On September 3rd, Dignity Memorial is hosting a very unique event for the Affirming Leaders Network and all LGBTQ+ affirming clergy and funeral Celebrants – should you be in the room with us? Invitation & details below.

Affirming Deathcare Matters

A funeral, memorial, celebration of life, remembrance, homegoing, tribute service, or end-of-life ceremony can be one of the most meaningful parts of a family’s grief journey.

• *See footnote below on use of the word “family”

Whatever we call an end of life ceremony, the person composing, choreographing, and leading it creates the atmosphere. They set the tone. They choose the language. They help shape the stories that are told, the identities that are honored, and the space that is created for those who are grieving. They have enormous influence over how the experience feels for the loved ones who gather – not only in the moment, but in the lasting memory of that moment and how it fits into their grief journey.

Their presence has an impact.

When that person understands the decedent and the family, the ceremony can feel deeply personal and authentic.

When they do not, the experience can become something very different.

Through my work in deathcare, my years serving secular and LGBTQ+ communities, and my work developing the Identity Affirming Deathcare Directives resource, i have heard many stories from people who felt that a loved one’s funeral was weakened—or even, in their words, “ruined”—because the person leading the ceremony did not truly understand or respect the family’s identity, values, or wishes.

Sometimes:

• a transgender person was deadnamed
• a family felt they had to ask certain loved ones not to hold hands at the funeral home
• a life partner was disregarded or trivialized by funeral home staff
• the officiant had little understanding of the cultural, spiritual, or community of the family they were serving.
• religious language or practices disregarded a loved one’s history of religious trauma, causing additional distress at an already vulnerable time.

These experiences are painful, but they are also preventable. Better relationships, broader professional networks, thoughtful questions, and greater competency can help us do better.

And they reinforce an important point: Who leads the ceremony matters—and who a funeral professional knows influences the choices a family is offered.

Funeral directors are often asked to make the connection

Families arranging a funeral frequently ask the funeral home a simple question:

“Do you know someone who can lead the service?”

Families are always free to seek out their own clergy member or Celebrant, and some do—researching websites, credentials, experience, and reviews just as they might when choosing a funeral provider. Others, in the unfamiliar and time-sensitive days after a death, may not know where to look and naturally turn to the funeral director for guidance.

Funeral directors naturally tend to recommend clergy members and celebrants they already know.

That makes sense.

A funeral professional has a duty of care to the families they serve. Recommending someone to lead a ceremony means placing a high degree of trust in that person. Their professionalism, sensitivity, and conduct can reflect on the funeral director and funeral home that made the recommendation. Funeral directors want to know that the officiant will arrive on time, communicate professionally, treat the family well, and conduct a meaningful service.

Relationships, experience, and trust do indeed matter. But relying exclusively on what we might jokingly call the “Reverend Rolodex”—the familiar clergy members a funeral home has worked with for years—can unintentionally create gaps.

If a funeral home’s network includes only a narrow range of clergy members and celebrants, the choices available to families may also be narrow.

That can be particularly significant for LGBTQ+ people, Atheists, Humanists, Pagans, Wiccans, members of minority religious traditions, people who are spiritual but not religious, and families whose Religious, Secular, or Spiritual Identity does not fit easily within familiar categories.

A funeral director can’t recommend someone they don’t even know exists.

That is why visibility matters.

Visibility is also part of affirming care

For LGBTQ+ people, these connections matter for another reason. LGBTQ+ people represent every Religious, Secular, and Spiritual Identity, and the experience of being marginalized in one area of life can influence how safe a person feels disclosing another part of who they are.

First, discrimination in deathcare does happen. However, not every inequity in deathcare takes the form of overt discrimination. Sometimes it is subtler: an identity is minimized, a relationship is misunderstood, chosen family is treated as secondary, pronouns are handled carelessly, or assumptions are made about identity or about what a person or their loved ones do or should believe.

Sometimes people recloset—choosing not to disclose parts of their identity that they may otherwise live openly.

