Big Gay Church: Sermons to and for an Underserved Population in Art Education Settings

Abstract

While the past decade shows dramatic progress in tolerance, acceptance, and support for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) people/rights in the United States, this population remains underserved. Statistics on LGBTQ youth suicide remain troublingly high; yet, when LGBTQ youth attend schools with Gay-Straight Alliances (GSAs), open faculty support, anti-bullying programs and policies, and LGBTQ-inclusive curricula, they fully integrate and avoid many of the stresses and negative safety/health consequences of homophobia (Kosciw, Greytak, Diaz, Bartkiewicz, Boesen, & Palmer, 2012, p. 6). An annual National Art Education Association Convention ensemble performance—Big Gay Church— examines the material, physical, psychological, and spiritual impact of Conservative, fundamentalist, anti-LGBTQ religious doctrine in creating and maintaining the underserved, marginalized status of the LGBTQ community in the US. Big Gay Church advocates and demonstrates the power of creative, collaborative, arts- and inquiry-based scholarship for interrogating discrimination and injustice, accepting agency, and imagining and enacting more equitable possibilities.