A welcoming place

By 2024, Greg Kanter had been out as a gay, ordained rabbi for nearly three decades, a pioneer of sorts, who had been leading a congregation in Charleston, South Carolina, for about eight years. Life had been good there for him, his husband, and two adopted daughters.

Then came a new presidential administration, and the warm breezes of Charleston turned politically chilly when it came to LGBTQ rights. 

“Southern politicians, it seemed like, were trying to outdo each other to curry favor with the president, at the expense of me and my family,” Kanter said. “And so, we wanted to come to a part of the country where we didn’t have to worry about that stuff.”

Springfield became that place. For about 18 months now, Rabbi Kanter has led Temple B’rith Sholom on Fourth Street, a Reform Jewish congregation since 1858. Kanter said Springfield has made him and his family feel welcome, although he still does a lot of explaining to people who meet him for the first time.

“People in Springfield, they ask about my wife and kids all the time,” Kanter says with a laugh. “Mostly they will go, ‘Oh, oh, OK.’ But they’re good with it around here.”

Kanter, 60, was born in Cincinnati and lived in Minnesota and St. Louis for many years, so as a self-proclaimed “Midwest guy” he had a feeling a place such as Springfield would be a good place to relocate. While his congregation is about a quarter the size of his roughly 800-member former one in Charleston, Kanter said it has grown since he got here. 

“We don’t knock on doors to try and recruit people,” Kanter said. “But if there are Jewish people looking for a place to worship, we welcome them. If people are interested in learning more about Judaism, we help them do that, too. We are just not like the evangelical churches that do knock on doors and try and recruit people. That’s never been a Jewish thing.”

Not that Kanter doesn’t reach out to people of all faiths. As part of a joint venture between Illinois Times and Central Baptist Church, Kanter spoke to Pastor Tony Stang on The Mosaic Project podcast of the common ground their denominations share and shared his story about coming out as gay in 1993, when he was a rabbi in Minneapolis. At the time, there were only a few openly gay working rabbis in the world.

Kanter originally came out to a senior rabbi at Temple Israel in Minneapolis, telling him he couldn’t keep a secret any longer about “who I was.” A year or so later, a panel of other rabbis there voted to accept Kanter as a working rabbi. On March 11, 1994, Kanter fully came out to the congregation. 

In that sermon, Kanter said, “You know that I am a rabbi and now you know that I am gay. Because I am this congregation’s rabbi, your rabbi, and because I now choose to share this news with you, our lives may change. Together, we will determine what course they take.”

That made national news at the time, and from there Kanter worked as a rabbi in the Fort Lauderdale, Florida, area and then in Charleston. He met his husband, Mike Merrill, in Florida, and they soon adopted two daughters, one of whom is transgender. 

Those were good times, Kanter says, but he says he and his family began to feel unwelcome – to the point of feeling threatened – and decided to move in 2024. According to a 2022 State LGBTQ+ Business Climate Index from the global LGBTQ business advisory Out Leadership, South Carolina ranked the lowest of any state with regard to a business-friendly environment for LGBTQ people. 

A proposed bill in the 2023-24 South Carolina legislative session that would restrict transgender people from attaining health care was a deciding factor, Kanter said. 

In his 2024 farewell address to his congregation at Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim in Charleston, Kanter wrote, “A confluence of factors have gone into this decision, including the barrage of legal challenges in the state of South Carolina that target me and my family. While last year’s legislative session was not a complete disaster, the attacks aimed at LGBT people continue to concern us. And so, we find it necessary to take steps to move to a place that will not target us and our human rights.”

Kanter said he plans to stay at Temple B’rith Sholom for the “foreseeable future,” even though he and his husband could soon be empty-nesters. Both his daughters will graduate from high school this year.

“It feels like home here,” he said.  

Greg Kanter was recently interviewed on Tony Stang’s podcast, The Mosaic Project. Stang is the pastor of Central Baptist Church, located in downtown Springfield, and created the podcast as a means of “archiving moments of humanity.” Find podcast episodes on illinoistimes.com under “Arts and Culture.” 

This article appears in April 16-22, 2026.