LGBTQ+ older adults in particular may recloset when entering unfamiliar care environments because they do not know how their identity will be received. A funeral arrangement conference can create that same uncertainty – at a very difficult time. Families may be meeting a funeral professional for the first time during one of the most vulnerable moments of their lives, without knowing whether their relationships, identities, traditions, or beliefs will be understood.

Visible symbols of welcome (think rainbow sticker on the door) and inclusive diversity statements can be meaningful signals, but they are only the beginning. Ultimately, it is our actions and relationships that demonstrate who we truly are and how prepared we are to serve.

One practical way to demonstrate an authentic commitment to serving LGBTQ+ people is to build relationships with the diverse community leaders who already serve them.

That means knowing LGBTQ+ affirming clergy and Celebrants of diverse perspectives.

A broader professional network gives the funeral director more than a longer referral list. It gives families more opportunities to say, “Yes. That person understands us.”

Our communities need a broader clergy network

The people and communities we serve rely on many kinds of Religious, Secular, and Spiritual Identity (RSSI) leaders: ministers; pastors; rabbis; imams; Humanist Celebrants, Chaplains, and community leaders; funeral Celebrants; Unitarian Universalist clergy; Pagan and Wiccan priests and priestesses; coven leaders; secular officiants; spiritual leaders; and others who provide inner-life support and meaningful leadership during significant moments in people’s lives.

What loved ones need and expect from an end-of-life ceremony varies widely – there’s no “one script fits all” for end of life services.

Many families don’t even realize how much personalization is available. I regularly meet people in preplanning who, for example, don’t know that a viewing and funeral service can take place with the body present before cremation.

When RSSI leaders have a broad understanding of the possibilities, they are better positioned to help people ask informed questions rather than unintentionally narrowing their choices.

Grief and the role of ceremony in that journey is so personal. Some people want ritual. Others want storytelling. Some want prayer. Some specifically do not. Some want a highly traditional ceremony, while others want something entirely individualized. While a skilled, experienced professional funeral Celebrant can balance and mix these as appropriate for each individual ceremony, not every celebrant or clergy member can.

The goal is not to decide which approach is best; rather, it’s to make sure families have access to someone who can authentically serve their needs.

That requires funeral homes and Funeral Directors to develop relationships with a broader spectrum of community Religious, Secular, and Spiritual Identity community leaders, funeral Celebrants, and clergy.

It also requires those leaders to make themselves visible and available.

Competency matters as much as availability

Being willing to serve a family is important, but willingness alone is not always enough. I often talk about the difference between being affirming and being identity-educated. Being affirming means genuinely welcoming people; being identity-educated means developing a deeper understanding of the needs and lived experiences of a particular community.

Someone working with LGBTQ+ families should understand the importance of names, pronouns, chosen family, relationships, and identity — while also recognizing that some people may hesitate to disclose those things until they have reason to believe they will be respected.

Someone serving an Atheist or Humanist family should be able to conduct an entirely secular ceremony without inserting religious language – which requires understanding and avoiding words, symbols, and readings that can evoke religion, compound existing religious trauma, and undermine the grief journey of secular grievers.

Someone serving a Pagan, Wiccan, or other minority spiritual community should be prepared to learn what rituals, traditions, sacred spaces, symbols, or practices are meaningful to that particular person and family—and to ask informed questions about how they can be incorporated into the chosen venue. I attended a beautiful Wiccan funeral last year in which a High Priest and High Priestess led the ceremony from a central altar, honoring Todd’s journey through Summerland. Participants and quarter callers addressed the four cardinal directions as part of casting a sacred circle and invoking the elemental forces of nature. It was unmistakably his funeral, rooted in the worldview of the person being remembered and the community grieving him. (Read my story of Todd’s funeral here).

No clergy member or funeral Celebrant is expected to know everything about every identity.

Competency does not mean memorizing checklists. It does require basic understanding of diverse perspectives, cultures, and traditions; however, it primarily requires knowing how to actively listen — asking rather than assuming and recognizing that the loved ones are the authority on what is meaningful to them.

