Straight-camp survivor starts support group for ex-ex-gays
They what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. And so it seems for former “homosexual sinner” James Stabile, who’s still proud to be “out” in Oak Lawn and has announced his new ex-ex-gay organization, Love Actually.
In May 2007, when he was 19, Stabile was caught up in the “I-35 Light the Highways” Christian intercessory movement. He says his Methodist and Catholic church upbringing had taught him that everything homosexual was a sin, that he was a sinner, and that he would burn in “the lake of fire” if he didn’t change his ways.
So when he was approached one night during a “Purity Siege” on the Cedar Springs strip, he was susceptible to feeling the “fire” of religious indoctrination.
He didn’t have a prayer in the world of standing up to a team of seasoned intercessors.
The Light the Highways movement was kicked off by Cindy Jacobs, a “prophet” of Generals International. The group’s only listed location is a post office box in Red Oak, near Waxahachie. The national I-35 movement called for churches from Laredo to Duluth, Minn., to pray, evangelize and intercede all along the I-35 corridor, for 35 days, based upon a biblical verse in the 35th chapter of Isaiah.
Pastor Steve Hill of Heartland World Ministries Church in Las Colinas was the lead “radical evangelist” for the mission, and it was Hill’s group who approached Stabile, then at a low point in his life, and prayed for his soul.
Stabile says he thought he was going to hell for his sins.
He’d been “whoring himself out” in Oak Lawn at the time, and when he was approached by the intercession team, they asked if he was “pure.”
Stabile said no and they led him to believe it was because he was gay.
Stabile says he realized later that he would have been engaging in the same sexual behavior had he been straight, but at the time, he believed them. He didn’t want to be “gay anymore” and didn’t want to “feel dirty.”
So he agreed to attend reparative therapy at Pure Life Ministries, located along the Dixie Highway in Dry Ridge, Ky.
Pure Life’s Web site states it is “on the front lines rescuing souls” and “setting men free” from their sexual addictions. They outwardly condemn homosexuality and gay churches, including the Cathedral of Hope, where Stabile says he has now found salvation and “God’s love.” (Renee Baker, Contributing Writer, Dallas Voice) Confronting Clinton On DOMA
A blogger takes a stand:
[Bill Clinton] talked about a new progressive era and how America has changed. [...] So, at the point that he said, "We need an honest, principled debate", I knew I had to try to stimulate the discussion. So, I stood and said, "Mr. President, will you call for a repeal of DOMA and Don't Ask, Don't Tell? Right now?"
The immediate response shocked me at the time and still does. Those surrounding me yelled at me, booed, and told me to sit down. One elderly lady even told me to leave. While I was among the supposed most progressive audience in the country, they sought to silence someone asking a former President to speak out on behalf of repealing two laws that TOOK AWAY RIGHTS OF A MINORITY. I was shocked. [...] I'll let you judge for yourselves the reaction of the audience (I especially LOVE the "I love you Bill!!!" while justifying DADT.)
Bill's complete answer is here. His DOMA response is after the jump:
Let me just say one thing about DOMA, since you -- the reason I signed DOMA was -- and I said when I signed it -- that I thought the question of whether gays should marry should be left up to states and to religious organizations, and if any church or other religious body wanted to recognize gay marriage, they ought to. We were attempting at the time, in a very reactionary Congress, to head off an attempt to send a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage to the states. And if you look at the 11 referenda much later -- in 2004, in the election -- which the Republicans put on the ballot to try to get the base vote for President Bush up, I think it's obvious that something had to be done to try to keep the Republican Congress from presenting that. The President doesn't even get to veto that. The Congress can refer constitutional amendments to the states.
I didn't like signing DOMA and I certainly didn't like the constraints that were put on benefits, and I've done everything I could -- and I am proud to say that the State Department was the first federal department to restore benefits to gay partners in the Obama administration, and I think we are going forward in the right direction now for federal employees.
