In that community [of Jesus], there are no second-class citizens. We had to learn that idea concerning people of color and concerning women. And now, the time has come to face the same gospel reality about LGBTQ persons as others who are welcomed as first-class citizens in the community of faithfulness and justice. We learn that the other is not an unacceptable danger and that the other is not required to give up “otherness” in order to belong fully to the community. We in the community of faith, as in the Old and New Testaments, are always called to respond to the other as a neighbor who belongs with “us,” even as “we” belong with and for the “other.”
Walter Brueggemann, theologian