Date: Sun, 11 Jul 93 14:39:00 PDT
From: Paul.Moor@f28.n125.z1.FIDONET.ORG (Paul Moor)
Subject: Falwell's ghost  (1/2)

   He was once the ghost-writer for some of the biggest names in
televangelism, as well as a TV producer and an occasional speech-
writer for Oliver North - but Dr. Mel White gave all that up when
he decided to publicly declare his homosexuality.  He's now Dean
at the world's largest gay & lesbian church, the Cathedral of Hope
in Dallas [!]. . . .
   Two weeks ago, on Gay & Lesbian Pride Sunday, Mel White deliv-
ered the sermon at his new Dallas church: " . . . Today I know
this: I give up my place forever as a prosperous, upper-middle-
class, middle-aged, slightly balding, white, pretend-heterosexual
male - and I say to my friends on the religious right: I am gay,
I am proud, and God loves me without reservation!"
   Fifty-four-year-old Mel White is ready to pass that message on
to the rest of the country, but he took a long time getting here.
He grew up in a Protestant evangelical family, attended religious
schools, got his doctorate, and taught at Fuller Seminary in
Pasadena, California.  All along, he was taught homosexuality was
wrong.  He married and had children, believing those who told him
all it takes is a good woman: "I went through twenty-five years of
shock therapy, and aversive training, and psychotherapy, and
exorcism - I did everything in my power to live up to what I
thought was true: that you can be reoriented sexually.  I was
hating myself, and I was terrified, because I thought I was a
sinner.  My church and my family had told me, directly and indi-
rectly, that being homosexual is the worst thing you could be.
There were many times I contemplated suicide, and by the time I
finally did try to commit suicide, when I had a wife and family
and thought `This is going to destroy everything', none of the
people could come to me and say, `You can be gay and Christian'
so I was surrounded by that kind of lie."
   Now White feels an evangelical compulsion to tell as many as he
can reach that you can be gay and Christian.  He's about to
start broadcasting the Dallas church services on cable channels
across the country, distributing them for free.  He's trying to
counter the religious right, although he admits he can't compete
in terms of their size or money.  He blames them for widely
spreading what he calls dangerous homophobia - homophobia that's
promoted violence and a belief that AIDS is a deserved punishment
for sin: "They're causing death - and Jesus warned his disciples
that if you hurt the little ones, it's better that a millstone be
placed around your neck and you be dumped into the sea.  He said
to the disciples: Don't hurt the little ones!  And I'm saying to
Pat Robertson and to Jerry Falwell and the rest of them: You are
hurting the little ones!  It's your misuse of the Bible that's
causing the death of my brothers and sisters who are young - and I
say God condemns you, and your own souls are in jeopardy because
of it!  They must stop it!  They MUST stop it - because blood is
on their hands."
   Just a few years ago, however, these leaders of the religious
right - Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell - were among his very best
customers.  Jerry Falwell says White's the best writer he knows;
he still calls him a friend - but Falwell's spokesman says it's
ironic that White wrote a couple of books with Falwell, and -
after earning a handsome living - decided to publicly denounce
Falwell's well-known position on homosexuality.  White says he
wrote for Falwell and others before their anti-gay rhetoric
turned so strident, when Communism was still the biggest enemy:
"They still had the Communists to raise their money, and to get
their mailing-lists, and to mobilize their constituencies around,
so they weren't being strident about gay and lesbian people, so it
wasn't so hard - but as it got more and more strident, the con-
flict within me got more and more strong, until I realized that I
couldn't save my integrity and keep working for them."


   With Communism's demise, White says the religious right began a
campaign of gay-bashing to raise money: "You need gay and
lesbian people, if you have a television show that has to bring in
two or three million dollars a week [!].  You have to scare
people with certain kinds of problems - and if they have a minori-
ty they can scare people with, they raise money from it, they
raise mailing-lists from it, and they mobilize their constituen-
cies around it.  So the more they can say gay and lesbian people
are the threat - that we're the threat to the American family,
that we're the threat to the schools - they need us: to raise
money.  So my anger is like Jesus's anger at the Pharisees: they
were turning the temple of God into a place of business, and it's
time that the money-changers were overturned, if they're Pat
Robertson or Jerry Falwell or the rest of them.  So I am angry -
but I don't hate these people, nor do I want revenge.  I just want
them to deal with truth."
   To White, the truth is that God loves, not condemns.  He
believes the Biblical lines used against homosexuals - what he
calls "the clobber passages" - are incorrectly interpreted, and
taken out of context.  But neither Jerry Falwell nor Pat Robertson
says they'll change their views on homosexuality.
   Robertson issued this statement through his spokesman: "Pat
Robertson's beliefs on the issue of homosexuality are well-known:
he believes it's morally and Biblically wrong.  In his ministry at
CBN [Christian Broadcasting Network], Pat reaches out to the gay
community, through prayer and counselling.  In fact, the ministry
receives several thousand telephone calls each month from gays and
lesbians [!] who are asking for prayer and counselling.  Pat
Robertson does not believe homosexuals should be afforded special
rights as a protected class.  He has devoted his life to spreading
the saving and healing message of the Lord Jesus Christ.  It's a
message of love and compassion.  Those who do not agree with his
deeply held religious beliefs often target him and attempt to
distort his views.  Mel White's comments are no exception."
   Members of the Cathedral of Hope say they reject Pat Robert-
son's message because he's rejected them.  They'd prefer his
acceptance, not counselling.  Mel White would prefer that Falwell
accept this counsel: "Right now, when Jerry Falwell talks about
gay people, he's going to have to remember that Mel White - his
autobiographer - is a gay person, and if the lies he's telling are
not about me, then whom are they about?  So I'm trying to say to
Jerry: I'm one of the thousands of people you know who are gay -
who you don't know are gay.  So quit lying about us - we're not
the promiscuous threat to this nation that you say we are!"
   The homosexual men and women at White's church consider the
Cathedral of Hope a safe place, not because it treats them as a
protected class but because it doesn't call homosexuality a sin.
Here's one of the church's attenders last Sunday: "To me it
doesn't matter whether you're a minority or not - when there's
injustice being done, it needs to stop.  And that's what Christ
said, and came to do - to stop injustice, so that the world would
find wholeness and salvation."
   Church members here say they've finally found religious accep-
tance, without conditions.  One said: "We're a Bible-believing
congregation - and Jesus didn't turn anybody away."