Beloved Arise Founder Jun Love Young Shares A Message to Queer Youth of Faith

Beloved Arise, founded by Jun Love Young, is known for its work in intertwining faith and queer identity which can sound impossible. It’s no lie that one of the many obstacles that LGBTQ people face is religious trauma, including the rejection and discrimination from religions people grew up with their entire lives.

This causes many queer folks to leave their religion, and often times family, behind to live authentically, which isn’t possible in toxic and restrictive environments. Now, people are beginning to create religious spaces for LGBTQ people that practice religion. Beloved Arise is one of the biggest organizations that does just that for queer youth. 

The start of Beloved Arise stems from Young’s experience which many people can relate to. Jun Love Young grew up Catholic in the Philipines, and once in the United States he and his family continued practicing Christianity.

“Faith has been an important aspect of my life, and because of that, I’ve never been comfortable with my queerness. I grew up in spaces where it was a known fact that you can’t be both queer and Christian,” says Young. ”You just can’t; it’s impossible. You have to give up one of the two things. So I accepted that fact for the longest time until my mid-40s.”

Young grew up in spaces where he had to force his queer identity aside, but everything changed once his 20-year marriage with his ex-wife ended. Jun Love Young decided to live his life differently, leading him to his now-husband, Drew. Once he came out by presenting the love of his life, his church kicked him out. At the time, Young was the board president at a faith-based profit, and once he came out, Young was told, “You can no longer serve here. Because of our commitment to the Bible and commitment to God, you cannot be here.” 

Previously, he believed that the world had progressed past this, but this experience opened Jun’s eyes to the rampant and flourishing homophobia in faith spaces.

”I kinda became an activist almost overnight. I wanted to advocate for queer faith. There’s this very accepted assumption in the United States and across the world that faith and queerness don’t go together. I wanted to challenge that assumption and say, ‘Absolutely false and I’m living proof of that,’” says Young. Young found that the few queer faith organizations around mainly target adults. Understanding that LGBTQ youth are vulnerable, he noticed that LGBTQ youth of faith were being ignored while being in faith spaces that can be harmful and dangerous. Beloved Arise is now filling that space for queer youth of faith. 

Beloved Arise is empowering youth through their outreach work across social media platforms like Instagram and Tiktok where they have over 45,000 followers across both platforms. They also partner with places of worship and youth groups started by youth to foster space spaces for queer youth of faith that are “fully affirming and celebrate queerness.”

Beloved Arise also has a vast catalog of content including things like a musical album dedicated to LGBTQ youth, podcasts, and love letters by parents to remind youth how loved they are. Jun fully understands how scary religious trauma can be, which has led Beloved Arise to work on an initiative to provide trauma-informed mental health support that specifically targets religious trauma.

“One out of four queer youth say that faith is important or very important to them. If queer youth are saying that faith is important to them, shouldn’t we be supporting them then and celebrating that and letting people know it’s a fact?” Young says, referring to a Trevor Project survey conducted with 30,000 queer youth.

Combining both queer identity and religion isn’t an easy feat. While many are told to pick between the two, Beloved Arise proves you can celebrate your entire identity. “I’m here to tell young people you absolutely have the right to be who you are,” Young says.

One of the ways Beloved Arise celebrates queerness and faith as a whole is through their annual Queer Youth of Faith Day which closes out Pride month on the last day of June. “It’s a day where we just get to say, ‘We’re taking pride in queerness,’ and it’s also a day for us to take pride in all of who we are including our faith.’ It’s part of our identity; we shouldn’t negate it; we shouldn’t have to hide it; we shouldn’t have to be ashamed of it,” says Young.

Projects like Queer Youth of Faith Day are trailblazing a path for youth to find spaces to practice their faith while embracing their queer identity. Beloved Arise’s Youth Ambassador program reflects how powerful and crucial it is to create queer-centered faith spaces for LGBTQ youth that find their faith to be important to them.

“It’s been so amazing because we stepped back and created a platform for them to step forward. They got so many opportunities to talk on a national level about who they are and why their faith is important to them,” Young says about the five youth ambassadors of 2022-23. The Youth Ambassador program has been featured on Good Morning America and AP News among other media sources.

This has led other LGBTQ youth to stand up for their faith in spaces where are made to choose. “If Beloved Arise can convince even one young person that who they are is beloved not a mistake, not an abomination, not gross, not a sin so that they don’t take their own life, all of it is worth it. Underneath our work is the full awareness that we are fighting for life by changing perceptions by questioning assumptions,” he says.

Jun Love Young’s work through Beloved Arise is all for empowering queer youth of faith. “You have the power to set yourself free. You might not have to the power to change other people’s minds, but you do have the power to set yourself free. You don’t have to do it alone; there are other people trying to set themselves free, so come to Beloved Arise and meet those other people.

“I want every queer person of faith, especially our youth, to know they are more powerful than they think,” Young says, hoping to reach youth struggling with their religious beliefs in relation to their queer identity. Beloved Arise is still growing and cultivating its programs like Queer Youth of Faith Day and the Youth Ambassador Program, and they are working on bolstering its resources for other religions for youth of Jewish faith, Muslim faith, and Hindu faith. Beloved Arise is expanding, and we can’t wait to see what else they have cooking up.

Photo courtesy of Beloved Arise