The UUCT has always maintained good relations with other UU congregations in Florida and the Gulf Coast area.  A small number of members who had disapproved of the move in 1973 from Concordia Street to the property in Temple Terrace formed their own fellowship, the All Souls Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, which continued to meet in South Tampa until it dissolved in 1986 and most of its members joined the UUCT.  The Fellowship’s remaining financial assets came to the UUCT at that time.  An active fellowship of the UUCT members organized in Zephyrhills, FL (30 miles N of Tampa) and met through the 1980s.  ln the late 1990s, another UU fellowship comprising many former UUCT members was organized at Sun City Center, about 35 miles south of the church.  A new and active UU congregation, Spirit of Life Unitarian Universalists, organized in 1997, settled a minister, and in 2000 purchased property northwest of Tampa.

TIME Magazine reported that in the 1970s, our minister at that time, the Rev. Adrian Melott, performed “the first gay marriage” in the area.

Rev. Young was highly involved in community affairs and social justice issues.  He was President and one of the original organizers of the Florida Consumer Action Network, the strongest citizen lobby group in Central Florida.  He was active on the ACLU Board and the Planned Parenthood Advisory Board.  For five years he served as President of the Tampa/Hillsborough County Human Rights Council and was responsible for getting “sexual orientation” added to the Human Rights Ordinances.  He was on the Police Chiefs Advisory Committee and actively involved in cleaning up a racist police department.  Rev. Young was given the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “Drum Major for Justice Award” by the Tampa Dr. M.L.K., Jr. Commemorative Committee in 1991 and the Distinguished Service Award by the Tampa/Hillsborough County Human Rights Council in 1992.  During Rev. Young’s summer travels, he found an old but well-preserved pulpit in Minnesota that reputed (without documentation) to have been used by the well-known minister Olympia Brown.  The church purchased the pulpit and uses it to this day.

The City of Tampa tore down its worn out convention center in the early 2000 and left that space on the river as an open park.  They held a competition for a sculpture to be placed in the park.  Our former church member, Nancy Young, won the privilege of placing her sculpture of two boys, Unitarian Religious Education children, in this park.

Our congregation’s social activism in the 1980s focused on work for affordable housing through the organization known as Housing Now and active participation in the Tampa Coalition for Peace and Justice and the UU Service Committee.  For example, a busload of members went under the auspices of the UUSC to Cape Canaveral to protest the militarization of the space program.

UUCT joined the Hillsborough Organization for Progress and Equality (H.O.P.E.), an interfaith organization in 1991, and we remain actively involved in this organization.  In addition, we recently have become active in RESULTS group.  The congregation’s Young Religious Unitarian Universalists (YRUU) group sent members to Social Justice Conferences and marched on behalf of rights for farm workers.

Standing on the Side of Love was supported by UUCT member, Tempie Taude, as she demonstrated against Arizona’s SB 107.  For more details, see UU World article: “29 UU’ss Arrested in Phoenix Protest.”

Members of the congregation, supported by our leadership, participate in a variety of social action endeavors, such as marching in the city’s annual Martin Luther King Day parade and the Gay Pride parade, and working through the UU Service Committee.  Annually we provide Christmas gifts to foster children through the Foster Angel program and collect and distribute food to migrate workers local to this area.