Andrew had this to say after Clinton got a similar question from a young reporter last year:
(by Chris Bodenner, The Daily Dish)The facts are these: under Bill Clinton the rate of discharges of gay people from the military doubled; under Bill Clinton, the Defense Of Marriage Act did not only simply enshrine the pre-existing right of some states not to recognize the civil marriages of other states - as he misleadingly states - but barred all of us gay couples from any rights on a federal level; Bill Clinton cited the Defense of Marriage Act in re-election campaign ads in the South.
Even now, he claims that repealing DOMA would lead to more persecution of gays, because more states would allegedly pass anti-gay constitutional amendments. But there are very very few left that could do more to stigmatize gay couples than currently do. And he still resists any defense of gay equality in substance seeing it entirely, as he did in office, as a matter of partisan positioning. Just as he left any mention of any gay people and any gay appointees out of his interminable autobiography, he still will not stand up for gay equality when confronted by the next generation.
When My Husband Became a Woman, I Realized I Was a Sexist Lutherans prepare for big decision on gay clergy
When my husband transitioned, it made me face all of the terrible gender stereotypes I carry around.
It's been a surprise to find out what a sexist I really am. I've been calling myself a feminist for two decades, and surely was one for the two decades before that.
I'm a woman who found myself with a female husband – the man I married is trans and currently transitioning to living as female in the world. She has been doing so socially for some time and only now has decided to make it official with a name change and all the legal ballyhoo. I've been surprised by a lot of aspects of this process, not least of which is our relationship surviving it.
People can't and don't just change their sexual orientation because they want or need to, and partners of transgender people are no exception. I can't magically become a lesbian, no matter how useful that would be. I am seen as one by most other people when I am holding my female spouse's hand.
If I were categorically heterosexual I wouldn't have managed this transition at all, which is one of many reasons I think of myself as simply queer.
I never played a heterosexual woman very convincingly, but I tried. That's one of the reasons I didn't expect any sexism in my own attitudes about gender in relationships. I was a tomboy growing up. As an adult, I was always a little too forthright and ungiggly for most straight guys. I preferred buying my own dinner and drinks in order to avoid any expectations later in the evening. I didn't play along, reflecting them at twice their natural size, as Virginia Woolf once so famously put it in A Room of One's Own. That said, as the woman in a straight relationship, you're assumed to be the more feminine of the two of you – even if you aren't.
What has surprised me the most are the expectations I had first of a male husband – and what the loss of “him" meant – as well as my more recent expectations of having a female wife. I use both husband and wife because both are true: legally, she is my husband, but socially, people see her as my wife. It is one thing for someone to become “not man," which is more like subtracting visible markers of masculinity, both physical and social. And it is quite different for someone to become a “woman" – which involves something far trickier.
When it came down to it, I feared my partner's transition because I expected her to become a woman, but what I didn't expect was how differently I would see certain things she did.--more-- (Helen Boyd, On The Issues Magazine)AlterNet.
(Fridley, Minn.) The Rev. Dave Glesne stood before the members of Redeemer Lutheran Church a few weeks ago and told them there might be some painful decisions in the near future.
Glesne is against letting people in same-sex relationships serve as pastors of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, and he says his congregation is behind him. They’re worried this suburban Minneapolis church could find itself on the losing side as leaders of the nation’s largest Lutheran denomination vote on whether to take that step at their biennial national convention, which starts Monday in Minneapolis.
“Of course the question was asked: What will we do, Pastor Dave, if this goes?” Glesne said. “The conversation we had left me no doubt that we will definitely have a discussion about leaving the ELCA.”
Avoiding such divisions was a main goal of an ELCA task force that prepared recommendations for debate by the 1,045 voting members at the convention. One is a revision of ministry standards that would let individual congregations employ gay and lesbian people in committed relationships as clergy. The other is a broader statement on human sexuality, a 34-page document that tries to craft a theological framework for differing views on homosexuality - but which critics say would simply liberalize the ELCA’s attitudes.
