The fund dovetails with one of the key priorities of Fordham’s recent fundraising campaign, Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student, with its emphasis on equity and inclusion as well as the wellness of every student. Here are five examples of the numerous activities it has made possible:

No. 1: Ignatian Q.

With support from the fund, 10 Fordham students traveled to St. Louis University in April for this annual conference organized by the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities to promote community and spirituality among LGBTQ students. (Fordham hosted Ignatian Q in 2023 with support from the wellbeing fund.) In the words of one Fordham graduate student who attended, Tatum Allen, FCLC ’24, “it offered me a space to feel less alone as a queer person of faith.”

No. 2: Students Together for Acceptance, Respect, and Support (STARS).

Piloted last year by professors and students in the psychology department and the Graduate School of Social Service, this network brings Fordham students together with local high school students seeking to engage with LGBTQ peers, find support, and build community. Two of the high schoolers also took part in a year-long research project on LGBTQ experiences in school and presented their research at the Eastern Psychological Association Conference in Philadelphia.

No. 3: Oral History Project with SAGE Center Bronx.

Last year, undergraduate students in a communications class—titled Photography, Identity, Power—worked with residents of the SAGE center, a community center for LGBTQ seniors, to produce a digital exhibition of their photography that includes an oral history element. Students in an art class, Visual Justice, later met with the seniors and made portrait photographs of them.

No. 4: Queer Prayer Book.

The book Queer Prayer at Fordham was developed in 2023 and distributed at Ignatian Q when it was held at the University. 

No. 5: NYC Interfaith Pilgrimage/Retreat

This daylong retreat at the Lincoln Center campus, held in February, centered on art as a way to explore the intersection between spirituality and queerness. About two dozen students and alumni gathered for morning presentations, toured sites important to the LGBTQ community in Greenwich Village, and reconvened on campus to produce their own art. 

No. 6: Urban Plunge and Global Outreach Scholarships.

With support from the wellbeing fund, LGBTQ students received scholarships to take part in Urban Plunge and Global Outreach, two programs of the Center for Community Engaged Learning.

Sources: Fordham Campus Ministry, Center for Community Engaged Learning 

His story is now on display at Quinn Library at Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus in a new exhibit “Have a Heart: Friendship and Activism of Jesùs Lebròn.” Lebròn donated his papers, artifacts, and more to the Bronx County Historical Society Research Library, where the exhibit was first displayed. It was curated by his friend and fellow activist Brendan Fay, as well as Steven Payne, director of the Bronx County Historical Society, who received his Ph.D. at Fordham in 2019.

Professor Karina Hogan, who helped bring the exhibit to Fordham, saw it first at Bronx Community College and said seeing it and speaking to Lebròn and Fay afterwards had a huge impact on her and the development of her Religion in NYC course.

“It was transformative for me,” she said. “I thought, ‘Oh it would be so cool to try to get the exhibit here because it’s so related to what I was teaching in my class.’”

Fighting Against the Defense of Marriage Act

The exhibit tells the story of Lebròn, who was born in the South Bronx, and how his work impacted LGBTQ rights in the U.S. In 1985, he became the manager of the Oscar Wilde Memorial Bookshop in Greenwich Village in Manhattan, which was the first to sell LGBTQ-themed books. It was there that he met Fay, who became a friend and fellow activist in fighting for LGBTQ+ rights.

Lebròn got involved locally, starting Gay & Lesbian Advocates for Change, the first group in New York to ask political candidates about their stance on gay marriage. Following the passage of the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, Lebròn co-founded an organization called Marriage Equality, which grew to more than 40,000 members across various states, and organized educational and political campaigns. He led all of these efforts despite being diagnosed in 1991 with AIDS, which he’s lived with ever since.

The Civil Marriage Trail

In 2003, Lebròn and Fay started the Civil Marriage Trail Project, which helped LGBTQ couples travel to Canada—and eventually Massachusetts and Connecticut—to marry where it was legal. One of the couples who used the trail was Edie Windsor and Thea Spyer. After Spyer died in 2009, Windsor’s legal efforts for her wife’s estate traveled to the Supreme Court, which ruled in her favor in United States v. Windsor in 2013. That case laid the groundwork for Obergefell v. Hodges two years later which legalized marriage equality.

Local History, National Impact

Hogan said that she hopes the exhibit will help students and community members understand the connections between local history and national impact.

“We owe a lot to these two guys, especially to Jesùs Lebròn, who was this kid who came up out of poverty in the South Bronx,” she said. “They had such a huge impact on American history and nobody even knows about it.”

The exhibit was opened at the Ignatian Q conference and will be on display at the library through the end of June.

Less visibly, the event also showed the power of philanthropy. Hosting Ignatian Q is just one thing made possible by a fund that is creating new momentum around the University for initiatives that support lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer or questioning students, plus other sexual and gender minorities.

Founded last spring, the LGBTQ+ Student Wellbeing Fund is supporting everything from pastoral care to academic events and the development of classes reflecting LGBTQ+ themes—with the promise of more initiatives to come.

