VISION

Participation in communities celebrating the creative spirit from within each heart and honoring the blessings of diversity in gender expression, sexual orientation, ethnicity and race.

MISSION  

Serve as a resource with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning people to promote community reconciliation and enlarge the scope of spiritual expression within organized communities, as the Source of Life is experienced daily and in connection while caring for neighbor as self.  


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

12/16/2011

Rainbow Community Cares Denounces Advertisement Supporting Violence Against LGBTQ People

Rainbow Community Cares (RCCares) denounces the hate speech presented on a bill board posted by Pro Shots, a North Carolina Shooting Range, outside Winston-Salem, North Carolina.  The bill board features a rifle and target with the words, “Pansies Converted Daily,” written on it.  This advertisement sends a threatening message of violence and fear to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people.  This attempt to make an act of violence a common, acceptable behavior against members of the community must be denounced as an attack on our community.  As a religious organization in North Carolina, RCCares adds our voice to the public outcry against the derogatory and threatening message this billboard portrays and is encouraged that it is being taken down.

Pro Shots’ advertisement supports a culture of violence against LGBTQ people at a time when violence against LGBTQ people remains a pervasive problem.  According to the recent report Hate Violence Against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and HIV-Affected Communities in the United States in 2010 by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP), there was a 13% increase in reports of anti-LGBTQH violence between 2009 and 2010.  RCCares, in coalition with people and organizations across our state and country, is working to break down the walls of hostility erected to divide people in order to build a stronger, healthier community where all can live and thrive in dignity without fear of being targeted by hate violence.

RCCares offers workshops to equip participants with tools needed to make all of our communities safer by working together with LGBTQ community leaders, allied organizations and religious organizations to create programs and campaigns to reduce anti-LGBTQ violence and expand resources to respond to hate violence in our communities.  To learn more, visit: www.rccares.org

This release is a product of Rainbow Community Cares, a church organized to address community reconciliation by meeting the need to increase resources enhancing the safety, power and supportive services of the LGBTQ community amidst a climate of religious intolerance. RCCares is a member of the Church Within A Church Movement and is a member of the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP).