Goals and Activities

[Last Update: 22.01.2004 ] HuK-Startseite English Home Page

Ecumenical Group "Homosexuals and Church"

Our Group

The Ecumenical Group "Homosexuals and Church" - Homosexuelle und Kirche (HuK) e.V. - is a free alliance of men and women that are interested in a critical and constructive examination of the links between homosexuality and church.

We experience God's deeds in the world, of which the bible gives testimony, as a liberating message. God invites men and women that have been made free, into a community where justice shall reign and where human dignity is observed. This opens a space for many forms of human life, for an unfolding of fulfilling life.

We consider homosexual and heterosexual feelings and behaviour to be equally valuable expressions of a single human sexuality. Therefore we work towards an elimination of discriminations and request full participation of lesbians and gays in church communities and in social life.

Our Goals

• Through information and personal contacts, we want to eliminate prejudice and ignorance concerning homosexuality.
• Together with church congregations, church groups, and official church bodies we want to search for an ethics of sexuality in which lesbian and gay relations can be lived, and valued equally to other relations.
• We want to correct undifferentiated and unqualified statements about homosexuality, made or even just tolerated in church as well as in political environments.
• We want to open professional chances in church and society for homosexual as well as heterosexual men and women. Gender and sexual orientation neither qualify nor disqualify for any office.
• We want to help lesbians and gays who experience employment problems with the churches because of their homosexuality. We strive for solidarity with others who experience similar problems because of unjustified priviledges of the churches.
• We want to make clear to the churches that their approach towards people suffering from HIV and AIDS indicates their acceptance of alternative forms of living. The words ”positiv” or ”negative” do not indicate an immune status in our community.
• We want to strengthen the solidarity among lesbians and gays. Commonalities as well as differences have their place among us.
• We want to invite lesbians and gays to share spiritual life with us. We want to be recognizable as Christians in lesbian and gay public life.

Our Activities

The Ecumenical Group "Homosexuelle und Kirche" consists of members from both mainstream Protestant and Catholic churches in Germany, as well as members with other or no organized church affiliation.

Self-help

We understand ourselves as a self-help group of gay and lesbian Christians. We help each other to find answers about our sexual identity. We foster self-acceptance and lesbian/gay confidence, in particular in cases where during the "coming out" phase the discovery of one's own homosexuality conflicts with aquired and accepted traditions about faith and moral standards. This part of our work is done mainly on a personal level in our regional groups. On the non-local level, our group of trained advisors contributes to this goal, offering personal counsel at national meetings of Protestants ("Kirchentage") and Catholics ("Katholikentage").

Emancipation

We are a lesbian and gay emancipation group. Homosexuality is not just a private matter concerning a single individual only. The discrimination against gays and lesbians in church and society makes it necessary to get involved in public policy matters and to engage ourselves openly for our rights. Therefore we are actively involved in our churches, their congregations, groups, and decision bodies, in order to influence or initiate discussions within the churches. The regional groups keep contacts with other local or regional lesbian and gay groups. We also try to cooperate with other groups and institutions, e.g. Amnesty International. On the national level, we are present at national meetings of Protestants and Catholics, and we issue position statements on political or church-related topics.

Theology

One of the main tasks of the HuK is theological work. We see our life and our relations as given and blessed by God. Therefore, we reject theological positions which, on the basis of a fundamentalistic interpretation of some passages of the Bible, simply depict homosexual behaviour as sinful. We seek for new approaches in theology that are open towards the results of modern social sciences, including research on sexual issues. We also want to include aspects of the feminist theology and the theology of liberation. We make this process public through our meetings, our positon statements, and last not least through public worship services.

General Information

Regional Groups

The regional groups decide independently how they conduct their group life. They usually meet at least once per month, for the discussion of current topics, for the exchange of experiences and information, for the preparation of public events and actions, for communication and social get-togethers. Membership in the different groups can be quite diverse: In some, students are the majority, others have members of all professional and age groups.

For the addresses of the regional groups of the HuK, please refer to the Address List. More than half of the regional groups have their own web pages (texts in German); the address list contains links to these pages.

General Address Information

Central Post Office box: HuK, Postfach 500 437, D-51088 Aachen, Germany
Central Phone Number (answering machine): +49-241-12346
Text of this page, questions via e-mail: Reinhold Weicker (webmaster@huk.org)