We live in a culture that tends to recognize just two genders, male and female. The idea that there are only two genders is sometimes called a “gender binary.” Yet, non-binary identities have been recognized for millennia by cultures and societies around the world. While our culture is starting to deconstruct the gender binary, our linguistic structure reinforces the very division and discrimination that we seek to end. Together, we will explore how we as Unitarian Universalists–and as a church community–can create a culture of belonging through pronouns and a new grammar of inclusion.
“We are not what other people say we are. We are who we know ourselves to be.”
—Laverne Cox
Rev. Teri Schwartz (she/her) is a UU Minister and the founder of Spirit+Strategy, a pastoral care, coaching, and consulting practice, and currently serves as the worship minister for the Juneau UU Fellowship. Formly, she served as Senior Co- Minister of First Unitarian Church of Chicago, along with her husband and colleague, our Rev. David Schwartz. As a clergy couple and partners in crime, the Schwartzes (mostly) stay out of trouble by staying in church. A graduate of Harvard Divinity School and Brown University, she has formerly served as a chaplain in hospitals, palliative care, hospice, and to UU seminarians. She lives in Longmont, with David, their two kids, ages 15 and 12, a giant 170-pound St. Bernard dog, but it’s really their three cats that run the household.
