Thirty years after surrendering her ordination for coming out as a lesbian, Rev. Martha Juillerat stood before Heartland Presbytery in Kansas City, Mo., on Feb. 25, and heard the words she’d waited decades for — an apology and the official restoration of her ministry.

“It just lifted the weight of the world off me to hear that,” says Juillerat. “I have been carrying the weight of that terrible time for 30 years, and to just hear that, I don’t have words for it to this day. I may never have words for it.”

Juillerat and her spouse, Rev. Tammy Lindahl, are now serving in Victoria as United Church of Canada ministers, but were both ordained in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) the 1980s, when the denomination was still barring “self-avowed, practicing homosexuals” from ordination. They met through a women-in-ministry support group and held a private holy union in 1988, with the only six people they were out to in attendance

After Juillerat and Lindahl publicly came out years later, they faced near-total isolation from their congregations. But even before that turning point, the Presbyterian Church had begun to examine how it treated queer clergy.

In 1993, the denomination launched a series of “dialogues” on homosexuality and invited LGBTQ clergy to share their stories. Only three ministers from the central states stepped forward with Juillerat and Lindahl among them.

“The church asked gay people to come out and join the conversation, yet did nothing to protect our status,” Lindahl recalls. This sparse head count spurred Juillerat to launch the

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