At 4.7 million members and about 10,000 congregations in the United States, the ELCA would be one of the largest U.S. Christian denominations yet to take a more gay-friendly stance on clergy.
In 2003, the 2 million-member Episcopal Church of the United States consecrated its first openly gay bishop, deepening a long-running rift in the worldwide Anglican Communion about homosexuality and Scripture.
Last month in Anaheim, Calif., the Episcopal General Convention declared gays and lesbians in committed relationships eligible for “any ordained ministry.” The move came despite Anglican world leaders’ calls for a clear moratorium on consecrating another gay bishop.
The divide in the Episcopal Church in the last few years has led to the formation of the more conservative Anglican Church in North America, which claims 100,000 members.
Headed into next week’s convention, ELCA leaders on both sides of the issue wonder if a similar split could be in store for them.
“I’m not going to predict that,” said Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson, the national leader of the Chicago-based denomination. “I’m also not going to deny that I have concerns about the implications about whatever we do, for our life together coming out of it.”
A variety of views are represented at Redeemer Lutheran, a congregation of about 2,000 that has grown steadily in recent years.
“We value intellectual honesty around here, and we are willing to look at other views,” Glesne said.
But he said most of the congregation sides with him against changing church policy on gay clergy.
“I think I’m a voice that represents the great majority of the people in the ELCA who are sitting in the pews,” Glesne said.
That wasn’t the case, however, in recent synod votes on the proposed change. Thirty-four synods approved resolutions supporting the change and 12 called for its rejection. The votes put synods on record for advocating for a position, which ultimately will be decided by voting members at the national assembly.
Past efforts to change the ELCA’s policy on gay clergy have failed. ELCA churches can already take on celibate gay and lesbian pastors, a policy in place since the early 1990s. Some churches are already testing the denomination’s position by taking on pastors who are open about their gay relationships.
The proposed changes are designed to avoid divisions by letting congregations decide whether to have pastors in same-sex relationships.
The Rev. Bradley Schmeling, an Atlanta pastor who became the focus of a church disciplinary hearing in 2007 after he acknowledged being in a relationship with a man, said he’s aware of the argument that the ELCA would lose some members and churches by liberalizing policy.
“What they don’t say is that we’re losing people now who see that exclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender individuals by the church is unloving and hypocritical,” said Schmeling, who was removed from the ELCA clergy roster but whose congregation kept him on as pastor. “We have the chance to demonstrate to the next generation of Christians that our church can be open and loving to all people.”
Glesne and many of his allies say they’re not homophobic. They say the issue is not about homosexuality but about being true to the word of God as dictated by Scripture.
“It is our feeling and our belief that what the Bible is telling us is that same-sex marriage and relationships are harmful,” said Diane Baardson, a member of the Redeemer Lutheran Church council. “We welcome homosexuals into our church, and we love them. But we’re not going to say hey, that’s a good idea.”
People who favor the recommendations to be considered in Minneapolis say the Evangelical Lutheran Church has never demanded what Schmeling calls a “blind obedience to one point of view.”
Bishop Peter Rogness, leader of the church’s St. Paul, Minn., synod, said differences over homosexuality are “driven more by the hysteria in the culture” than by what Scripture says.
“If someone tries to argue this is going to be the test as to whether we are scripturally faithful or not, that’s a hard argument to make because Scripture says so little about homosexuality,” Rogness said.
At the grass-roots level, he said, “people don’t want their church to go to war over this.”
Few on either side of the debate want to predict how many members and churches the ELCA might lose if it moves toward greater acceptance of clergy in gay relationships. Even Glesne said he would lean toward staying in the ELCA and “struggling from within.”
“I think leaving the ELCA would be on the table - it would have to be,” said Baardson, the Redeemer member. “But my first reaction would not be knee-jerk, ‘Let’s leave.’ My first reaction would be, can we stay and work on our disagreements? That’s a biblical approach as well.”(The Associated Press, 365Gay.com)
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