10:56am |Eric Leocadio is Founder, President, and Executive Director of Catalyst Network of Communities. The organization is unique, in that its mission is to support the missions of other organizations, to facilitate and sustain connections between them, and with the community at large. In fact, its three primary areas of focus are Community, Collaboration, and Citizenship.
Since starting in April of 2006 they’ve hosted the first Green Long Beach Festival, and helped support LBCreative!’s Carnival del Corazon, which raised thousands for disaster relief in Haiti. They’ve worked with Pedal Movement to establish The HUB, a facility at Hancock University where people can learn how to maintain their bikes. They’ve also sponsored Long Beach Grows, the Long Beach Time Exchange, and started a campaign called OutFaith.
In speaking with Eric, it became clear to me that more than one conversation was required. In part one, we discuss his work prior to creating Catalyst. In part two, we’ll talk more directly about Catalyst and, in part three, we’ll discuss some of the specific efforts and organizations that Catalyst has helped.
I began our conversation by asking about the origins of the Catalyst concept.
Eric: The vision for Catalyst was birthed out of the observation that our world can seem pretty fragmented at times. I know what it’s like to personally feel disconnected, and I know I’m not alone in that. I’ve always believed that we are better together, than we are apart. In April of 2006, I wanted to see our city inspired with a greater sense of community, collaboration, and citizenship through meaningful relationships so I established the organization. Before that, I was a co-founder of faith-based non-profit called Kingdom Causes. I started that back in 2002, here in Long Beach, with my friend Brad Fieldhouse. Together, we built relationships with pastors throughout the City and region, and helped churches to explore how they could serve the City more effectively, together. By the time 2006 came around i had been chewing on broader vision for the whole city. Not just faith-based, but all of us, to explore what it would look like to connect and collaborate. So I guess, for almost a decade, I’ve been working to see folks come together in real and tangible ways.
Sander: What was the nature of the work you were doing with Kingdom Causes?
Eric: With Kingdom Causes, we first invested time in building relationships with pastors, hearing their stories, their hearts, and learning about the things they’re doing within their churches and in the City. Then we began to facilitate introductions, and just helped them to build relationships with each other, and even encouraged collaboration. We saw lots of diversity. Denominations have varying styles of worship, varying traditions. Our hope was to cast a broader unifying vision, to establish a common ground that would provide a context that they could come together. The process was… interesting.
The issue of faith and sexuality seemed to be “heating up” over the years, not just locally but globally, and then for me, personally. Within the context of interacting with all these churches throughout the city, and even helping to bring people from different churches together to pray together… while all that was happening, I began my own personal journey of trying to reconcile my faith, and everything I had been taught, with the reality of my own sexuality. The catalyst for the start of my own journey was the realization that everything that I thought I believed about homosexuality was pretty much one-sided. I believed it because that was the only thing I was taught. So i took a step back, withheld judgment, and asked myself with honest assessment: Why do I believe what I believe?
I realized that I didn’t really “own” it. I just echoed what I had heard from the pulpit. So, this journey led me to seek a greater understanding. I studied scripture with a fresh lens. I learned what the “other side” believed about this issue. I stopped seeing “the other side” as enemies, and realized they worshipped God in pretty much the same way. I realized that God’s love was not conditional even though, at times, the Church’s acceptance can be conditional.
Sander: There’s a big difference between the two.
Eric: Definitely, and that tension has caused so much pain for people like me,
caught in the middle. Our faith is important to us. For many of us, our faith is a core part of who we are, and yet so is our sexuality. It can be confusing for many of us on this journey, and the Church often didn’t/doesn’t make it any better or helpful for us. I eventually reconciled my faith and my sexuality, that God loves me as I am, but I also realized that I got to that point because of the journey, not simply because someone told it to me. This, His love, I could own. So my approach has always been to encourage the journey, not to tell people what to think, but to encourage them to embark on that personal journey of faith regarding their sexuality. See, for two years (2002-2004) I was a part of ex-gay programs/ministry, so I know that perspective, but I learned that there is a spectrum of perspectives regarding this issue of faith and sexuality among gay people.
Sander: Does that ever work for anyone, really?
Eric: There are some that say it works. There are many, like me, that sincerely tried it. In my own experience, I realized that those programs were simply offering “tools” to suppress homosexuality. not change it. Of course they say only God changes us. My fundamental question was: Did God want me to be changed? I realized that what is most consistent with everything I’ve ever learned and studied and experienced from God is that He wants to change/grow my character, not my sexuality. He doesn’t talk about WHO to love, but rather HOW to love. He wanted me to love better.
I think that translates to my whole approach to community building: Helping people to love each other better. We may not change each other, but we can love each other better and, with the hostile climate during the times before and after Prop 8, I knew more than ever that we need a different approach. The debates are not effective in changing minds of anything, since we can’t change someone else. We can resolve to change ourselves. We can change our stance towards one another. To love better means to seek to understand one another, and this begins with relationships. When relationships happen, empathy thrives. That’s what we really need in the faith communities, and in the LGBT communities. We need empathy.
The majority of LGBT people have had some kind of background in, or exposure to, religion or faith and the vast majority of us have been hurt by those experiences. I think things get so hostile sometimes because it’s so very personal to so many of us on both sides, but here’s what I believe: I believe that on “both sides” there is a fundamental need for an apology and a need to be forgiven. When both are offered, that’s when healing happens.