The responsibility of the person leading the ceremony is not to impose meaning, but to help the family express it.

Deathcare itself is evolving

There is another reason these relationships between funeral homes, Funeral Directors, and RSSI leaders and funeral Celebrants are increasingly important: families have more choices than ever before.

Traditional burial and cremation remain important options, but families may also be considering green or natural burial, alkaline hydrolysis or water cremation, burial at sea, creative cremation memorialization, scattering options, cemetery alternatives, personalized celebrations of life, and other emerging approaches.

Community leaders are often among the first people families turn to when they are navigating difficult decisions.

When clergy members and celebrants understand the range of deathcare options available, they are better equipped to support the people they serve.

And when funeral professionals know RSSI community leaders representing a broad range of identities, traditions, and perspectives, they are better equipped to connect families with the right person when that need arises.

Those relationships benefit everyone.

Building the connections before they are needed

Funeral directors need a network of clergy and Celebrants they can trust. Families need access to someone who can lead a ceremony that authentically reflects who they are. And community clergy and Celebrants need funeral professionals to know who they are, whom they are equipped to serve, and how to reach them.

Those connections are best built before a family needs them.

That is one of the goals of the September Affirming Leaders Network event.

The Affirming Leaders Network, hosted by The Hearth Church, is a support network for LGBTQ+ affirming religious clergy in Central Florida. Its members create space for peer support, shared learning, and conversation about how religious communities can better welcome and support LGBTQ+ people.

For its September meeting, ALN is extending that table by partnering with Dignity Memorial and inviting LGBTQ+ affirming funeral Celebrants to join the conversation.

This gives the gathering a broader purpose: LGBTQ+ affirming clergy from diverse religious traditions and funeral Celebrants from Religious, Secular, and Spiritual perspectives coming together around a responsibility they share—helping ensure that people can be authentically honored at the end of life.

The gathering may also provide an opportunity for LGBTQ+ affirming clergy who have not yet discovered ALN to connect with colleagues and learn more about its network and mission.

I will lead a discussion of traditional, alternative, and emerging deathcare choices, including burial, cremation, green and natural burial, alkaline hydrolysis or water cremation, creative cremation and memorialization possibilities, and other options that community leaders may encounter as they support individuals and families.

Managing Funeral Director Jason Moody will offer another important perspective: how funeral homes identify clergy members and Celebrants to serve families, what helps establish trust in a new referral relationship, and how community leaders can become known as reliable resources when a family asks for someone who understands their needs.

For clergy and Celebrants, this is an opportunity to better understand both the deathcare choices available to the people you serve and the professional relationships that can make you more accessible when a family needs someone with your particular experience, tradition, identity competency, or perspective.

For funeral professionals, the broader message extends beyond this one gathering: know the Religious, Secular, and Spiritual leaders and Celebrants serving the communities around you. A trusted referral network should be broad enough to reflect the diversity of the families who may walk through your doors.

This is bridge-building before the bridge is needed.

Funeral professionals should know who is serving their communities.

Clergy and Celebrants should understand the deathcare professionals and options available to the people they serve—and make themselves visible as resources.

Families should have choices that reflect the full diversity of the communities in which we live.

Together, we can create a network broad enough that when a family asks, “Do you know someone who understands us?”

the answer can be: Yes. We do.

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* Use of the word “family” is intended in this – and all of my work – to refer to a person’s network of love and connection, whatever that means to them. I recognize that the word “family” may be triggering to those who have been disowned or estranged from loved ones because of their LGBTQ+ or RSSI identity or intersectional identities.

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About the author: Tee Rogers is a Certified Preplanning Consultant (CPC) and pre-planning advisor with Dignity Memorial, Humanist Celebrant and InSight Funeral Celebrant with Orlando Celebrant, and author of the Identity Affirming Deathcare Directives workbook. Her work focuses on inclusive, identity-affirming deathcare for LGBTQ+ and minority religious and secular communities, community education, and helping people understand the full range of options available to them.

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