| abstract | - Ralph Blair is an American psychotherapist and founder of The Homosexual Community Counseling Center in New York City. In 1975, he founded Evangelicals Concerned, Inc. (or EC), a U.S.-wide network of gay and lesbian evangelical Christians and friends. Blair founded EC to provide hope, encouragement, teaching and fellowship to gays and lesbians seeking to integrate their sexuality with a theologically sound and committed Christian faith. EC uses conferences, publications and other venues to spread the Good News of God's grace and peace in Christ to a people called to lives of grateful service. EC sponsors summer regional conferences, winter Bible study retreats, and fall preaching festivals. The latter focuses on contributions from some of the great people of faith who have gone before us: John Wesley, George McDonald, John Newton and J. Gresham Machen are some of those honored at past EC preaching festivals. Blair also publishes a quarterly review of literature published about religion and literature. For the Eastern and Western EC conferences, Blair invites as keynoters only evangelicals and only those evangelicals who support monogamous same-sex partnerships. These keynoters are invited only once, so that it cannot be said that EC retreads just a set few evangelicals.
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