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FEBRUARY 4, 2011
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Those Who Walk
with Integrity
Andy McQuery’s mission to usher welcoming
ways to Oregon’s LGBTQ community,
Episcopal Church
B Y RYAN J. P R A D O
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Beth .Mirri I aw
Beth A. Allen, founding partner: winner of the Oregon
Gay & Lesbian Law Association (OGALLA) Silver
Jubilee Award; OGALLA Award of Merit; and the Basic
Rights Oregon Superhero Award. Selected as a 2010
Oregon Super Lawyer. Founding member of the
BRO Legal Group; author of Same-Sex M arriage: a
Conflicts o f Law Analysis for Oregon; frequent local,
state and national speaker on marriage equality.
The global Anglican Communion has been
nothing if not highly visible, and the topic of
great debate within the religious community
during the past decade. Just last month, boycotts
against a church conference of primates—re­
gional leaders of the Anglican Church—high­
lighted a growing tension between the Commu­
nion (an international association of Anglican
churches) and the U.S. Episcopal Church. Under
protest was the U.S. Episcopal Church’s ordina­
tion of gay bishops and blessing of same-sex cou­
ples, as well as even the presence of the U.S.
Episcopal Church’s Presiding Bishop Katharine
Jefferts Schori at the conference.
The rift has resonated in all areas of the Com­
munion—even to Oregon, where the welcoming
nature of the U.S. Episcopal Church, through the
work of Integrity USA’s Portland Chapter, is
benefiting from the efforts of Andy McQuery.
In 2008, McQuery became a member of In­
tegrity USA—a nonprofit organization of LG-
BTQ_Episcopalians and straight friends leading
the grassroots effort for the full inclusion of LG-
BTQ_persons in the Episcopal Church and equal
access to its rites. After having worked for two
years as an office manager for Lambda Legal in
Manhattan, McQuery came to Portland with a
personal moral dilemma involving his Christian
beliefs, the wobbly political sentiment facing the
LGBTQ_community and the reconciling of the
two for the education and benefit of others.
“It was just driven home that anti-gay senti­
ment is almost exclusively religious in nature,”
says McQuery of his time at Lambda. “The legal
arguments are important, but you’ve got to fight
“ It’s a terrible thing to think God
hates you, and it is a pernicious
lie that sexual orientation can be
changed through prayer. What Chris­
tian teaches or believes that if you
just pray hard enough, you can grow
taller or change your hair color? God
doesn’t ‘cure’ homosexuality be­
cause it isn’t a disease. But if you’re
taught that it is, the failure to achieve
heterosexuality is devastating."
—ANDY MCQUERY
in the court of public opinion, too, and that
means engaging with religious communities. The
default assumption, both in and out of the church,
is that Christians are anti-gay or that queer peo­
ple are anti-religion, and that is increasingly not
the case.”
The Portland Chapter of Integrity, where Mc­
Query’s role as convener couples with an unoffi­
cial role as organizer for the rest of the Oregon
diocese, is relatively new. As the chair of the
Portland Chapter’s board of directors, McQuery
leads a group who decide how Integrity’s minis­
try will manifest itself in Oregon.
On January 12, McQuery and Integrity orga­
nized the second annual local celebration of the
Mass for St. Aelred at the St. Stephen’s Episcopal
Church. The sermon was delivered by the Rever-
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