This week’s full-length Come Out Mobile Trailblazer feature by Prism United honors Reverend Marge Ragona, a lifelong champion of love, justice, and radical inclusion whose impact continues to echo across Alabama.

Watch the full video on Facebook – click here.

Born in 1929, Rev. Marge has spent nearly a century shaping a more compassionate world. A nurse-turned-clergy, educator, and pioneering LGBTQ+ rights activist, she served MCC congregations in Providence, New Orleans, Birmingham, and Mobile; penned feminist theological works like Women and the Bible and De-Sexing Your Local Hymnal; and once held an eight-day hunger strike demanding nondiscrimination protections.

Rev. Marge founded Cornerstone Metropolitan Community Church—one of the region’s earliest fully affirming spiritual homes for LGBTQ+ people. At a time when acceptance was scarce, she created a space where queer folks could worship, organize, heal, and know they belonged.

She also led with courage and compassion during the height of the AIDS crisis. In 1986, she launched the first training classes for the Mobile AIDS Buddy System, pairing volunteers with people living with AIDS and offering companionship, transportation, support, and dignity when many were forced into isolation.

Now 96, Rev. Marge continues to inspire. Even in retirement, she has officiated same-sex weddings in Alabama, marched for LGBTQ+ rights, and ensured her personal archives are preserved for future generations seeking to understand the roots of queer liberation in the Deep South.

Her story is a reminder that courage shapes history and that every act of care becomes part of a larger movement for justice.