Marc Adams - December 17, 2008 / 7:30 p.m.

Surviving the Religious Right

The bruising fight against Proposition 8 showed all of us the lies and vitriol that conservative religious organizations use against LGBT people. In over 28,000 schools around the country and millions of churches, this withering attack is turned on children. Sitting in pews and classrooms, young children, who know they are different and teenagers just coming to an awareness of their sexual orientation or gender identity are taught that there is something terribly wrong with them. They suffer. They hide. They are outted by their friends and classmates, exposed to their parents, expelled from school, subjected to reparative therapy. They spend fruitless years trying to be straight. Much too often, they kill themselves.

Marc Adams was one of those youngsters. He survived. He escaped both the physical confines of his parents’ fundamentalist home and Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University. Then, in spiritual journey documented in his book (lost)Found, he made his way to self-acceptance.  

Since then, he has spent his life helping other lost and alone young people to make the same escape. In year 1998, he started the non-profit organization HeartStrong, Inc. to help  gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered students from religious educational institutions (grade school through graduate school). The outreach team, spearheaded by Marc, has driven over 350,000 to spread his message of hope.

A seasoned fighter against cruelty, bigotry, and homophobia, Marc will tell us how to support LGBT youth trapped in religious schools and how to combat effectively the religious right in our own neighborhoods.

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