Questions or Information: email YoungAdults @ dignityny . org
We will have several prepared discussion questions as well as plenty of opportunities to present your own questions to the room. We hope this will be an open, honest and fruitful discussion in which we all are both intellectually and spiritually enriched and through which we can further pursue relationships with confidence and pride.
~~~~Young Adult meeting- 10/19/14 Topic: Prayer Life.
~~~~Young Adult meeting- 8/17/14 Topic: Christian Sexual Ethics. This is a follow up from our retreat last month.
~~~~Young Adult meeting- 6/15/14 Cancelled
~~~~Young Adult meeting- 5/18/14 Topic:International LGBT rights. ~~Alex will be leading us in a presentation and discussion about LGBT rights internationally. The legal status of LGBT people and the barriers they face varies from country to country, from full equality and marriage rights, to facing long-term imprisonment and possibly death just for living their lives. We will be learning about the state of LGBT rights in a few different places around the world, in order to give us a more global perspective of the movement and the challenges facing people in places outside the US. It's sure to be an interesting discussion, so please join us!
~~Young Adult meeting- 2/16/14 Topic: LGBT Identity, Privilege and Intersectionality
As a group of people with LGBTQ identities in common, we so often focus on these aspects of our identity and the experiences of oppression and injustice we face related to them specifically. However, people are complex. People can be oppressed on some dimensions while being privileged on others, and the various parts of our identities and the oppressions we face will interact in complex ways to create unique experience of injustice.
A discussion on identity, privilege and intersectionality that goos beyond our identities as LGBTQ+ individuals and explored the more complex ways in which the multiple aspects of who we are impacts how we experience privilege and injustice in society.
~~December 15, 2013 “Exploring the Sacred in the Season of Advent” Jamie lead us in a reflection on how we can welcome God more fully into our lives during the Advent season. Through theological reflection and personal sharing we explored how the Incarnation informs our faith and our “sense of the sacred” as Catholics, and how the Advent mystery can help us in our own lives of longing and anticipation.
June 2, 2013 Celebrate Pride Month and learn some of our LGBT History! Tom McLoughlin spoke to the Young Adults to tell us his story, his experience of the movement, and his involvement in Dignity. Tom has been involved with Dignity since some of its early days and lived in New York and San Francisco at key times in LGBT History. He was there for some of the nights of the Stonewall Riots and then in San Francisco during Harvey Milk’s time.
May 5, 2013 In light of recent events in Boston, this week's discussion is going to focus on what it means to have faith during difficult times in our lives.
April 21, 2013 Topic: In light of recent events in Boston, this week's discussion is going to focus on what it means to have faith during difficult times in our lives.
April 7, 2013 Topic: "Tell Us What You Know" guestl John Falcone. As many of you know, John is married to Matias. Matias is not an American citizen so DOMA now forces them apart. John will talk about relationships, marriage, and the effect DOMA has had on their relationship. We're blessed to have this opportunity to hear his story before he moves to the UK to be with his husband.
March 17, 2013 Topic: Stephen is this week's facilitator. We have a casual topic that will be focused around Saints, what they mean to Catholics and, more specifically, St. Patrick. As always, we'll share our stories and thoughts over a light meal (pizza and soda).
March 3, 2013 Topic: LGBT erasure becomes more difficult for the institutional church, as numerous examples of same-sex relationships can be found. We'll talk about historical examples of LGBT peopl in the Catholic Church and what that means for us going forward today.
While some in the Church have tried to promote the idea that homosexuality is a recent addition to society, we'll discuss the deep-rooted significance and richness that LGBT individuals have actually contributed to the Catholic Church. We can then turn towards how we can help the Church grow today through our unique positioning as well.
February 17, 2013 Topic: We will be discussing the future of YADs. In January, we talked about our goals and our needs, and we came up with some ideas for potential coordinator positions. Now that we've had plenty of time to mull everything over, we need to review the various positions, solidify nominations, vote if necessary and then move on.
Also we'll talk about the GLBT Expo happening at the Javits Center on March 9th and 10th. This is a great time for us to expose our group and just to hang out. So plan on volunteering.
February 3, 2013 Topic: open discussion.
January 20, 2013 Topic: Coming Out to Ourselves. We want to share our stories on what it meant not to come out to other people, but to reconcile our sexualities with ourselves.
January 6, 2013: Topic: During the first meeting of 2013 (!!!), we started by discussing how to address our need for structure. We listed responsibilities, suggested ways to fulfill these responsibilities, and spent a little bit of time brainstorming various goals we have for YADS.
