I remember the question well. It was during the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association (UUMA) Professional Days at the 2004 General Assembly in Long Beach, California. The presenter was Ernesto Cortés, Jr., a community organizer affiliated with the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF). He had just reached what I thought was the main point of his presentation, namely, that the most important thing progressives could do in order to bring about better world for everyone is to “stand for families.” He made a comparison to standing with a person in a court of law. “Someone must stand with the accused against the might of the state,” is how this legal imperative is sometimes phrased. When it came time for questions and comments, one of my colleagues asked him a perfectly legitimate question: “What Do You Mean by ‘Family’?” The implication was, I think, that it would be difficult, if not impossible, for this group of liberal religious ministers to agree with him wholeheartedly if his definition of family was anything less than all-inclusive. Read more here.

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