“I’m really encouraged and optimistic about the kind of response the fund has gotten, not only from LGBT members of the Fordham family but also straight members of our family who are deeply committed to issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion,” said Joan Garry, FCRH ’79, a former executive director of the LGBTQ+ advocacy group GLAAD and nationally recognized activist who serves on the Fordham University President’s Council executive committee.

Garry and her wife kick-started the fund last year by leading a Fordham Giving Day campaign for it and providing a $50,000 matching gift.

The need is plain, Garry said: The number of students who identify as other than heterosexual or cisgender is growing “off the charts.” These students “have all kind of struggles every day,” from self-acceptance to harassment to bullying, and suffer disproportionately from anxiety and depression, she said.

The fund is also needed because of a political climate that has become “downright terrifying,” she said, pointing to the Human Rights Campaign’s June 6 declaration of a “state of emergency” for LGBTQ+ people due to laws being enacted around the country.

By helping to foster a more inclusive campus community, the fund dovetails with a key priority of the University’s $350 million fundraising campaign, Cura Personalis | For Every Fordham Student.

Impact of the Wellbeing Fund

In addition to providing critical support to the Ignatian Q conference, the Wellbeing Fund has supported Campus Ministry programs including Queer Spirit Community and the Prism Retreat, as well as the publication of a Queer Prayer at Fordham booklet distributed at Ignatian Q, said Joan Cavanagh, Ph.D., senior director for spirituality and solidarity at Fordham.

The fund has also supported Center for Community Engaged Learning initiatives including scholarships that helped LGBTQ+ students take part in Fordham’s Global Outreach and Urban Plunge programs, a panel discussion on LGBTQ+ history, and grants for faculty. Co-sponsored by the Office of the Chief Diversity Officer, the grants support innovative classroom projects related to LGBTQ+ history and advocacy.

The Wellbeing Fund has “ignited an understanding that there is so much to do,” Garry said. “I am excited about the forward motion the fund is creating to educate, drive awareness, and galvanize support.”

Learn more about the uses of the LGBTQ+ Student Wellbeing Fund and make a gift.

Learn about Queer Spirit Community, the Prism Retreat, and other Campus Ministry resources for LGBTQ+ students.

See related story: Pope Francis Sends Warm Letter of Support for LGBTQ+ Conference at Fordham

The messages conveyed during keynote speeches, breakout sessions, a Mass, and other events made for a conference that was, in the words of one organizer, “amazing.”

“I don’t even know how to describe it. Everyone was crying. It was more than I could have ever hoped for,” said Ben Reilly, a senior at Fordham College at Rose Hill and chair of the Ignatian Q Planning Committee. “It seems to have breathed life into the conversation around LGBT life on campus and LGBT student community, and the importance of community both at Fordham and across our AJCU family.”

Speakers were unsparing in describing the obstacles to LGBTQ+ equality. The weekend began with a keynote at the Church of St. Paul the Apostle, next to the Lincoln Center campus, by Bryan Massingale, S.T.D., a gay Catholic priest and the James and Nancy Buckman Chair in Applied Christian Ethics at Fordham.

He spoke of the necessity of dreaming as a step toward creating a just society in which people no longer face intolerance and violence because of gender identity or gender expression.

“That dream is under attack—blatant attack, disturbing attack,” he said, citing laws against “life-saving, gender-affirming medical care” and discussion of LGBTQ topics in schools, among other things. “There are serious efforts underway,” he said, “to create a world in which we don’t exist.”

He decried the idea that “God does not love us and we are not worthy,” saying “we have to dream of a world and a church where that lie is put to rest.” During his address, he prompted everyone in the pews to turn to one another and give affirmations including “you are loved” and “you are sacred.”

Visibility, Understanding, Acceptance

Saturday’s keynote was delivered at the Rose Hill campus by Joan Garry, FCRH ’79, a nationally recognized LGBTQ activist and former executive director of the gay rights organization GLAAD.

“The LGBTQ movement for equality needs all of you—badly,” said Garry, who serves on the executive committee of the President’s Council at Fordham. She urged the students to be activists who foster greater inclusivity at their colleges and universities and provide a model for other LGBTQ students who may be struggling.

“Visibility drives understanding, and understanding drives acceptance,” she said. “When you are ‘out,’ you model authenticity and honesty, and you show people the way. We illustrate that one does not have to be controlled by the expectations of others, and do you know how big that is? That’s a superpower.”

The event was supported by Campus Ministry and the Office of Mission Integration and Ministry. Father Massingale celebrated Mass at the Lincoln Center campus on Sunday, and for some students, it was their first time attending Mass since coming out, Reilly said.

Also on Sunday, in a keynote at the Lincoln Center campus, James Martin, S.J., the prominent author and editor at large at America magazine, said the openness of more and more LGBTQ people in parishes and dioceses ensures that the Catholic Church will continue to become more open to them.

“As more and more people are coming out, more and more bishops have nieces and nephews who are openly gay. That just changes them,” he said. “And that’s not going to stop.”