Showing posts with label TJ Williams. Show all posts
Showing posts with label TJ Williams. Show all posts

Friday, June 8, 2012

Help Sustain TJ Williams And His Social Justice Work

Please help support the important Social Justice work of TJ Williams.

The LGBT civil rights activist TJ Williams will be spending a large part of summer in New York City, to complete his clerical study, and he is asking for private donations to fund his important work relating to social justice.

''Please join us in our fight for progressive causes, that includes organizing clergy to support the President. It is a crucial time in our history,'' Mr. Williams wrote on his Facebook page. ''And I need your help to sustain, in terms of study and the development of the work that I do.''

Mr. Williams, who is normally based in Chicago, is asking people to donate money to his PayPal account, which can be accessed on his Pilgrimage to Riverside website, to pay for his housing, education, and social justice expenses.

''Your gift today means that more progressive voices of faith will join our national discourse and that we can collectively speak louder then bigoted Conservative voices who have taken over ou air waves,'' Mr. Williams added.

Here is the kind of work that Mr. Williams has done : he takes the message of LGBT equality to African-American churches, to build a grassroots support for LGBT civil rights.

In another example, Mr. Williams made a compassionate appeal for all minority groups to work together, to further progressive causes. Watch the video statement here :

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Obama Marriage Equality Reaction

(May 9, 2012) Statement from TJ Williams and Brad Williams Hauger : Responding to President Obama's support of Marriage Equality We would like to say thank you to President Obama for making history by becoming the first sitting American President to come out in support of the freedom to marry for same sex couples. We are mindful of the political sacrifice that you are taking, but rejoice in the fact that our families have gained a new friend and ally. Today is a new day in America after we witnessed a dark day in American history as another state amended its constitution by adding bigotry to it. For we know that this is nothing new to the state of North Carolina for they have done it to African Americans before, although we know the reality of the constitutional decision. We also know that when the sun came up today that it brought with it new hope, a promise and an opportunity, that demands that we be vigilant as we face yet another election season. The right will surely try to use the President's stand against him and they will try to use us and our communities to block his second term. So Brad and I ask the LGBT community and people across every sector of American society to unite with leaders and every American from the LGBT community, Latino community, African American community and communities that have been impacted by job loss. All of us must come together because our President, our parents, our children deserve nothing less. We must find this kind of unity in every facet of every faith community because real faith and real justice demands nothing less of us but to stand on the right side of history together as one nation. As President Obama once said, “There is no Gay America, there is no White America, Black America or Latino America, but there is a United States of America that stands on the hope of freedom and justice for all.” TJ Williams and Brad Williams Hauger members of the Riverside Church and the First gay couple to be legally married at the Riverside Church NYC.

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

At The Riverside Church, A Covenant To End DOMA

Invitation to Wedding and Covenant to End DOMA at The Riverside Church (Fundraiser)

On Sunday, October 30, 2011, TJ Williams and Brad Hover are to be married at The Riverside Church in New York City in a ceremony, which will include a prayer -- calling on President Barak Obama to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (“DOMA”) before the end of his second term in office.  TJ and Brad are calling this special prayer a Covenant to End DOMA

"My partner and I started planning our wedding before we even knew that marriage equality would be made legal in New York State. But we had faith that the laws would be changed in our endless effort towards achieving equality," said TJ Williams.

To raise money for the wedding and for the Covenant to End Doma, TJ has released the above YouTube fundraiser video. TJ and Brad need your help to gather leaders and speakers and others for a civil rights event, where President Obama will be asked to covenant with our nation's communities and its leaders to end DOMA before the end of his second term. All donations will be used for this service and for purposes of community-building around social justice.

Under the discrimination of DOMA, no state is required to acknowledge the legal same-sex marriages, even if they are legal in other states.  Participants in the Covenant to End DOMA are also hoping that this event will spur a conversation that would encourage unity between the African American community and the LGBT community, as we face the 2012 election year.