A Few Resouces Regarding LGBTQ Inclusion

I've been an Evangelical Christian for 30+ years. In the last few years I have undergone a dramatic shift in my views about inclusion of LGBTQ people in the church and in society at large (such as marriage). I went from being stridently against it, to being reluctantly against it, to being quietly for it, to being an outspoken advocate/ally. This transition occured primarily as a result of extensive Biblical and theological study.

Of the many, many resources I utilized along the way (including Matthew Vine's excellent video), there are three that I would like to recommend:

1. "Welcoming in the Gentiles" by Dr. Sylvia Keesmaat. A brilliant essay by New Testament scholar Dr. Sylvia Keesmaat, who is a colleague of N.T. Wright and co-author of Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire. http://empireremixed.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/welcoming-the-gentiles.pdf

2. "Heterosexism and the Interpretation of Romans 1:18-32" by Dale B. Martin. Martin is the Woolsey Professor of Religious Studies at Yale and specializes in New Testament and Christian Origins, including attention to social and cultural history of the Greco-Roman world. This essay is included in Martin's excellent book Sex and the Single Savior: Gender and Sexuality in Biblical Interpretation (http://www.amazon.com/dp/0664230466/ref=rdr_ext_tmb%29)

Heterosexism and the Interpretation of Romans 1:18-32 can be read online via Google Books by clicking here.

3. Michael Westmoreland-White, Ph.D, an academic theologian married to a Baptist minister, created an in-depth and very detailed series of posts under the collective title of "GLBT Persons in the Church: A Case for Full Inclusion". This resource, more than any other, had a profound impact in me. The index of these posts is here: http://levellers.wordpress.com/2008/07/14/index-of-posts-on-glbt-persons-in-the-church-a-case-for-full-inclusion/