The COIL Foundation is collaborating with Faith in America (www.faithinamerica.org) to create a web site to meet a unique and pressing need of LGBT youth. This collaborative effort includes consulting on site design, content development and promoting the launch.

The target for this new site is LGBT youth living where stigma and hostility in their family and community toward homosexuality is driven by religious teaching, and this is a severely undeserved demographic. This tension is the primary stress factor in their lives. There are countless stories from young people about religion-based stigma and hostility being the No. 1 contributor to their emotional, psychological and spiritual distress.

Our goal is to create an online environment, in which we can communicate the positive outcomes associated with the intersection of sexual orientation and faith, and how LGBT orientation should not be viewed as incompatible with Christian teaching or the love a parent has for a child. The website seeks to create a comfortable, family-oriented web environment as a youth, parent, pastor, and guidance counselor resource.

The majority of content comes from straight, religious-minded people who are speaking a message of affirmation. Much of it will be video messages from real people – kids, parents, grandparents, and pastors, elected officials – from different walks and from different faiths speaking a message tailored for this site.