IN POLAND, dozens of small towns have declared themselves free of ‘LGBT ideology’. Politicians' hostility to LGBT+ rights has become a flashpoint, pitting the religious right against more liberal-minded Poles. And LGBT+ people living in these areas are faced with a choice: emigrate, keep their heads down - or fight back. Andi from Open Table Warrington shares a Polish film-maker’s response.

LAST MONTH Methodist Conference, the governing body of the Methodist Church in Britain, passed a vote to allow same sex marriages conducted on Methodist premises or by Methodist office-holders, making it the largest denomination in the UK to make this change. Former President of the Methodist Conference, Barbara Glasson shares a personal response.

Prompted by a friend's question about her experience as a gay Christian who instantly felt excluded from her (then conservative evangelical) church community and large parts of her (also evangelical) family when she revealed her sexual orientation to them at the age of twenty, Dr Anneke Schmidt writes: For LBGTQIA+ Christians, the line between active exclusion and passive withdrawal from Church can be thin.

PRIDE MONTH is over, but the struggle for equity and justice for all LGBTQIA+ people everywhere continues, particularly in faith communities. This powerful testimony from an Open Table member who experienced threats from a member of another church based on beliefs about sexuality shows that we still have much to do to make our faith communities safer spaces for all of us, without exception.