Sadly, there is a horrible persecution going on today.  I have experienced it, not as one being persecuted but as one who persecuted by not taking a stand, and by listening to and believing the persecutors. I have "repented", literally "turned away from", being a participant in that persecution, and that's what this page is all about. In the context of this website and my life, I will address only the Christian perspective, though I understand the persecution goes beyond this parameter.

I am a straight Christian who has many personal friends who are gay Christians.  Through the course of my friendships with gay Christians, I began to see that all of them were treated horribly by others like myself who call themselves “straight” Christians.  Why are they treated this way?  It's not because of their character, or because they're "bad" people, but simply because of their sexual orientation.  They are told they are wrong, they are told the Bible and God are against them, they are told “we love you, BUT you are going to hell”, they are told “you just WANT to be gay, but God can change you”.  There are ministries to “change” gay people and make them “right”.  There are “ex-gay” people who work to “fix” gays.  All in the name of God’s righteousness.  Nearly every gay person whom I have known has gone through some period of wanting nothing to do with Christianity or God because of being bombarded with this kind of attitude.  Many others may NEVER know the love of God because of this kind of attitude.

Now I ask you, is that TRULY sharing God’s love?

The common belief amongst straight people is that gays have mental and emotional problems because they are gay.  I wasn’t there, I know no one personally who was, but I have researched the victims of slavery and the Holocaust.  They had many mental and emotional issues, not because they were black or Jewish, but because they were treated so horrifically.  Yes, many gay people struggle with mental and emotional issues, but my observation is that much of that comes from living in a world where they are treated as subhuman, not "normal", "perverted" or as an Oklahoma state representative, on God's behalf, so unfortunately stated, "a greater threat than terrorism", "cancer that should be eradicated." Wow, that brings to mind the Nazi attitude towards a group of humans who they tried to eradicate.

This same group of people, gays, are seen to have an “agenda” if they choose to participate in the democratic process – you know, voting, the right of EVERY American.  Let’s see, the last time an American citizen was refused the equality of the vote was in 1920...and that was overturned in August of 1920 when the first woman was allowed to vote.  I wonder if men during that time period thought women had an “agenda”?

The American Psychological Association (APA) poses these frequently asked questions on their website:

Their answer to all three questions is no.

The APA researched the question:

Is being gay as healthy as being straight?

The findings of the research indicates that homosexuals are as psychologically normal as heterosexuals.

The APA has determined that sexual orientation is immutable (unchangeable) and therefore it is harmful to try and change a person’s orientation.

Some Christians will ask, why should we believe the APA, why not just believe God?  I’m happy to address that question because this is a specific area of ministry calling for me.  I have 30+ years of personal experience, research, and ministry as a non professional lay person (i.e. I am not a professional counselor) regarding mental illness and psychology, and I know that God does in fact work through psychology.  The majority of Christians do not hesitate to visit the doctor when anything from a minor virus to a major illness occurs.  Most of us have seen God work through medicine and medical technology.  While mental illness is still a taboo subject in much of Christianity, the science of psychology has also been very much used by God to help people, just as medical science has.  I am an advocate for psychology, professional counseling, medications where needed, and the tools developed over many years of research and work by psychologists such as represented by the APA.  God works through psychologists just as much as He works through medical doctors.

Every gay person I've spoken to has told me they knew from a very early age that they were gay. Research in recent years suggests that there is a "gay gene". Most gay people have spent some amount of time trying to be someone they are not, hiding their authentic self in a world that doesn't accept them. I recently met a 45 year old gay man who told me he had been an atheist up until six years ago...he said, "I wanted nothing to do with a God who would condemn me for being who I was from birth." He heard "love the sinner, hate the sin" many times, but until six years ago he never heard about a loving God who accepts him as he authentically is. This testimony by a friend of mine which was quoted in a Cathedral of Hope newsletter tells the story from an inside view of how gay people come to view God because of the attitudes and words of fellow Christians.

