From: RevMel Date: Sat, 13 Dec 1997 21:58:20 EST Subject: Gay Clergy Presented ACLU National Civil Liberties Award in Atlanta, GA A SOULFORCE NEWS ALERT: GAY CLERGY ACTIVIST WINS ACLU NATIONAL CIVIL LIBERTIES AWARD (ATLANTA, GEORGIA) Saturday night, December 6, the Rev. Dr. Mel White (Minister of Justice and Reconciliation for the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches) was awarded the ACLU's National Civil Liberties Award for his efforts to apply the 'soul force' principles of Gandhi and King to the struggle for justice for sexual minorities. At the presentation, Dr. White passed on the award to a very surprised Lynn Cothren, the local gay activist who founded Atlanta’s Queer Nation chapter and headed the successful campaign to reform the Cracker Barrel Restaurant chain. In handing on the award to Cothren, who is also Coretta Scott King’s executive assistant, Dr. White asked his friend, Lynn, to keep it temporarily, "At least until I’ve earned it." It was Lynn Cothren who encouraged Dr. White to base his volunteer UFMCC justice ministry on the ‘soul force’ principles of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. During the past five years, White and his partner, Gary Nixon, have traveled across the country, speaking on university campuses, teaching the ‘soul force’ principles of militant nonviolence, organizing people of faith to do justice locally, and confronting religious leaders whose anti-gay rhetoric White believes, "leads to the suffering and death of God’s lesbian and gay children." On Sunday, December 14, White flies to Delhi, India, to begin a five week study tour around the nation with Arun Gandhi, the Mahatma's grandson, and professor Joseph Elder, a PFLAG parent and a leading Gandhi scholar from the University of Wisconsin. Dr. White will be meeting with leaders of the nonviolent justice movement and visiting historic sites associated with India's struggle for independence, as well as Gandhi ashrams, archives, & study centers. For more contact Gary Nixon Fax: 714 494 4079 Ph: 714 494 0960 E-mail: RevMel @aol.com www.melwhite.org Background: On February 15, 1995, the Rev. Dr. Mel White was arrested for "trespassing" at Pat Robertson's CBN Broadcast Center. The story of his arrest, the 22 day prison fast, and the ‘little victory’ that followed, made news across the nation. For 30 years, Dr. White had served the evangelical Christian community as a pastor, seminary professor, best-selling author, prize-winning filmmaker, communication consultant and ghost writer to its most famous and powerful leaders. His ghost-writing clients included Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, D. James Kennedy, Ollie North, and Pat Robertson. Then, on Pride Sunday, June 27, 1993, Mel White was installed Dean of the Cathedral of Hope Metropolitan Community Church in Dallas, Texas, with 14,000 congregants, the nation's largest gay-lesbian congre-ga-tion. After almost 3 decades of counseling and "anti-gay" therapy including prayer, fasting, exorcism, and electric shock, Mel White was able to reconcile his Christian theology and his sexual orientation. At his installation, Mel proclaimed his own, heart-felt statement of faith: "I am gay. I am proud. And God loves me without reservation." In the months that followed, Mel's story was featured in the L.A.Times, the Washington Post, and in media across the nation. He was in-terviewed on hundreds of radio and TV broadcasts including Larry King Live, National Public Radio and the BBC. In 1994, Mel, his partner, Gary Nixon, and his former wife, Lyla, were featured on Sixty-Minutes. In April, 1994, Simon&Schuster released Dr. White's Stranger at the Gate: To be Gay and Christian in America. In this moving, best-selling autobiogra-phy, Mel comes out of the closet to give hope to other gay and lesbian Christians, to confront the misleading anti-gay rhetoric of the radical right, and to launch his own fight for justice and understanding for God's gay and lesbian children. On January 1, 1995, Dr. White was appointed national Minister of Justice (an unsalaried position) for the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches, the only Christian denomination with a primary outreach to gays and lesbians. The Reverend Elder Troy Perry, founder of the U.F.M.C.C., and its Board of Elders, has asked Dr. White to represent the denomination's 300 churches in the current nationwide struggle on behalf of justice for all who suffer, gay and non-gay alike. In the summer of 1996, UFMCC moved into their newly acquired world headquarters in West Hollywood, California. To work closer with Troy Perry and the UFMCC Elders (who function as Dr. White’s advisory board) Mel and Gary sold their home in Texas and moved back to southern California. On September 1, 1996, partner, White and Nixon, began a two week Fast for Justice on the steps of the United States Senate, inviting people of faith across America to join in this prayer vigil that God would change the minds and hearts of Senators about to pass the so-called ‘Defense of Marriage Act." Almost alone in protesting this bill, White reminded the nation that "...passing DOMA would be the first time in U.S. history that the entire lesbian-gay community would be singled out for second-class-citizenship, automatically denied the 1,047 rights and protections that go with marriage." When the Senate passed DOMA (85-14), White moved his Fast for Justice to the White House steps where he, his partner, Gary, and 7 others were arrested while praying on the White House sidewalk. After a four year study of his nonviolent resistance heroes, especially Gandhi and King, Dr. White is writing Storming The Gate, his sequel to Stranger at the Gate. "Across this country," Mel explains, "our gay brothers and lesbian sisters are the victims of a tidal wave of intolerance, discrimination, and violent crime flowing directly out of the anti-gay rhetoric of the radical right. Every American concerned about injustice, gay and straight alike, must take her or his stand to end the suffering." After Dr. White's 22 day fast in the Virginia Beach City Jail, Pat Robertson visited him in jail, heard White's plea and went on the air to say clearly that he "abhorred the growing violence against gay and lesbian people." "Pat Robertson is not our enemy,' White said later. "He is a victim of misinformation like we all have been. In the spirit of Jesus, Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. we must go on believing that Pat and the others can change." Dr. White has dedicated his life to a ministry of change. "Until this nation accepts God's gay and lesbian children as full members of the human family," White explains, "we must go on telling that truth in love, whatever it might cost us."