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For Immediate Release

Unitarian Universalist Ministers Voice Opposition to Justice Moore's Comments

(Selma, Alabama - March 11) On Sunday, March 10, over 400 Unitarian Universalist ministers meeting in Birmingham, Alabama, condemned the recent discriminatory statements of Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore. The liberal religious clergy-people issued a statement which voiced their opposition to Judge Moore's comments and which said, "Just as Unitarian Universalists worked for equal rights for African Americans during the civil rights movement and beyond, we pledge our support to the struggle for full civil rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender citizens of our country." (Full text of ministers' statement is attached.)

The ministers said that they were "compelled by our religious beliefs to speak out in opposition to the recent homophobic comments of Chief Justice Roy Moore. The statement describes Moore's comments as "shameful expressions of bigotry and hatred."

Today more than 50 Unitarian Universalist ministers traveled from Birmingham to Selma, Alabama, in a solemn pilgrimage to the Selma street where the Rev. James Reeb, a Unitarian Universalist minister from Boston, was murdered by white assailants in 1965. The pilgrimage, an emotional day of remembrance and rededication to the struggle for equal rights, commemorates the thirty-seventh anniversary of Reeb's death.

Drawing a parallel between the civil rights struggle then and the struggle for gay rights today, the Rev. Meg Riley, director of the Unitarian Universalist Washington Office, said "As Unitarian Universalists, we believe that it is homophobia that is the sin, not homosexuality." Riley then led the assembled ministers in a march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, scene of the vicious assault on civil rights marchers in 1965 known as "Bloody Sunday."

The Unitarian Universalist ministers were also scheduled to meet with Mayor James Perkins, Jr., the first African American mayor of Selma. Last June, the Unitarian Universalist Association, a historically white denomination, achieved a similar milestone when it elected its first African American president, the Rev. William Sinkford.

Unitarian Universalism is a liberal, creedless religion with Judeo-Christian roots; it traces its history in North America to the first Pilgrim and Puritan settlers and has numbered among its members five U.S. presidents. The UUA, headquartered in Boston, MA, was formed in 1961 through the consolidation of the Universalist Church of America and the American Unitarian Association. More than 1,050 congregations in North America belong to the Unitarian Universalist Association.

For further information, please contact John Hurley, UUA Director of Information, at jhurley@uua.org , (617) 948-6131, or Janet Hayes, information officer at jhayes@uua.org , (617) 948-4386.

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