Thankfully, there are those in the gay community who have held onto their Christian faith, such as Tim Wolfe who recently launched Straight-Friendly, a daily devotional blog for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people. Tim writes:

"The goal is to provide GLBT believers an on-line site that offers a daily passage of Scripture, followed by a five-to-six paragraph discussion that (hopefully) reflects many of their concerns.   The underlying concept is very basic. As followers of Jesus, we guide our lives by His commandment to love God with all our hearts, souls, and minds, and we love our neighbors as ourselves. For GLBT Christians, this urges us to extend our love and understanding even to those who deny our claim of faith or seek to exclude us from the Body of Christ. In other words, instead of waiting for the church-at-large to become gay-friendly, it’s incumbent on us to become straight-friendly.

Tim is urging others in his community to reach out to us – the straight Christian community. I thank God for people like Tim.

When I read what the APA, and genetic research says about homosexuality, and I compare that to the people I know personally, I find the two coincide...they are saying the same things. 

But I don’t draw my conclusions only there.  As with ANY issue in my life, I invest time in studying and researching the Bible, personal time in communication with God (i.e. prayer), and, here’s a big one, I use my very own God given brain and heart!  I’ve read the Bible cover to cover many times, and nowhere does it say you must change anything in order for God to love you. To the contrary, what Jesus demonstrated with His own life was that He loves you exactly as you are right now! He loved you yesterday, He loves you today, and He will love you tomorrow, whether or not you acknowledge Him, know Him, or have a relationship with Him. After all these years, this is my conclusion – God wants you, period. He wants a relationship with you, period.  He wants the authentic you!

We also are NEVER given the right to judge another human being for ANY reason. Many Christians will say we have the right to point out sin. No we don't. Jesus didn't even judge (John 8:16, 12:47), why do we think we have that right?

Does God require change?  Well, yeah, He calls us to be transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:2), and I am here to proclaim that I have been transformed.  I used to stand idly by while others like myself (straight Christians) talked about how gay people cannot possibly be Christians (because they’re sinners) and even if they are Christians they’re simply under God’s grace until they repent and change. 

And then my heart began to grieve, along with God, as I heard the stories of men and women, person after person after person, good people, people like you and me, people who love their families, people who love their partners and are monogamously committed (sometimes even more so than I’ve seen in straight marriages), people who go to work and school, preach in pulpits, minister in the mundane (those little jobs around the church that no one notices), teach yoga, make jewelry, counsel others through their pain, sing in choirs, play the piano. I heard their stories and saw their tears as they told about being treated as less than equal to their straight brothers and sisters in humanity. 

And I wept...and I am still weeping because I have gotten but a tiny glimpse of God’s grief.  To see any more would be unbearable, yet I continually pray that God WILL give me more and more of HIS compassion, which means seeing more pain.  To see a lesbian woman weep when she hears the news that her father has not made it through surgery; to see a church body stand beside her and pray for her; to see a gay man who was once imprisoned (because of, as far as I can tell, an act of discrimination against him) now free and speaking of love, urging his gay brothers and sisters to NOT give up on God or the Bible, not give up on hearing that GOD LOVES US ALL; to hear a gay pastor, my friend, courageously addressing the “clobber passages” (those parts of the Bible used AGAINST gays) from their COMPLETE context rather than simply the literal reading of words from a page.  These are the things that make me weep.  These are the places where I experience God the most. 

I have been in ministry for nearly 30 years now.  April 2008 was the first time I set foot in an openly gay church.  For any person who proclaims that they truly love God and love all people (and we are told that we cannot love God if we do not love our brothers and sisters, (1 John 4:13-21) I challenge you to visit an openly gay or gay affirming church.  I challenge you to go without prejudice against a people, but to go with God’s true heart and God’s true mind, and see if you don’t see what I see, people.  People just like you and me.  People whose hearts are truly free because they have experienced God’s grace, oh they have so very much when they have learned to be their authentic selves and KNOW that God loves them.  It is beautiful, it is God’s beauty that I experience.  I have never experienced more freedom in a church, nor God’s presence more vividly, as I have in an openly gay church. 

