21/12/2025
We all want to wish you a Merry Xmas, as q***r as it can be. Rev. Wielie Elhorst, lgbtiqa+ minister of the Protestant Church of Amsterdam, wrote an Advent reflection that we hereby gladly share with you:
Lgbtiqa+ people living in between what is and what shall be
Jesaja and the renewal of reality
Not a year goes by without words of the prophet of Isaiah in the time of Advent. The words chosen (Isaiah 2,1-9; 7,10-17; 9,1-5; 11,1 10; 35,1-10) are words that portray hopeful perspectives of peace. They hold a promise of light for people that walk in the darkness of their times. They foretell a fundamental change in leadership, that punishes wrongdoers, brings justice and that ends the brutalities of peoples standing up against each other in war and suppressing each other. They depict a world that is no longer a place of threat. They show a world in which everything that holds people back, has disappeared. No more poverty. No more diseases. No more physical defects. In beautiful imagery the words of the prophet paint a world that is whole and wholesome. The words of the prophet Isaiah are chosen to direct our attention in the time of Advent as we are waiting for what comes. Our waiting and waking does not need to be anxious. There is no reason to be afraid. The change that will come will be merry. It will bring joy. It will bring peace.
I love Isaiah
I love the chosen words from the Book of Isaiah, because they divinely foresee a world that is liberating for all, that fundamentally changes our relationship with each other and our relationship with creation. I love the words because in the midst of the darkness of the times they were written in, they foresee the world upside down after a radical change that is also a very merry one. And I love the words because they tell us that this renewed world with renewed people is not the result of yet another war, even more violence, but that it all begins with something as vulnerable as a newborn baby. The words of Isaiah tell us that our expectations should not be directed by the wish to bring change or to overturn through power, aggression or revolution, but through the soft powers of vulnerability, love, service, compassion, forgiveness that liberate people and the world from within.
So, where is the change?
As much as I love Isaiah’s words, I very well understand they can also bring about a cynical reaction. How much of the beautiful imagery that Isaiah painted with his words have we seen or do we see become reality, even after the beginning of the change that was to come with the birth of that baby in a stable in that little town called Bethlehem? On the contrary, the world even seems to be heading in the wrong direction. Humankind violates creation. It destroys itself in an economy only driven by growth and greed. It hurts itself deeply in wars and conflicts with more people fleeing their homes and countries than ever before. It violates itself in marginalizing groups and minorities in a rigid normativity that denies all those who do not fit ‘traditional standards’.
Heading in the wrong direction
There really is enough reason to be cynical when hearing the words of Isaiah at the same time looking around and seeing where we are, or I should say: where we are not. Among others the reasons to be cynical in our time and world present themselves especially to lgbtiqa+ people. We have seen decades of progress that translated itself in laws that guarantee equal rights, equal treatment and equal opportunities and also in similar change of teachings and practices in some faith communities. But now, at least in the last decade we see backlash worldwide, compromising the lives of lgbtiqa+ people. The new Rainbow Index of Churches in Europe, published this years, painfully lists the discrimination against lgbtiqa+ people over the last years, both in society as in churches:
- In 2022, Kirill, the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church in a Sunday sermon blamed liberal western values, particularly gay pride parades for the alleged ‘need’ for Russian’s invasion of Ukraine.
- Having already passed a law in 2020 banning transgender or inters*x people from legally changing their gender, in 2021 Hungary legally banned ‘homos*xual and tr*******al propaganda’ to then in 2025 prohibit public assemblies that promote the rights of LGBTI+ people by passing a constitutional amendment.
- On 12 October 2022, two people were killed (plus the perpetrator), and a third person was wounded in a shooting outside of the front entrance of Tepláren, a gay bar in Bratislava, Slovakia, a well-known spot frequented by the local LGBTI+ community.
- Although 2025 saw an end to the so called ‘LGBT free zones’ in Poland, until 2024 provinces, towns, and municipalities across the country adopted ‘family charters’ pledging to ‘protect children from moral corruption’ or declared themselves free from ‘LGBT ideology.’
- Although the world has come to know the late Pope Francis as the first Pope who strongly appealed to change the pastoral attitude towards homos*xual people, in 2024 during a symposium he yet again spoke out against gender theory describing it as an ‘ugly ideology of our time’, because, according to the Pope, it erases all distinctions between men and women. To cancel this difference, the Pope claimed, ‘is to erase humanity’.
- In 2025, in The Netherlands the proposal to make it possible for transgender people to themselves change the gender marker on their birth certificate was withdrawn. According to the Dutch government this proposal at that moment was ‘politically unfeasible’.
- Also in 2025, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom ruled that the legal definition of a woman is based on biological s*x, a decision which can have far reaching implications for who can access single s*x services and spaces and who cannot. At the same time, the Church of England remains in a prolonged stalemate on LGBTI+ inclusion, immobilized by the fear that any step forward could fracture the Anglican Communion.
This is the reality for lgbtiqa+ people, even having gained so much as well, of course, that is: in limited parts of the world. This is the reality and confronted with that reality through this list of violent acts, it distances and estranges from the words of Isaiah. It is clear that in the face of people who suffer from the darkness and from what is downright evil, the words of Isaiah cannot and should not be used to easily comfort or ease pain.
Against all odds
What does help I think is to again and again return to the very humble and vulnerable beginning of what Isaiah describes on such a high and joyful note. What does help I think is to again and again turn to the people and places in our times that ‘deliver new life’ and a new reality against all odds, putting themselves at risk not knowing if what they say and do will ever make any difference or if they will experience it in their lifetime. The hope we need and that can end cynicism and giving up, and that we can draw strength from is to be found there: in these people, not seen and invisible to the(ir) world, but living the promise of a new world of justice and peace against all odds; yes, just like God coming to live with us as a tiny baby amounting to nothing, in the margins of the then known world: a little town called Bethlehem.
Just these two against all odds
There are many examples that come to mind thinking of where we find them. The one that I want to share with you now is when I was in Bratislava, Slovakia in November of this year. I was spending a holiday week in Vienna with a friend. We decided to also pay a visit to another European capital closeby: Bratislava. Accidentally in this week and on our day in Bratislava a documentary was launched in the Lutheran centre of Bratislava showing the affirmative answers of religious leaders from different Christian traditions to questions about the situation and position of lgbtiqa+ people in Slovakian society and churches. Just before the meeting I was introduced to two young roman catholic priests, in their thirties, that had also decided to take part in the documentary. They both served in small parishes in the country side of Slovakia, very vulnerable in a hostile environment that does not want to or knows how to understand and accept. Against the odds of their environment, ‘amounting to nothing’, they nevertheless ‘delivered new life’ in words not spoken publicly until then, making themselves even more vulnerable than they already were. Courageous as they obviously also were, they are also just two ordinary young priests, not able to rely on any kind of power that could protect them. On the contrary: they were forbidden to speak by their bishop during the launch of the documentary. Of course their presence there spoke all the words needed – the words I also needed to keep loving the promise made to us in the words of Isaiah, realizing that I always need to return to the humble beginnings against all odds to really see the strength and the overcoming power of the love of God in the new life and the new world SHe wants for and offers to all people – living my life in the reality of what already is and what not yet is, or I should say: of what shall be.
Just a few more days and nights to go before Christmas…
Wielie Elhorst
lgbtiqa+ minister
of the Protestant Church of Amsterdam
