Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, May 15, 1994 TAG: 9405120035
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By Ron Miller Knight-Ridder Newspapers
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
"But it also goes on to say they should be put to death for it," White told the minister. "Who should do the killing? You in the church?"
"No, no, no," the minister protested. "That's for the civil authorities to do. It's not pleasant, but it's what God demands. That's why we have to get more men of God in this government, to follow God's plan for this nation."
The minister's remarks chilled White, dean of the non-denominational Cathedral of Hope in Dallas, the largest gay church in the world. But he no longer finds such talk either rare or unusual among religious leaders. In fact, he fears that it represents the cold wind of a new reality for gays and lesbians in America.
"I'm terrified for this generation of gays and lesbians who are young and out and don't have a doubt in their minds that everything's going to be all right," White said on a recent Saturday at San Francisco's Hyatt Regency Hotel while promoting his new book, "Stranger at the Gate" (Simon & Schuster, $23). The book details his lifelong struggle to accept his homosexuality.
"It's exactly what the gays in Berlin thought. If our economy goes down, we lose the Clinton types and we get a real Pat Buchanan type in, what would they do? We're already in ghettos all over the country. Talk about the Warsaw ghetto. It ain't nothin' compared with the Castro."
But a Nazi-style Holocaust against gays and lesbians, led by the Religious Right?
White hopes that's a worst-case scenario the American people would never let happen, but he's losing his faith. He has heard sermons he believes inspire a generation of gay-bashers - and he has been on the inside, listening to the private thoughts of the most influential preachers of the Religious Right. "Pat Robertson blamed the earthquakes in California on gays, lesbians and other sinners," he says. "They believe we're a threat because Jesus can't come again until they've purged the nation of all sinners. Why our `sin' is the worst of all is still a mystery to me. But they need to find an issue that will unite people who don't agree on anything else. They can push that button - and it works every time."
For years, White - a slender, mustachioed 6-footer - was the most sought-after ghostwriter for America's leading televangelists. He wrote books that were published under the bylines of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. He wrote speeches for Billy Graham and fine-tuned his manuscripts. He wrote the autobiography for Jim and Tammy Bakker.
All that ended a short time ago when White told all his "clients" he's gay.
"We've lost every client - and not just the Religious Right," White explained during his stopover in San Francisco. "I've twice been given lifetime achievement awards by the Christian Booksellers Association, but not one Christian bookstore will have my book."
Before the book was published, White spent nearly a year writing to all his clients, including Falwell, Robertson and Graham, telling them he was gay and asking to meet with them to discuss their attitudes. Not one responded to his calls or letters, he says.
Before CBS's "60 Minutes" profiled White on March 20, correspondent Morley Safer sought responses from all White's famous clients. Only Falwell participated, telling Safer, "I believe that he could have chosen not to be a homosexual." Falwell also said White had demonstrated "abject selfishness" by "making sex such a god in [his] life."
Yet Safer's report easily turned up clips from televised sermons by Falwell, Robertson and other televangelists. In one, Robertson was shown warning viewers that "the same thing will happen here that happened in Nazi Germany because many of those people involved in Adolf Hitler were satanists, many of them were homosexuals - the two things seem to go together." Another clip showed Falwell predicting "a modern Sodom and Gomorrah" unless those in the pulpit take a stand on the issue.
(Mike Russell, a spokesman for the politically active Christian Coalition in Chesapeake, Va., said his group "does not condone violence against any one. That is insulting and absurd.")
In his book, White, 53, chronicles his long search through the Scriptures for the truth about God's word on homosexuality. A biblical scholar with degrees in the ancient languages, he has read the Bible in both the original Hebrew and Greek versions. He now sides with scholars who believe today's preachers misinterpret the parables and miss the abiding message of love and mercy brought by Jesus.
"I love the Bible. If it was clear that it really hated homosexual people, I'd be in a terrible quandary," White says. "But the word homosexual is never used in either the Hebrew or the Greek. And the story of Sodom really isn't about gay people. Even Billy Graham never preaches about homosexuality when he talks about Sodom."
Still, White and other gay Christians are alarmed at the importance organized religion now gives the subject of homosexuality.
"All these African-American pastors who are evangelical fundamentalists and grew up watching Pat Robertson are anti-gay," he said. "They're taking politically active roles in local chapters of the NAACP and those chapters all are coming out against us."
Even more alarming to White is the spread of anti-gay rhetoric into mainstream religion. He cites a recent statement signed by 24 "graybeards" of the church, including deans of the divinity schools at Yale, Oberlin, Rutgers, Notre Dame and Hebrew Union, arguing that gays and lesbians are, among other things, a threat to heterosexual marriage and to "vulnerable children."
White sees the politicization of the Religious Right as a very real threat to gays, even if the presidential ambitions of preachers such as Robertson have not gained wide support yet. He cites the presence of televangelist Falwell, "smiling benignly down" at the last Republican National Convention, as an ominous sign. He says the Falwell-backed Christian Coalition now has a million members all working to get anti-gay initiative measures passed in state elections. (The group says it has about 500,000 dues paying members but also many others it considers "activists.")
White agrees that the growing militancy of gays and lesbians on public issues such as AIDS research and gays in the military probably has pushed many straight people into the anti-gay camp. But he believes there's no viable alternative. He remembers sitting in a limousine with Falwell during a gay demonstration once and hearing him remark that, "If we didn't have these activists, we'd have to invent them because they give us all the publicity we need."
"That's the irony," says White. "If we organize, they use it against us. But if we don't, then they've got us. We have to confront them. It's just like the Jews before the Holocaust. Their silence got them into boxcars."
That no longer seems a remote possibility to White. In conservative Texas, where he now resides with his partner, Gary Nixon, violence against gays and lesbians is rising.
"We just buried this 23-year-old in Tyler," he said. "They took him out, stripped him from the waist down, then began to shoot him from the toes and fingers up, so he'd feel every wound. The 29th wound was to his brain. All that because he was a faggot. Invariably, these killers are from religious homes. Studies show you hate gays almost in direct proportion to the amount of time you attend church."
All this has given White incredibly mixed feelings about religion. At one point, he says, "I'm really through with religion," if it means linking arms with Falwell, Robertson and other anti-gay preachers. It's not hard to understand why. White has a letter signed by 80 Oregon pastors, suggesting he be castrated and sent directly to hell.
"And these are all pastors who put it on church letterhead and signed it in Jesus' name," he says.
Right now it appears as if White's writing career will have to change focus completely. He feels a bit like Julia Child might if nobody would publish her cookbooks. But there's a possible movie deal in the works for "Stranger at the Gate" and maybe a book on violence against gays. Ironically, his ex-wife, who has never written a book, has received an offer to write one about their breakup and the aftermath - with a larger advance than White got for "Stranger at the Gate."
Yet even if he's being boycotted by Christian publishers and shunned by his former church colleagues, White is finding it difficult to give up on religion. He has spent all his life in the church and is encouraged by the booming religious interest among gays and lesbians.
"There's a whole kind of spiritual renewal," he said, "so, I'm back in religion now, trying to hold onto the notion that I'm through with it. Historically, spiritual renewal always has meant bad times are coming. God helps us get ready in times of need, so I'm afraid gay and lesbian people are going to go through some very bad times because of religion."
by CNB