Plaintiffs in the landmark Supreme Court case that made same-sex marriage legal in the U.S. have created a new scholarship for LGBT Catholic students at the University of Louisville.
The Bourke DeLeon Endowed LGBT Catholic Scholarship, created by Greg Bourke and Michael DeLeon, will be awarded yearly.
“For a lot of LGBTQ people, they feel like when they come out they have to lose their faith identity," said Lisa Gunterman, director of the Belknap Campus LGBT Center.
"And I think Greg and Michael are such a good example that you can be both a person of faith and proud of your LGBTQ identity.”
Preference will be given to LGBTQ students who are graduates of Catholic high schools or LGBTQ U of L students who are Catholic.
“This scholarship is so unique, if not one-of-a-kind because it is both administered by a university foundation and also affirms LGBT Catholics so as to not force them to separate those identities,” Burke said in a news release announcing the scholarship.
He said he hopes the scholarship sends a positive message to LGBTQ people of faith.
“We wanted to make it known, and to express to other people, that they also do not have to make choices in their life between religion or being true to themselves and their gender or sexual identity,” said Bourke.
The first scholarship will be awarded this May.
