They call themselves the NALT Christians, and Wednesday morning they quietly launched a video campaign with a controversial message: there is nothing anti-Biblical or inherently sinful about being gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. NALT stands for “Not All Like That”—Christians who say “We are not all anti-gay”—and the NALT Christian Project aims to give LGBT-affirming Christians a platform to tell the world, and especially young gay people, that you can be a Christian and still support equal rights for gays. Modeled after Dan Savage’s It Gets Better Project, the NALT Project lets anyone upload a video to share why he or she is a Christian and supports gay rights. The project began when Wayne Besen and Evan Hurst of Truth Wins Out, which works to counter anti-gay religious extremism, collaborated with John Shore, a California pastor with the Progressive Christian Alliance. Frustrated that many people think Christians who oppose homosexuality and gay marriage like Tony Perkins, Maggie Gallagher and Pat Robertson speak for all Bible followers, they reached out to Savage to see how they might create a platform like It Gets Better to help affirming Christians speak up. “People feel they have to make a choice between their faith and their sexuality, and for some people that is devastating,” Besen says. “Actually you don’t have to make a choice.” NALT launched Wednesday morning with thirty videos, mostly from allies. Supporters of the project now include Auburn Theological Seminary, Covenant Network of Presbyterians, Methodists in New Directions, and The Evangelical Network. Young evangelicals are one of NALT’s main target audiences. “Young people are very uncomfortable when they see these finger-wagging evangelicals who don’t seem to have much in common with the Jesus they believe in,” Besen explains. Shore’s own conversion experience is one many evangelicals might understand. He was sitting at his desk in a law office 16 years ago when, “suddenly and out of nowhere,” as he says, he felt the Holy Spirit’s presence and he fell to his knees in prayer. The next Sunday he knew he needed![]()