As for the “clobber passages”, I challenge you to study for yourself a differing view, including researching the historical and cultural context of the passages.  A good source is the Romans series by the Rev. Dr. E. Scott Jones.  Scott has roots in conservative theology, and intelligently studies the Bible.  He does not use one source in his research of context, but is very balanced and includes many conservative (straight) theologians. 

From two of Scott's sermons in the Romans series:

...in my study of this letter over the last few months, one of the most interesting proposals came from Thomas Hanks, who served as a missionary in Latin America. Hanks studied the names of the people mentioned in the letter and concluded that of the 38 people named, that at least twelve and as many as twenty-six have names that were commonly slave names in the Roman Empire. Just imagine that maybe half, or more, of the members of these early churches were slaves, including some of the leaders of the church. How would that affect our reading of this letter? From Wrath to Adoption ...slaves were owned by their masters and could be used and abused by them. Sexual use and abuse of slaves was common and generally accepted. So, imagine you are a young slave who has been routinely raped by your master and when you go to church you hear these words from verse 28, “And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind and to things that should not be done.” You are going to hear that passage as a strong condemnation of your abusive master. From Flesh to New Body

I invite you to read all of the sermons in the Romans series for the full perspective, and to search the Cathedral of Hope sermon archive for more views that you may not have considered.

I have been seeing this move of God for awhile now, and I'm beginning to notice many others who are independently stepping into this move. I'm seeing more and more people taking a stand, people who either lived a lie and tried to be someone other than their authentic self because that’s what society (and Christianity) demanded, or people like me and others who are straight and have had it with the imprisonment placed on our fellow humanity by PEOPLE (not God). The Rev. Bruce Lowe, who graduated from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in 1946, writes this on the introduction of his website:

"Shortly after I had gone from the seminary to my first pastorate in 1948, Louise invited my wife, Anna Marie, and me to have Sunday dinner with her family. She has been one of our dearest friends ever since. Recently, during one of the many visits we have had since then she said to me 'My brother hates God because God made him gay, and he knows he is going to hell, and I do, too, for that is what the Bible says.' At that time I had only some suppositions - quite negative - about homosexuality and had never thought it needed study. But her words made me want to know as much as I could learn. When I began reading I soon realized things about myself I now deplore: I was ignorant of the many facts about homosexuality and what the Bible says about it. Yet, without facts, I had pre-judged it; I was prejudiced. With little thought I had read into the Bible what I presumed it ought to say instead of reading out of it what it did say. My idea of not needing to study the subject was pure anti-intellectualism. I am now grateful to God that He led me to study. I read some two score books, most by eminent sociologists, psychologists and theologians. Then I wrote this letter to Louise, reflecting what I have come to believe is the truth about homosexuality, what the Bible says and what God wants us to think and do about it. Now I want others to study seriously this matter of such importance to many lives and many churches and denominations. I asked for and received Louise’s permission to share her letter with others. I pray it may be helpful."

I invite you to read Bruce's Letter to Louise for an in depth, scholarly dissertation regarding homosexuality.

My friends, God has heard the cry of His enslaved people and is leading them out of prison and into the promised land.  A new sermon series by Scott Jones on Exodus is quite in tune with what’s going on...this people (GLBT) are still in the desert, but I see God moving and leading them toward the promised land of freedom and equality.  God truly wants equality for ALL people. God truly wants freedom for ALL people.

I will close with this thought.  When people are so repelled because they hear again and again that they are wrong, that God loves them “BUT they must change….” (an anti-biblical statement by the way), in what way are we sharing God’s love?  The art of communication is not about what you say, it’s what the recipient hears.  We must, we must, we MUST stop persecuting gays by insisting that they change…we are NOT sharing God’s love with them by doing so, we are pushing them away from God and this hurts God and it hurts His people.  We are all His people, God loves everybody, whether you consider yourself a Christian or not.  

Standing side by side as an equal with ALL my brothers and sisters in humanity...

Tammy