefs, and practices to enable all in their search and struggle to become loving human beings celebrating the divine blessing of sexuality gifted to all of us.
- We commit ourselves to critically engage with our belief systems and practices to review and re-read teachings and moral codes that stigmatize and demonize people who are different from us.
- We condemn homophobia and bigotry as morally unacceptable, and commit ourselves to strive together to eradicate this sin from our religious communities, as an expression of our religious faith and ethics.
- We pledge to accompany friends who are stigmatized and criminalized due to their sexual orientations and to provide them fellowship and solidarity in their struggles to love and live with dignity.
- We recognize the need to create awareness within our religious communities on issues related to Religion and Sexuality and also transform our communities into communities of mutuality and inclusivity.
- We commit ourselves to transform all our places of collective worship to welcoming and safe spaces for sexual minorities.
- We discern the need to reclaim and reinterpret our traditions and rituals, festivals and feasts, scriptures and practices, to liberate our religions from the shackles of ideologies of exclusion such as patriarchy, casteism and homophobia.
- We dedicate ourselves to safeguard the rights of all sexual minorities and to join hands with all civil society initiatives to decriminalize homosexuality and to eradicate homophobia.
- We call upon religious leaders to condemn homophobia and to practice non-discriminatory hiring policies in their institutions, and also to follow affirmative action to end the discrimination that transgendered people face in admissions and appointments.
- We affirm our resolve to work tirelessly to create a new world of compassion, justice, inclusivity and acceptance where the divine gift of sexuality will be celebrated in all diverse manifestations of affirmative love.
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