Around April of 2008, I was a founding member (representing Catalyst) of what we called the Coalition of Bridge Builders that comprised of both gay and straight individuals representing bridge-type networking organizations. Our mission was to help facilitate a safe and productive dialogue within the broader church regarding GLBT individuals within our community.
Sander: What was your strategy?
Eric: Our strategy was to first work within both groups of conservative traditional church leaders and also inclusive church leaders and assess who among each group were willing to build bridges with the other group. We were reframing the controversial and divisive issue within the Church in a way that elevated the conversation beyond the politics of our differences.
We realized that both groups needed a preparatory process in order to get to a point of being ready to engage in a safe and productive dialogue with each other. We didn’t want to just put both groups in the same room and create a space that might potentially cause more harm and division. So we tried to invest the time in building relationship and trust. Our goal was to eventually facilitate introductions between both groups when it seemed right.
We hosted several events that included pastors round table discussions (in each group separately), community Q&A sessions, and dinner events. Leading up to the vote on Prop 8, we planned a gathering of about 60 evangelical church leaders throughout Southern California from the conservative/traditional perspective. It happened to be scheduled a week and a half after the vote on Prop 8 – which passed. It was also planned for me to share my own personal story of faith and sexuality with this group. I was terrified! I had no idea what to expect since the religious and political climate in our state had been so tense. I had my own feelings of hurt and anger about Prop 8 narrowly passing. However, I didn’t want to burn bridges; I wanted to build and preserve them. So I shared my story with the only agenda of being authentic about my genuine faith in God, the experience of growing up gay and in the closet, and my journey of reconciling my faith with my sexuality. After sharing my story, we had a Q&A session.
Sander: How did the participants respond?
Eric: I was surprised at the positive reception that the group gave me. The audience was filled with pastors, youth pastors, and church leaders from traditionally evangelical churches and I expected to be bombarded with questions challenging “my choice” and “my lifestyle.” Instead, I received encouragement and thanks for being open to share my story with them. I received numerous questions such as “What do we tell our youth groups when most of them are more okay with gay people than we are?” or “My child just came out to me, what do I do?” or “How do I communicate to the congregation that we need to welcome gay and lesbian people but my church Board isn’t ready for that yet?”
Sander: What kinds of results have you seen from these efforts?
Eric: The result of our efforts in helping to build bridges between these communities was that it began a much needed dialogue. It wasn’t about finding answers – there weren’t any real easy ones. Lasting and real change takes patience and consistency. However, as a coalition, at the time we didn’t have the capacity to continue hosting these events so our last one was in January 2009.
As divisive as Prop 8 was and is, it became a catalyst for a broader dialogue – not just about whether or not homosexuality was acceptable, but instead about how we should treat people who are homosexual. This meant that there was a group of straight evangelicals – post Prop 8 – that began a journey of their own. Many of these sought to reconcile the things they heard from the pulpit with their feelings towards their gay family and friends.
Sander: What’s transpired since then?
Eric: Since the coalition wasn’t able to continue its work, for the rest of 2009 and much of 2010, I decided to continue with a different approach. Instead of hosting events with leaders, I continued to develop personal relationships one-on-one with people I met along the way – both gay and straight, church leaders and lay leaders and individuals, just people who were on a journey. I had coffee meetings with people who wanted to share their questions about the issue. I went to lunch or dinner with people who wanted to tell me about their gay family member who recently came out. I organized smaller and intimate informal dinner gatherings that provided a context for the sharing of stories.
I learned that with a relational approach, people were willing to talk. The majority of people I connected with affirmed the fact that they were not happy with the endless debates and public attacks from both sides. And most of everyone that I talked with were seeing their stereotypes and their assumptions shattered simply through relationship. But more importantly, I found that most agreed that it was a difficult situation that didn’t have easy answers for the broader church.
Thus, one of the reasons why OutFaith was birthed: To create dynamic experiences for people to connect meaningfully with the LGBT world of faith – informed, engaged, and above the fray. My friend Ryan Blanc and I co-founded OutFaith as a collaborative campaign initiated by the Catalyst Network of Communities and Greater People – both bridge-building non-profits that are not exclusively faith nor gay organizations. This campaign provides a safe space in the middle for people who are tired of either extreme, for both gay and straight, on a kind of journey figuring out what to believe.
Sander: Spirituality is part of the human condition, as is sexuality. Isn’t a negative judgment about sexuality something we can let go of?
Eric: When you feel different than others, and we see others as different than us, we all create all that mess that ultimately attacks our self-worth, self-image, self-confidence, and self-esteem. I call that the ‘fractured four’. I was in 3rd grade and knew I was different. I guess my point is that, as a society, there’s a subtle message that there’s something ‘wrong’ or ‘different’ or ‘less’ about being gay, and its easy to maintain that subtle message. When a person actually knows someone who is gay, that’s what breaks the stereotypes. It breaks the fear. It breaks the false assumptions. That’s where we find so many people, in that middle space: They know people who are gay, and are friends with them, but they can’t reconcile the message of what they are hearing from the pulpit. That’s why relationships are so key.