Coming Out Strong

First seen at YAR in September 2006

Hey Folks, I’m Katie Hochstedler, aka KatieHo. I’m young and Anabaptist and I’d like to think I’m radical. Who know’s who’s really radical and who’s not?

I spend my time living in Minneapolis and working for Brethren Mennonite Council for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Interests as a full-time volunteer. Right now, it is the best way I know that I can be Anabaptist. I’ve been here for almost two years and I’ll be done in August. Then I’m going to move all the way St. Paul and got to culinary school. Before that I was studying at Goshen College and before that I was growing up near Kalona, Iowa.

Something I find amusing about volunteering for BMC is that while I am working with an organization that is involved in both the Mennonite Church and the Church of the Brethren, I have been volunteering through the Lutheran Volunteer Corps and now the United Church of Christ Volunteer Ministries. Neither Mennonite Voluntary Service nor Brethren Voluntary Service will have BMC as a placement so other churches are supporting me.

Something I did recently was give a speech at a conference hosted by BMC and two other faith based lgbt organizations. I was supposed to be provocative as I was speaking to a group of lgbt and allied church people who were mostly older than me. I thought it was a pretty good speech so I’m going to put a link here so you can read it too. It might give you a better picture of me and what I do at work.

Hello folks, Welcome. You might already know, but we’re still setting up and working out the kinks around here. We’ll be up and running full blast soon with interesting posts from interesting people (maybe you).

Here is the blurb I wrote up so far for what this blog is all about:

Coming Out Strong is the blog of Brethren Mennonite Council for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (BMC) and is focused on the perspectives of youth and young adults who identify with the BMC community (Brethren or Mennonite related and lgbtqa).

For more about BMC, you should go to the mothership and look around a bit. Coming Out Strong is named after a video recently released by BMC. You can view most of the video online and you can also order dvd copies for $5 from the BMC office. For more on this, check out the Coming Out Strong video page.

More coming soon…

In the meantime, register for an account and start writing posts. Tell us a little about yourself and what you are passionate about. I’ll be starting my posting with a relevant piece or two that I’ve posted previously on another blog I frequent, young.anabaptistradicals.org.

Send any suggestions and questions to kaleidoscope@bmclgbt.org.

Katie Hochstedler

Kaleidoscope Coordinator, BMC Volunteer, administrator of Coming Out Strong