Our Goals:
- Continue to increase the YADS community
- Plan and Execute a retreat
- Service - follow up with Ali Forney Center and get involved as a group
- Outreach to other parish LGBT groups
- Get involved with SAGE
- Create an outreach task force to new Dignity members
- Establish some sort of celebration/ initiation for newly out members of our community.
December 16, 2012 : Topic Christmas: What do you really believe about Christmas? What are your best Christmas memories? How do our faith and sexuality impact our Christmas traditions, beliefs, and experiences?
December 2, 2012 : Topic "Look how far we've come! And where are we headed now?"
This topic can be a natural follow-up to last meeting's Coming Out theme. How did our visits home for the holidays go? How far have we come since coming out? How far have we come as an LGBT community, particularly after this year's election. How far have we come in our little group? What are some goals for next year-- for ourselves, our community, and our Dignity group? What do we want to get out of this group? How should we begin?A huge THANK YOU to all of the Young Adults of DignityNY who helped prepare food for the Street Corner Gourmets this year. Our efforts helped feed thousands of homeless and hungry people in New York City. Mary Lanning, the organizer of this huge effort, expressed her gratitude for our significant participation. Many of us baked, bought, or contributed brownies (we exceeded DignityNY's goal of 2500 brownies -- we actually contributed over 3000 brownies!!!) In addition, many of us came to help prepare the meal by peeling, chopping, dicing, cooking, or cleaning. A special Thank You to Robert, Craig, Faidy, Kevin, Francis, Courtnie, Tom, John, and the friends and family that they enlisted, there were many others from our community who contibuted in the brownie project and in preparing the food, A big thank you goes out to Nicholas Cimato for helping to organize Dignity's participation in this event.
Report from November 18, 2012 Thanksgiving is coming up- a time when LGBT people often head home and often choose to come out to families or are compelled to come out by badgering elderly relatives wondering, “why you never seem to a have a girl [boy] friend…”
Many of our members were going to be heading home for the Thanksgiving holiday. Because holidays can be a time when LGBT people might choose to come out to families, or might be badgered by elderly relatives wondering, “why do you never seem to a have a girl [boy] friend?”, we thought it would be a good time to share our Coming Out stories. For those who had come out to their families, we discussed how they were positively or negatively received and about how our faith played into these experiences. For those who are just coming out, we talked about where we were on that journey. It was a great moment to share experiences and support each other as we headed back to visit our families.
Report from October 21, 2012 Topic: Personal Sexual Ethics.
What are our personal rules for our own sex lives, even if we don't follow them? What do we do, with whom, when, how long, and under what circumstances? How do people reconcile their personality, religion, sexuality, family background, personal morals, and sex lives?
12 people attended the meeting of the Young Adults of Dignity at the LGBT Center to discuss Personal Sexual Ethics. The discussion included what our own personal rules are for our sex life, including how we've formulated them and how they've changed over time. We talked about whether we've been able to abide by our own set of rules, and what we've learned when we've broken some of those rules. Some of us found that more general guidelines about the conditions, our state-of-mind, and the relationship with a particular partner was more successful than a rigid set of rules of what we would do or not do (and with whom). We also discussed how our family background, friends, community influences, and our religion affected our personal set of ethics. Later in the discussion, many of us expressed that the Church did not provide a good model for us in regard to sexual ethics and we talked about some sexual ethics theories that seemed to relate better to our generation and to LGBT people.
It was a lively discussion and we decided that we would continue it at later meetings, perhaps talking more about the general topic of Sexual Ethics.
We also spent some time setting an agenda for our upcoming YAD organization meeting, where we will discuss goals for the upcoming year and the possibility of setting up positions or an organizational structure.
Report from September 16, 2012 Our continuing series, "Tell me what you know" featured guest, Nicholas Cimato shared his experience as an activist during the AIDS Crisis. He brought along some memorabilia to show us. Thank you to Nick and every actvist who worked to give the world what we have now as a community.
Report from August 5, 2012
Report from July, 2012
Dignity/New York YADs participate in joint DYAC and DignityUSA Board meeting
Over 30 young adults from around the country participatied in a strategic planning meeting, July 20-22, 2012. 9 of our Dignity/New York YADs and other DYAC members from Boston, DC, Detroit, Philly, Houston, San Antonio and Miami were present to participate in the weekend's activities.
