St. Paul’s and the LGBTQ+ Community

St Paul’s is lgbtq+

Since the beginning of St. Paul’s, members of our leadership and our staff have identified as gay, lesbian, bisexual, trans, two-spirited, or queer. We are a community who chose in the 1990s to support the LGBTQ+ community in welcome and in advocacy. We have stretched into a greater and greater understanding as time has gone on.

we embrace lgbtq+ perspectives in hopes of Living into our own wholeness

The non-binary is a liminal space, and it invites all people, whether queer, straight or cisgender, to become more authentically who they are. see our queer theology project

from its very beginning. . .

St. Paul’s began as a coffee house called The Golden Grape. The priest who conceptualized and realized this ministry was the famous poet and social activist, Malcolm Boyd. Fr. Boyd, a gay man, served the CSU campus from 1959 until 1961, leaving to become a Freedom Rider.

in the 1990’s

After serving the St. Paul’s community for several years, long-time rector, Fr. William Bacon, a gay man who had fallen in love with the man who would become his life partner, came out to the parish. The community very percipitously was forced to address the issue of people loving people of the same sex. As the result, St. Paul’s came to support issues such as full inclusion of gays and lesbians in the Episcopal priesthood and offering blessings of same-sex unions.

In 1998, Fr. Bacon ministered to Matthew Shepard and his parents during the six days following Matthew’s lethal beating, when Matthew was at Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins, dying. Following this, St. Paul’s became even more emphatic in its support of LGBTQ+ issues.

2000 and beyond

The blessing of same-sex unions, marriages, support of loved ones whose partners are ill or dying, and many other offerings are part of the fabric of St. Paul’s life.