Early on a weekday morning, dozens of Latino evangelical leaders stream into a large church on the outskirts of Los Angeles. Greeting one another in Spanish, they sip coffee and share pastries until they are informed that class is about to begin.
The first course of the day? Hebrew.
They are here as part of a program sponsored by the American Jewish Committee, a global organization that supports Jewish life and promotes pluralism, to teach Latino evangelical leaders about Judaism.
“We started this course three years ago to tear down this wall and construct a bridge,” said Randall Brown, director of interreligious and Israel affairs for the American Jewish Committee’s Los Angeles chapter, as a group of professionally dressed Latino leaders applauded.
“Who wants to go to the Holy Land?” Brown asked the room full of students. The majority raised their hands. READ FULL STORYRead more…
Perez Hilton is a celebrity blogger who dishes out the latest Hollywood gossip, but there's something about his personal life you may not know.
Hilton is a Latino pioneer. He is one of the first Latino public figures in the U.S. to be openly gay. While Latinos have broken ground on the U.S. Supreme Court, in Hollywood and in professional sports, gay Latinos in the nation's public arena remain largely invisible.
Hilton says deep-seated homophobia within the Latino community has forced many gay Latinos to go underground, but attitudes are shifting.
"At the beginning, when I came out to my mom, she reacted with a sigh and said, 'You're my son and I have to love you,' " Hilton says. "But now she says, 'You're the best son in the world, and we need to find you a man.' "
Some gay Latino leaders are starting to share Hilton's optimism. The Latino community has long had a reputation for being notoriously homophobic. But some surprising developments within the Latino world -- in the United States and abroad -- suggest that may be changing, gay scholars and activists say. READ FULL STORYRead more…