The weekend will began on Friday night in Newark, Penn Station Hilton. Meetings include: chapter experiences in creating young adult groups/sharing best practices, plotting goals for DYAC for the next 3 years, bridging the generational divide in chapters, 2013 convention planning, and 2 strategic planning sessions with the DignityUSA Board.
We hope this meeting will continue to energize us and give us a clear vision for the future of our chapter, DYAC and the entire DiginityUSA community. We are looking forward to planning events for the Minneappolis Convention, 2013 with our friends from DYAC.
Report from June 17, 2012 Topic: "Before Stonewall"
We'll be watching the documentary Before Stonewall. We're really excited about watching this movie together especially since we got to hear James Osbourn's story the last time we were together and because Pride is coming up. We hope everyone can make it! See you on Sunday
Report from June 3, 2012 James Osbourne shares his experience of being a member of Dignity/New York and being part of the Cathedral Project with the YADs
Report fromr April 1 2012 Jesus as a Relational Minister
Report from March 18, 2012
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As a group we continue to look for service opportunities. The LGBT Expo is March 17th and 18th. Many of our members will be staffing the Dignity/New York table. If anyone would like to volunteer, email Craig. We will also participate in the AIDS Walk NYC on May 20th. Braxton will bring us additional information about having a bar night fundraiser in May.
Report from our February 12, 2012 meeting Topic: "Putting Social Justice Into Action."
Jamie recapped the Catholic Social Justice Teaching of the Church reminding us that we encounter Jesus in the poor and we are the ones who are transformed. In her speaking engagements she often is asked how to get young people to church. Her response is to engage them in social justice work. Some actions that we will work on are: Walk with the larger Dignity/NY community in the upcoming AIDS walk, May 20th. We hope to have some fundraising events for this cause. We are looking are the various homeless LGBT programs across the city to see how we can get involved as a group. Our discussions on an "It Gets Better" video continued.
Report from our January 15, 2012 meeting
Topic: Catholic Social Justice Teaching of the Church.
Jamie Manson gave an overview of the social justice documents beginning with 1891's Rerum Novarum. In addition to church teaching, she talked about Dorothy Day, telling stories about her and explaining her understanding of the poor as the body of Christ.
Report from our December 18, 2011 meeting
Topic: Who is God for me?
Report from our December 4, 2011 meeting
Report from our November 6th meeting.
Report from our October 16th meeting.
Topic: "The Gender Question"
-Our discussion was about Gender, and if there is a difference between gender related behaviors in gay vs. lesbian relationships. Of course the gender discussion can be had for ages and involves so many different things. We mostly conversed about the stereotypes that arise about what roles each gender plays. Can gays and lesbians relate to each other and find the opposite sex attractive? We spoke about "masculine traits" vs "feminine traits." We discussed our views and societies views of labeling people. The topic of becoming "gayer" after coming out was also tackled. Why does that happen? What is that about?
Report from our September 25th meeting.
Hello friends!
It was great seeing everyone at our YAD meeting last night and it was so nice having such a big group! I have three items of interest:
- The next More than a Monologue panel discussion is this coming Saturday. It's focused on LGBT youth (teens) and the suicide crisis. Please note that the keynote speaker is DAN SAVAGE!!! This event is free and includes lunch, but you have to reserve a seat.
- We set our next meeting for October 16th at 5pm at the Center. This meeting could be a planning meeting or a regular meeting
- Robert and Bill both participated in the Dignity USA Young Adult Caucus conference call on Monday night and they told the YAC about all the great things happening in NY. They will fill us in about the conversation at our next meeting. If you'd like to join this group, here's the web page and Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/DignityYoungAdultCaucus
Report from our August 14th meeting.
Topic: How we "live out" our spirituality in our relationships (i.e., How does our spirituality influence --or not-- whom we date, how we handle or look at tough situations like breakups, or what makes us happy in a relationship).
This month a few of the young adults managed to clear some time in our scattered, distracted schedules to hang out, eat some pie (pizza pie that is) and throw around ideas and experiences regarding faith and relationships. Over the past couple of months we've kept our discussion themes loose and fun. We've taken pleasure both in each other's company and in forming a safe place where we can love each other well. This month, as a result of our growing camaraderie, we were able to go a little bit deeper into understanding how God sees us as perfect and beautiful. We talked about how we can take that unconditional love, that knowledge of being specifically and wonderfully made, and apply that to our confidence in meeting other LBGT peers.
Report from our June 12th meeting:
Let us know if you would like to participate in the Pride Liturgy, the Witness at the Cathedral, the March, or the upcoming DignityUSA convention in D.C .
