From the beginning MAP has primarily served the African-American community, but some 20 percent of its clients are Hispanic. The organization offers a wide range of programs, including HIV testing and counseling, AIDS prevention education, and the provision of food, clothing, and transportation to patients.

Sponsor Message.

Bean was executive director of MAP until 1989, when he gave up the post to devote more time to the needs of his growing church. In 1990 UFC became the Unity Fellowship Church Movement when new congregations began forming. The denomination now has some four thousand members in fifteen cities around the United States.

Bean espouses liberation theology and stresses that his church is committed to defending the rights of historically oppressed groups, including women, persons of color, and glbtq people.

Bean has received numerous awards from both religious and secular organizations for his work in providing a spiritual home for glbtq Christians, combating AIDS, and continuously striving to improve the lives of those in the minority community. Among these honors are an NAACP Image Award (1987) for his work on AIDS, a Prophetic Witness Award (1993) from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and a Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund Liberty Award (1994). In addition, the AIDS Health Foundation has recognized his dedication to helping people with AIDS by naming one of its residential care facilities the Carl Bean House.

Bean is proud to shepherd a church that nurtures Christians faced with oppression because of both their sexual orientation and their ethnicity, but he emphasizes that the UFC welcomes all people. He points out that heterosexuals and indeed whole families are members. This is consistent with the motto that Bean has given his church, "God is Love and Love is for Everyone."

Spurred by the gay liberation movement of the late 1960s, a number of religious groups--including specifically gay-oriented churches and synagogues--have been formed to address the needs of gay and lesbian believers.

The glbtq history of Los Angeles, the U.S.'s second largest metropolis, is replete with cultural, social, and political firsts.

The Metropolitan Community Church, a Christian denomination founded to minister to the glbtq community, has grown into a worldwide ministry with over 40,000 members in 18 countries.

In 1977 Malcolm Boyd, an Episcopal priest and prolific author, became the first prominent openly gay clergyman in a mainstream Christian denomination in the United States.

Since coming out publicly in 1991, after a homophobic issue of a student publication at Harvard University led to tension on campus, the Reverend Peter Gomes has lent his eloquent voice to the cause of equality for glbtq people.

Troy Perry is the founder of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches, a Protestant denomination devoted to ministering to the spiritual needs of glbtq people.