On January 8, 2002, our church board endorsed our efforts to become a Welcoming Congregation. The UUA Welcoming Congregation program started in 1989, after it was acknowledged that ignorance and prejudice about LGBTs had led to their exclusion from UU churches. Since then, more than 360 UU churches and societies have been officially certified as Welcoming Congregations.

After more than a year of Welcoming Congregation workshops and events, we fulfulled the UUA's requirements, and pledged to be welcoming, supportive, and embracing of bisexuals, gays, lesbians, and transgenders. Finally, on May 18, 2003, our congregation ratified this resolution, voting for our church to become an official UUA Welcoming Congregation:

We, the Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica, having engaged in a process of self-examination and education in accordance with the Welcoming Congregation Guidelines of the Unitarian Universalist Association, do hereby declare ourselves to affirm bisexual, gay, lesbian, and transgender persons, to be responsive to their concerns, and to celebrate and be inclusive of bisexual, gay, lesbian, and transgender persons as members of our church community and our community at large; and we hereby request the Unitarian Universalist Association designate our Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica a Unitarian Universalist Welcoming Congregation.