Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration in Dallas hosted a photo shoot for the NO H8 campaign:
Throughout the past few years, one of the most frequently requested cities has always been Dallas. We’ve traveled in and around Texas before, hosting open photo shoots at Texas A&M in College Station and on Harvey Milk Day in Austin – but it wasn’t until this year that Dallas finally made it onto the schedule. Our friend Deb Boopsingh at the Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration and Vision Forums reached out earlier this year, hoping to bring the NOH8 Campaign to Dallas for the first time and use the opportunity to create a unique NOH8 event to bring her community together. Several months later, we’d say Deb accomplished her goal!
The Dallas photo shoot was the largest NOH8 photo shoot to date with well over 800 people showing up at the event to show their support. Over 300 of those supporters lined up hours in advance, eager to finally be able to participate in an official photo shoot.
Ellen Dingwall, Director of Congregational Development for the church writes:
This past October, The Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration stepped out in faith to support the relatively new California based NO H8 campaign, which was started to fight against discrimination, hatred and bullying. A ministry of the church, The Vision Forum, was the sponsoring group and one of The Vision Forum board members, Deborah Boopsingh, was responsible for shepherding the event from the beginning through to its record breaking conclusion late on a beautiful fall Sunday evening here at the church.
NO H8 was started in California by two talented young men who were very disturbed by Proposition 8 – the proposition which overturned the marriage equality act of that state. One of the young men, Adam Bouska, is a gifted celebrity photographer and he and his partner decided to start a website and blog featuring pictures of folk with the NO H8 logo tattooed on their cheeks and duct tape placed across their mouths. Soon, celebrities were lining up to support this campaign and getting their pictures taken for Adam and his crew to post on the website. Since the inception of the NO H8 campaign a few short years ago, Adam has taken thousands of pictures all over the world. The Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration was their first event at a church, their first “shoot” in Dallas, TX. and broke the record for the most pictures taken at any single event.
The Vision Forum at Transfiguration was founded several years with a mission to raise awareness of the human condition and to support justice, peace and equality among all people. If we truly strive to live our baptismal promise to Seek and Serve Christ in All Persons, we can do no less than bring all the issues of discrimination, injustice and inequality to the attention of people who live and work in our community with the hope that their minds and hearts will be changed. We are so proud of the work The Vision Forum has done and continues to do for Transfiguration. The Vision Forum brought Archbishop Desmond Tutu to Dallas in 2006, Lou Gossett Jr. and his anti-racism campaign in 2009, the Pulitzer Prize winning author, Jon Meacham in 2010 and The NO H8 campaign in 2011. We look forward to continuing to bring God’s message of unconditional love and reconciliation to our broken and hurting world.
Ellen Dingwall
Director of Congregational Development
The Episcopal Church of the Transfiguration
Dallas, Texas