It was both a privilege and honor for me to attend the recent "Creating Change" Conference held right here in San Diego during the month of November. I was there in behalf of Dignity/USA and Dignity/San Diego through the gracious assistance of both.

It was, at times, a bit overpowering to be in the midst of so many remarkable people who are in charge of so many wonderful projects and organizations, working behalf of lgbt communities. And this was a working conference. In fact this was the best-attended conference in the 10 years it has been held.

In 1987 the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force first sponsored this unique conference. It has since become a major vehicle for LGBT leaders from across the nation to gather and share ideas and hopes and frustrations, and to support one another in our noble efforts to bring about and to create change.

In addition to the two religious/spirituality workshops, a special three hour roundtable discussion of glbt religious leaders and volunteers, & 3 plenary sessions I had the opportunity to network with a lot of individuals. You can take great comfort in knowing that Dignity has tremendous name recognition the in the glbt community.

A couple of very significant decisions were made at this conference that is of direct interest to us as a religious/spiritual community. It was agreed that at the next Creating Change Conference next year (to be held in Pennsylvania) there will be a full one day institute devoted to glbt religious & spiritual issues. The second most important thing to happen at this conference, in my opinion, was the creation of a Spirituality Caucus Statement of Values. This was the direct result of the three-hour roundtable discussion in particular and the workshops in general.

That statement is reprinted on the next page. It is the first time ever that such a statement has been attempted. It sets the tone for the importance of what we are doing to help create change in our society and in our churches, synagogues, and other places of worship. It is all the more remarkable when you realize that this statement represents a very diverse religious and spiritual collective of people.