LGBTQ Exhibit
BUILDING BRIDGES
Portraits of LGBTQ Asylum-Seekers and Immigrants
Black and White photos © Mark Chester. Color photos © Gigi Kaeser. Interviews by Peggy Gillespie
Building Bridges:
Portraits of LGBTQ Asylum-Seekers and Immigrants
This exhibit will introduce you to a small group of LGBTQ individuals and their families who have come to the United States as immigrants and asylum-seekers. A few have been citizens for a long time; others have arrived on our shores recently, seeking refuge from violence. In these interviews, you will learn why these men and women hope to become citizens of the United States, and how much they yearn to contribute to America.
We hope you enjoy meeting all of these people who generously agreed to share their experiences, their lives, and their ideas with us to help us broaden our understanding and empathy for people struggling to find a safe home in our country. They want us to remember that we are all a human family
— Peggy Gillespie and Gigi Kaeser, Co-Directors, Family Diversity Projects
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Emma Lazarus
from “The New Colossus”
Building Bridges : Portraits of LGBTQ Immigrants and Refugees
Interviews by Peggy Gillespie
Color Photographs by Gigi Kaeser
Black and White Photographs by Mark Chester
Statue of Liberty image by Stefano Brivio
Acknowledgements
We want to thank every person in this exhibit who courageously shared their story. Each participant in Building Bridges took time from their challenging lives to answer our questions thoughtfully and recount their personal journey, in order to build bridges, not walls!
We especially want to thank Pastor Judy Hanlon of the Hadwen Park Congregational Church in Worcester, Massachusetts, who has linked her remarkable LGBTQ Asylum Support Task Force with Family Diversity Projects, enabling us to share the stories of a small group of the many asylum-seekers this group has supported.
This online version of our traveling photo-text exhibit, Building Bridges: Portraits of Immigrants and Refugees, was created with the support of The Center for LGBTQ and Gender Studies in Religion (CLGS), and its Executive Director, Bernard Schlager, PhD, who commissioned this project.
The mission of The Center for LGBTQ and Gender Studies in Religion (CLGS) is “to advance the well-being of lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer and transgender people and to transform faith communities and the wider society by taking a leading role in shaping a new public discourse on religion, gender identity and sexuality through education, research, community building and advocacy.”