From left: Rev. Dr. Anabel Proffitt; the Rev. Naomi Washington-Leapheart; Rev. Dr. Kharma Amos; and Bambi Galore speak during the Queer Celebration as Resistance: 25 Years of Courage event held by the School of Theology by Moravian University in Lancaster on Sunday, Nov. 9, 2025.
SUZETTE WENGER | Staff Photographer / LNP
SUZETTE WENGER | Staff Photographer / LNP
From left: Rev. Dr. Anabel Proffitt; the Rev. Naomi Washington-Leapheart; Rev. Dr. Kharma Amos; and Bambi Galore speak during the Queer Celebration as Resistance: 25 Years of Courage event held by the School of Theology by Moravian University in Lancaster on Sunday, Nov. 9, 2025.
For Duane Romberger, organizing Lancaster Seminary’s first celebration of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students was meant to solve a practical problem.
As a divinity student, he needed to be supported by a local church in order to get his degree. But none of the churches in central Pennsylvania were officially open and affirming to LGBTQ+ people.
“The struggle and challenge was, if none of them are officially open to me, how do I even stay here until the second year,” Romberger said Sunday following a gathering marking the seminary’s 25th anniversary of publicly supporting LGBTQ+ students.
Lancaster Seminary’s first “GLBT Week” celebration in 2000 was attended mostly by seminarians and school faculty, Romberger said. But by the second year, word had gotten out. He was able to find churches to welcome him and went on to earn his master’s degree.
“I think it really did kind of plant the seed, which we got to see grow over the last 25 years,” Romberger said.
Now, there are roughly two dozen welcoming churches spread across Lancaster, Dauphin and York counties, according to online directories of LGBTQ-affirming churches.
That’s how Allison Reeser said she found Hayshire United Church of Christ in York County. She wasn’t born yet in 2000 when Romberger and others were pushing churches to publicly embrace LGBTQ+ people.
When it came time for Reeser to find a church that would welcome her, it was only a click away. Reeser said she came out first, then began to search for a community that would allow her to embrace both her faith and her identity. She attended Lancaster Seminary’s 25-year celebration to support the community she felt had welcomed her, she said.
“A lot of younger people are scared to find religion right now, but I want them to know that there are places that you’re safe and you’re welcome,” Reeser said.
But Romberger said Sunday’s event made him feel emotional, overwhelmed and conflicted. It was nice to see how far LGBTQ+ acceptance had advanced, but said when he went home he knew he would see anti-LGBTQ+ sentiments on social media.
He told a story of going to the Gratz fair in northern Dauphin County just after Donald Trump was elected president the first time. One of the stalls was selling an American flag, a Trump flag, and a pride flag. In a way, that was progress, Romberger said. But in the last ten years, the politics of acceptance have taken a step backward.
Visibility as a political strategy
Kharma Amos was a divinity student alongside Romberger. She came from Oregon, where she was a queer activist who hung out with other queer activists, she said. Lancaster in 1998 was a cultural shock for her, she said.
“Reorienting to being in a majority heterosexual space was a reset for me. There were people still talking to me about Romans in the Bible and about how being gay was sinful,” Amos said. “That was a conversation I had left behind long before.”
She learned to connect with people across religious, personal and political differences, she said, on her path to graduating with a doctorate in divinity in 2002. She did that by setting aside assumptions, and meeting with people who were willing to do the same for her, Amos said.
“The people who were going to be in ministry were transformed,” Amos said. “People entered seminary here and left differently, left ready to engage their congregations to become open and affirming.”
Being able to bring LGBTQ+ affirmation to a seminary is a political strategy, Amos said, that is more effective than trying to work with one church at a time.
Institutional support
When Romberger and Amos proposed that Lancaster Seminary host its first GLBT Week, the seminary’s academic leader at the time, Anabel Proffitt, was nervous, she said. But the answer was yes, as it was from the school’s president.
“It was an act of courage that amplified courage,” Amos said.
A quarter century later, when Romberger and Greg Carey, a professor and associate dean at the school, asked to host Sunday’s commemorative event, school leadership was again supportive.
“It takes courage in 2025 to make an unreserved, complete yes to this event,” Carey said.
But none of the speakers explicitly said from the stage why courage is needed now or made direct reference to politics or elected leaders. That rhetorical strategy was not discussed ahead of time, Carey said in a follow-up interview. Instead, it reflected the seminary’s commitment to be nonpartisan, as well as the view that increasing political hostility is a social problem that goes beyond a single party or politician, Carey said.
In the first eight days of his second administration, Trump signed seven executive orders stripping federal protections from LGBTQ+, especially targeting transgender people, affecting healthcare access, workplace discrimination, military service, education, and participation in sports.
“The whole truth is it’s a social problem that everyone in the room is feeling,” Carey said.
He pointed to local government, such as the decision by five Lancaster County school boards to hire the Independence Law Center, a group that helps craft policies and files lawsuits to push for their version of Christian governance, such as preventing transgender students from participating in sports or using bathrooms of their choice.
Carey also pointed to campaigns to erase LGBTQ+ references from both public and school libraries.
In this political climate, support from a theological institution sends an important message, especially one in a largely conservative part of the state, said Naomi Washington-Leaphart. She earned her master of divinity degree in 2016 and now teaches at Villanova University and works with Political Research Associates, which describes itself as “a social justice research and strategy center.”
“The opposition to LGBTQ justice and freedom would really like to pretend that they are the majority,” Washington-Leaphart said. “But in reality, the data shows that a majority of people of faith in the United States support LGBTQ rights, support LGBTQ marriage.”
National opinion polls and research, including from the Public Religion Research Institute, show that a majority of Americans and most religious groups support LGBTQ+ rights and protections.
Lancaster Seminary, now part of the Moravian University School of Theology, will continue to support LGBTQ+ inclusion in its faith training, according to Christian Rice, dean of the School of Theology and Vice President of Moravian University.
“We’re living in a cultural moment where there’s a deficit of compassion, and there’s a need for us to train individuals who want to be the agents of compassion,” Rice said.
The school stopped hosting its GLBT Weeks just before the pandemic. Panelists at Sunday’s event said putting on the celebration was a tremendous amount of work. But reflecting back on 25 years, Romberger said it may be time to start organizing again.
“I hope remembering this part of our history and making these new connections reminds us that it’s time to come together again so we can address the challenges that are in front of us and that lie ahead,” Romberger said.
A collection of interviews, photos, and music videos, featuring local musicians who have stopped by the WITF performance studio to share a little discussion and sound. Produced by WITF’s Joe Ulrich.
