It has been more than six years since our last contribution to this blog – six years in which we have been simply living abundantly queer lives. We have cultivated lasting friendships, discovered the joy of intimate relationships with partners, changed jobs, changed cities, survived a global pandemic, and realized dreams we never thought possible. There have been a few occasions when one of us would reach out to another and talk about something happening at PHC, but for the most part we were far too busy actually living queer life to contemplate writing about it.

Last Friday, as part of the semi-annual “Faith and Reason Lecture” tradition, the PHC administration invited Dr. Rosaria Butterfield, an “ex-gay” author well-known in conservative evangelical Christian circles, to speak on campus. Progressive PHC alumni have frequently taken issue with the selection of speakers for this lecture series, but the choice of Dr. Butterfield feels like it was intended to be a direct slap in the face of all students and alumni who identify either as part of the LGBTQIA+ community, or as affirming allies. We at Queer PHC are disappointed, but not surprised.

Our entire purpose in returning to this blog for a brief post is to let you know what some of our other queer alumni are saying about Dr. Butterfield’s speech. They have written a letter which you can access here on their site and even sign it if you are a PHC alum who is either part of the queer community or stands with us as a supportive ally. The letter was written by five PHC queer alumni, several of whom we are proud and happy to know as friends. The list of supporters is actively growing as we type these words.

We stand with our queer family at PHC Queer Alumni and hope that you will follow along with what they are doing. If you are a current student reading this who found us through PHC Queer Alumni, you are so welcome here, and we hope that you learn something of our history through the back pages of this blog. We are a little older now, and hopefully a little wiser, but most importantly, we are still here.

And frankly, that’s all we have to say in response to Rosaria Butterfield, too. Despite so many attempts to poison the well, in the years since Queer PHC was first founded, so many queer alumni and former students of PHC have found that they can have life, and have it more abundantly. And we have, and we do. Our numbers are growing, our lives are gloriously queer, and we are never going away.

We are still here.

Until next time,

Leslie Beauchamp and Kate Kane