A priest talks about accepting your gay child

Pastor Jimmy Bartz offers advice to parents of gay or transgendered youth
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A priest talks about accepting your gay child

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Sometimes people ask me for advice about the understanding that their child is gay or transgendered. And the first advice I would give moms and dads about issues around human sexuality would be to check themselves first. To really have some sense of where they sit with that experience, because it might be something unexpected. It might be something disruptive for them. It might be something that causes conflict within the family. And what you want to be careful not to do is to transfer your own fear or anxiety or discomfort onto your child. Your child is already going to experience some level of challenge just because of the culture at large. But what you want to cultivate within the context of your family is a nurturing, loving, understanding, open environment where your child can talk about his or her identity in any way that they feel like they need to talk about it.

Pastor Jimmy Bartz offers advice to parents of gay or transgendered youth

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Jimmy Bartz

Priest

Jimmy serves as rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Prior to coming to Jackson, he was the founder and priest at Thad’s, an emergent Episcopal Church in the Santa Monica, California, in the Diocese of Los Angeles. He has also served as the Campus Missioner at the University of Texas in Austin, at All Saints’ in Austin, Texas, and All Saints’ Parish in Beverly Hills, California. He is a graduate the University of Texas at Austin and Virginia Theological Seminary. Presently, he serves as the Chair of the Board of the Episcopal Evangelism Society, and in years past has worked with Red Bull High Performance teaching athletes spiritual disciplines, with Naval Special Warfare working to create systems for character development within special operations teams, and was a speaker at TEDx, Venice Beach.
Married to Cindy and dad to Jas and Jade, the Bartz family loves to spend time outside mountaineering, skiing, fly-fishing, hunting and surfing.  Jimmy is currently writing a book on the spirituality of risk.

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