Dear Friends,

It is PRIDE month, celebrating the LGTBQ community, and I was asked to write an article for the Opinion Section of the San Diego Union Tribune.
I included how important it is for us to love, accept and stand up for ALL people, for we are all children of God.
Here is the article.

“I am the executive director of the Poway Interfaith Team (POINT), which has been a nonprofit since 2006.
POINT has individual and faith organization memberships, from all over the San Diego County. Members are people from many different faiths,
backgrounds and cultures. They are people of color, and people who are in the LGTBQ community. We are an interfaith organization which recognizes
the beauty and importance of a wide variety of people working, playing, and enjoying meals together. Our uniqueness is what benefits POINT and the
community as well as the programs we organize such as our annual Interfaith Thanksgiving Services, Interfaith Harmony Breakfasts, Interfaith Awareness Week,
and other events and symposiums co-hosted with different organizations. We all believe our differences and similarities are what make us strong,
compassionate, and effective. We honor each one’s strengths and help each other’s weaknesses.

Many POINT members show up to support faith groups that have been victimized by anti-Semitic actions, such as graffiti and/or harm to people’s lives.
We have formed prayer circles and prayer vigils for our Muslim, Sikh and Jewish brothers and sisters who were victimized in their homes and places of worship.
We have showed up at press conferences and marches for those who need our support. We are appalled by people who display such criminal behaviors.

I speak for myself and for many other people in POINT about how shocked and dismayed we are by the recent outlandish behaviors of people in political power
who are trying to de-evolve us as human beings. Human beings are not just White Anglo Saxon Protestant. Human beings are uniquely diverse in faith, culture,
ethnicity, race, nationality, gender and sexual preference. Those who are trying to stop diversity education, such as the Carlsbad council members and their
3-2 vote on flags at city hall, and the Texas leaders banning education on diversity equity and inclusion, is cruelly sending us back to the days of Nazi Germany.
Our children are suffering and do not feel safe in their skin, at home or at school. The White nationalist philosophy is infiltrating our country at all levels.

This has got to stop! We must open our eyes, and recognize this as an in-home terrorist activity.

As a New Thought minister, I believe in the unity of all life, and that the highest God and the innermost God is one God.
“Each person is an individualization of Spirit/God and that all people are individualizations of the one Spirit. God is Divinity made visible.”
(Quote from Dr. Ernest Holmes) Every man, woman, child regardless of faith, color, culture, ethnicity, transgender or gender identification are all
connected by the essence of God within. There is no other, there is only one (God) expressing in different forms.

I believe in a God of love, compassion, and nonjudgment. I believe God created us to be uniquely different for the purpose of our spiritual growth
to learn how to love and serve God, by loving and serving all people, all faiths, all nationalities, all cultures, all ethnicities, all races,
all genders and all people including the LGBTQ community. Love is love and who we choose to love is our choice on Earth. Let us judge not and condemn not; l
et us love with open hearts and minds. We are here to serve others, love others, find compassion and joy in life. It is time we devote our time to those values
and qualities.

Rev. Dr. Abigail Albert
Executive Director of the Poway Interfaith Team (POINT)”