Every year at this time, Michael Bayly at features a post on “A Catholic Presence at Gay Pride”, in his own city of Minneapolis – St Paul. This year, the celebration for Twin Cities queer Catholics will have been particularly sweet, after their twin successes in off last year’s attempt to entrench marriage discrimination in the state constitution, later capped by the success of equal marriage legislation. Bayly and his Catholic colleagues, both LGBT and straight allies, were heavily involved in both efforts, and reaped the rewards of many years of hard work towards full LGBT inclusion and equality in church.

Here’s the introduction to this year’s report. (Read the full post at The Wild Reed – then dip into recent history, and see the earlier versions, for 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007)

I spent most of last weekend (June 29-30) in Minneapolis’ Loring Park at the Twin Cities Pride festival. I helped staff the CPCSM/Catholics for Marriage Equality MN booth and participated in Sunday’s parade down Hennepin Avenue in the heart of Minneapolis.

Giving the recent advances in marriage equality at both the state and federal levels, our theme this year was “Catholics Celebrating Marriage Equality!” We altered our banner to reflect this theme and gave out hundreds of stickers bearing this message (above left). These stickers were very popular.

Above and below: As well as giving out our “Catholics Celebrating Marriage Equality” stickers, we also invited visitors to our booth to complete a questionnaire so as to help us discern our future direction and focus as an organization. Questions included:

• What do you think is the most pressing area of concern for LGBT people in the Roman Catholic Church?

• How would you describe your relationship to the Church?

• Where do you currently find affirmation and spiritual nourishment?

-continue reading at The Wild Reed