Making sacred worth material.
God’s love is unconditional and so is ours.
Our Message is Clear.
Our Co-Founders
Kevin brings 15+ years of university level teaching, research, activism, and public policy leadership to Hope House. He is a nationally recognized scholar, author, public speaker, consultant, and associate professor of education policy and leadership at University of Wisconsin Madison. Kevin challenges his students, colleagues, and community to think about how policy and power intersect to animate the human experience, and what it takes to galvanize around what we do as citizens to ensure everyone in our society can thrive. Kevin serves as the President of the Lotus Foundation for Hope and Freedom.
Sheldon brings 10+ years of executive leadership, institution building, and community impact to Hope House as its CEO. He’s an internationally certified mediator and facilitator, and is oftentimes called on as both a strategic and spiritual advisor and coach to executive level leaders navigating multi-dimensional organizational conflicts and crisis. Sheldon’s approach to ministry and to leadership is to be a catalyst for leaders dedicated to making a positive impact in the world. He is the host of The Dear God Podcast and Tea Time and is the founder of the Lotus Foundation for Hope and Freedom.
Our Mission
Hope House is a catalyst for bringing LGBTQIA+ liberation into being through organizing, mobilizing, institution building, advocacy, and public policy. Rooted in a spiritual mission, we believe it is the God given right of every human on the planet to live and love freely, without shame or fear of social and religious persecution, exile, or marginalization. We fight for:
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The right to full belonging in family, community, and any faith tradition, without condition, and equal standing in the social and civic institutions that shape everyday life.
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The right to live free from violence and harassment — online and offline, including targeted digital harassment and doxxing; to access healthcare, including gender-affirming and reproductive care, without obstruction; to protection under hate crime law; and to safety in public spaces, workplaces, schools, and homes. This includes the specific right of LGBTQIA+ youth to safety in schools, freedom from conversion therapy, and access to affirming healthcare.
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The right to vote, run for office, and be represented at every level of government; protection under civil rights law equal to any other protected class, regardless of immigration status; and a genuine seat at the table in policymaking that affects LGBTQIA+ lives.
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The right to employment and fair wages without discrimination; to housing without discrimination; to access capital and build a business; and to build and pass on generational wealth, on the same terms as anyone else.
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The right to self-determination — to define one's own identity, make decisions about one's own body, family, and future, and lead the movements and institutions that serve one's own community, rather than be led on its behalf.
Statement of Human Rights
We affirm what should never have required affirming: that every person carries inherent, unconditional worth, and that no institution — religious or secular — has the right to exile, diminish, or endanger a human life on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression. Where that exile has occurred in the name of faith, we name it as a betrayal of faith, not an expression of it. Hope House exists to correct it.
This is not only a spiritual claim. It is a material one. LGBTQIA+ people deserve what every community deserves and has had to fight for: safety, power, wealth, belonging, and the right to determine our own lives. This is our fight for that, waged in the same tradition as every other community that has organized to secure it.