About Cole Parke

L. Cole Parke is PRA's LGBTQ & Gender Justice Researcher, and has been working at the intersections of faith, gender, and sexuality as an activist, organizer, and scholar for the past ten years. Raised in a military family and a conservative Christian world, Cole studied theology at Texas Lutheran University, earned their Master’s in Conflict Transformation at Eastern Mennonite University’s Center for Justice & Peacebuilding, and traveled throughout the country advocating for LGBTQ justice at conservative religious schools and institutions as a part of the 2008 and 2012 Soulforce Equality Rides.

Seventeen Years of Tracking the World Congress of Families

By Cole Parke, on May 22, 2017

The World Congress of Families XI meeting in Budapest, Hungary is on May 25 -28. PRA first reported on the World Congress of Families (WCF) in 2000, noting its role within the coalition of Christian Right groups that was beginning Read More

Chechnya’s LGBTQ Assault and the Consequences of “Pro-Family” Contradictions

By Cole Parke, on May 10, 2017

Chechnya is a small, independent republic of the Russian Federation. (Map: Wikicommons CC BY-SA 3.0) In early April, reports of atrocities being committed against LGBTQ people began to emerge out of Chechnya, a small, independent republic of the Russian Federation Read More

Pro-LGBTQ Smokescreens for Anti-Muslim Attacks

By Cole Parke, on February 2, 2017

Two activists with placards at London’s vigil in memory of the victims of the Orlando gay nightclub terror attack. Photo: Alisdare Hickson via Flickr. In a press release issued after last year’s Pulse Nightclub massacre in Orlando, Florida, where a Read More

The Christian Right on the Gender Frontier: The Growing Anti-Trans Offensive

By Cole Parke, on October 5, 2016

Click here to download the article as a PDF. This article appears in the Summer 2016 edition of The Public Eye magazine. In June 2014, TIME magazine declared that the U.S. had reached the “transgender tipping point” and was venturing Read More

World Congress of Families Descends on Africa

By Cole Parke, on September 15, 2016

Poster for the African Regional Conference on Families scheduled to take place in Nairobi next week. Next week, the World Congress of Families (WCF) will host a regional conference in Nairobi, Kenya. For several years, PRA has tracked and reported Read More

The Christian Right’s Love Affair with Anti-Trans Feminists

By Cole Parke, on August 11, 2016

Photo by Mr.TinDC via Flickr. Intersectionality /ˌintərˈsekSHənˈalitē/ noun the linking of different systems of power and oppression (e.g. racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, ableism, etc.), which can occur at different levels—individual, interpersonal, family, community, and institutional. Since American professor Kimberlé Read More

Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Political Aspirations

By Cole Parke, on July 25, 2016

For three days last month, from June 28-30, Pastor Rick Warren lectured a packed, 3,000 seat auditorium on Saddleback Church’s 120-acre main campus in Orange County, California, while hundreds more tuned in via livestream from all over the world. All Read More

The Christian Right’s Favorite New Target: North Carolina Isn’t Alone

By Cole Parke, on March 29, 2016

A slate of anti-LGBTQ laws and policies is sweeping across the country with transgender and gender-nonconforming people squarely in the crosshairs. While violence and oppression continue to wreak havoc on the lives and livelihoods of trans people, as of this Read More

Franklin Graham: Falwell Prodigy, Putin Lover, and Trump Fan

By Cole Parke, on January 7, 2016

This week, Franklin Graham—son of famed evangelical Billy Graham and current president of both the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) and Samaritan’s Purse—begins a 50-state tour of the United States. The “Decision America Tour” will feature prayer rallies across the Read More

Alliance Defending Freedom: the Right-Wing Lawyers Fueling Transphobia in Schools

By Cole Parke, on December 18, 2015

Co-authored by Gabriel Joffe In the past year—a year in which Caitlyn Jenner graced the cover of Vanity Fair and Raffi Freedman-Gurspan became the first openly transgender White House staffer—at least 23 transgender people have been killed in the United Read More

Author Archives: Cole Parke