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A SUNDAY AT ATLANTA’S SAT MARK, ONE OF LARGT GAY-IENDLY CHURCH NATN
From HIV ttg to feedg the homels and muny outreach through Black Gay Pri events such as the Pure Heat Communy Ftival, the reach of The Visn Church will not be nfed to Atlanta. But those lears, he said, were often surround by LGBTQ members who ma the church’s choirs livelier, helped wh llectns and filled the Oliver Cly Allen Weatherspoon for TODAYThose dynamics, bed wh sermons that cried non-heterosexuali as abomatns, are part of the reason Allen se himself as more than a lear of a Black or gay than a preacher, Allen scrib himself as an abolnist whose job is to spread a msage of eedom and acceptance, two elements that he argu are the fundamentals of Christian belief.
“J Christ didn’t say anythg about gay people and said everythg about liberatg people. I didn’t know a way out, bee I hated myself, bee that’s what I was tght, to hate a person who was gay. Asadi said his fay ti to the church did not shelter him om stigmas as people began to realize he was gay.
” McKney said that although the majory of church members are LGBTQ, Allen’s sermons have “nothg to do wh whether or not you’re gay or straight. “People n get the love and re that they would normally get om their grandmother or their ntie, ” Allen Allen put , Visn mols a fay dynamic the same way unrground ballroom muni, gay dive bars and gay villag beme surrogate spac for those who were shunned for g out s past. “We believe that all people are wele to fellowship wh God and experience the fullns of the llg of God on their liv, cludg gay, lbian, bisexual, and transgenr dividuals.