Talks With Falwell Leave Gays Full of Hope

LYNCHBURG, Va. —  For years, he was their sworn enemy: a man who presumed to speak for God by saying over and over that their gay lifestyles were sinful, their morals were depraved and their political agendas were destroying family, church and country.

But when Christian fundamentalist leader Jerry Falwell finally said Saturday that he’d gone too far and would mend his ways--by stressing compassion over condemnation--he set off euphoria among the 200 gays and lesbians he invited to meet with him here. It marked the first time a national evangelical leader acknowledged excesses, embraced gays in friendship and vowed to end the incendiary rhetoric of hate against homosexuals, evangelical Christians and others.

Falwell followed up his preaching with concrete practice: He took objectionable material about homosexuality off his Web site immediately after gay leaders protested it as inaccurate.

With those actions, both sides are declaring the stirrings of something historic. The Lynchburg meeting, they say, represents an important first step in easing the passions and pains over the most explosive issue facing religion today--one dividing denominations, shattering families and provoking murder and suicide.

“I am not only hopeful, I’m convinced he’s sincere,” said the Rev. Mel White, the Laguna Beach gay leader who pulled off the meeting after seven years of ardent efforts and, as his former ghostwriter, knows Falwell intimately. “Jerry is risking his ministry because he doesn’t want to go down in history as a hater, but as one of Jesus’ boys.”

Ask Falwell why he’s doing this, and he recounts the string of mindless murders of students, many of them Christians, in Texas, Colorado, Kentucky: the killings of Matthew Shepherd and other gays. “Someone has got to be willing to sit down with whoever will talk and say . . . can we not agree on the worth of human life that God values equally?”

Only time will tell if Falwell really means what he said this weekend at the gathering of 400 evangelicals, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgenders and their straight parents, friends and supporters. In interviews, Falwell defended his views that homosexuality is biblically condemned as sin. He maintained his stand that sexual orientation can be changed with Christian counseling and prayer.

But he also said something that White and others hope will blaze a trail in the evangelical world--just as surely as Falwell led conservative Protestants to integrate churches, televangelize and plunge into the profane world of political action in his movement known as the Moral Majority.

“It is wrong to hate homosexuals, and those who lift a violent hand against them invite the wrath of God upon themselves,” Falwell said. “We believe the homosexual lifestyle is wrong. But, we are commanded by Christ to . . . love the sinner even more than we hate the sin.”

To outsiders, such pronouncements may not seem like much. But to some of Falwell’s conservative critics, they mark a betrayal of biblical principles. Picketing outside his church this weekend were three anti-gay Christian groups, including the fringe Kansas pastor Fred Phelps. (Radical gay leader Bob Kunst of Oral Majority also showed up to blast White and others for meeting with a man he compared to a “Nazi war criminal.”)

But the meeting was nothing short of a miracle to those gays and lesbians of faith who have been beaten by strangers, fired by employers, rejected by landlords, disowned and dumped by their families and told by their churches, synagogues and temples that they are beyond salvation.

In this graceful town of steepled churches, rolling hills and foliage tinged with tones of autumn gold, they came to share stories about growing up gay--and condemned--in Christian churches and families.

There’s Brian Randall, 30, a soft-spoken Chicago salesman who tried to bury his raging inner conflict with over achievements: lettering in three sports, leading Christian prayer groups, excelling in his public relations studies at Falwell’s Liberty University. He desperately tried to change through Christian counseling, fasting and prayer.

But after he gave up and disclosed he was gay, Randall was fired from his job with a conservative political activist. He was excluded shunned from some family gatherings. And he was told by his devastated parents that he would not live long.

White struggled to get straight for more than 30 years--a harrowing journey of electric shock, suicide attempts and Valium--before coming to the conclusion that sexuality of any stripe is a blessed gift from God to be cherished and celebrated. His decision to come out ended his marriage--but not friendship with his wife--and most of his professional relationships as a film producer and writer for such evangelical figures as Billy Graham, Pat Robertson and Jim and Tammy Bakker.

To White and his partner, Gary Nixon, the meeting with Falwell marked the first victory of an approach they created and call “Soulforce.” The strategy aims to end bias against sexual minorities using the relentless but nonviolent principles of Mohandas Gandhi and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Their first target is Falwell. Conservative televangelist Pat Robertson, head of the 700 Club, is next.

With the blessings of Lynchburg Mayor Pete Warren, the 200 delegates were led Saturday in a training session of celebratory music, a Tibetan Buddhist meditation on compassion and hard-core Soulforce principles. Such as: Be loving to your enemies. Earn their trust and friendship. Refuse to quit negotiations until you’ve reached resolution.

Throughout the weekend, White worked to humanize Falwell and position him as a potential friend and ally. The Soulforce group also worked to humanize themselves. They put together a pamphlet for the evangelicals with their photos and their stories, showing themselves as attorneys, teachers, psychologists, artists, computer technicians. They are people who have raised good children, contribute to their churches, volunteer in their communities.

They know things won’t change overnight. The news conference Saturday underscored the difficulties that lie ahead, when discussion over ending violence and forging friendships at times devolved into seemingly unbridgeable differences over whether homosexuality can be “changed.”

Falwell also pointed out hateful acts perpetrated against him by gays--including a bag of urine labeled HIV positive sent to him anonymously--and argued that his teachings against homosexuality have not incited violence, as White and others claim. And he disagreed with critics who say his ministry is flogging the gay issue mainly to raise funds in direct-mail campaigns, now that communism and abortion have cooled as issues.

Despite the myriad differences, Nixon gave a simple reason why his forces will continue to put their faith in Falwell.

“He’s working with his constituency to change them slowly,” Nixon said. “And he’s the only one willing to do that.”