Axis Mundy

Axis Mundi.

On a bright winter morning in 2015, outside the same courthouse where Martin Luther King, Jr. was imprisoned for his civil rights activism in 1967, ministers from

Birmingham's Unitarian Universalist Church conducted wedding ceremonies for gay and lesbian couples

who had just won the legal right to get married.

My phone name is Lorne Jensen Gussard.

And I'm a retired Unitarian Universalist Minister.

I was born in Copenhagen, Denmark. I am bringing that up because otherwise people may

sit there and wonder where on earth is she from?

Though she was born in Denmark, Reverend Brissart had lived in Alabama long enough to temper her expectations when it came to state-sanctioned same-sex marriage.

I thought the most we could hope for was a service of union kind of thing, a legal thing, you know, at least.

But I never thought this would happen.

But in 2015, it did happen.

And for the congregation at the Birmingham Unitarian Universalist Church, it was a big deal.

Their LGBTQ members now had access to a vital right, a right that would protect and honor their relationships.

It was just the latest civil rights struggle the church had engaged in,

there, in the buckle of the Bible Belt,

as religious blue dots in a red state. Welcome to Red State Religions, a limited series podcast exploring liberal religion in conservative spaces.

My name is Gillian Frank. In this series, we're exploring the many perforations in the so-called Bible Belt.

The term Bible Belt conjures images of old-time religion and conservative Christianity.

But just like any other belt, this label fails to contain the excesses it surrounds.

In Bible Belt states, known for electing self-proclaimed religious and conservative politicians,

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