What religion is this that loves but does not love?

Another turn of another decade in the years of my life,
and still, my mother cannot openly love me, her gay son.

By Rev, Stephen Parelli
January 24 and 25, 2013
Bronx, New York

As a gay activist and son, I finally, openly reflect on my mother's inability, after 15 years, to escape her homophobic religious surroundings in which my father, her husband who is a lay-pastor, dominates her life, manipulating her landscape
through the grid of his own dreaded, hidden, secret homoerotic feelings.

 

Yesterday my mother refused to speak with me on the phone when I

called her on my birthday. All she could say, in a soft-spoken voice,

was "OK" to each of my several awkward small-talk comments. Then

she said "I love you, I always have," and hung up. In 15 years times -

since I came out and entered into a same-sex union with my lover in

1997 - my mother and I have spoken perhaps 5 or 6 times.

I wish she could see this present-day, 2013, video of a Parsippany, NJ, high school student coming out to his classmates and suddenly realize,

like an epiphany, that we gays – by virtue of our omnipresence, if

nothing else – are not sinners from whom to separate. Ostracism is

one of the worst forms of abuse a person can suffer, so psychologists

tell us. We gays are people to love just as we are, not off-spring to

disown and disassociate from, to discharge as if suddenly we become

still-born when publicly coming out as gay.

I don't know why God made me this way . . . but I am . . . and I wish

they could all love me unconditionally (just as they once did): That my

parents and my children and my college friends from Bible college and

seminary days, and my former clergy peers and church friends since

my childhood, and my ex-wife (who knew before we married), -- that

they could all love me now, love me still.

God is my witness: I did not choose this! So, I will live it with gusto and

thanksgiving, honoring the God who blesses me with it.

Yes, I am gay and I am blessed with a husband of 15 years who holds

me in his arms at the end of each day and is lovingly, passionately

dedicated to our union. I hurt. He loves me, oh so tenderly, when I

hurt. With sympathetic eyes, he looks deep into mine while holding me.

They - my (former) family, (former) friends and (former pastor)

associates - are missing out on some of the greatest ventures and

accomplishments of my life. I miss them, but I cannot go back. I pray

they will, with love and affirmation, at long last step into the light with

me, and embrace me, and rejoice in God's creative diversity - so

obviously, universally attested to.

"I love you, I always have," my mother said as she silently hung up the

phone, shutting me out of her life again. How sad that she cannot live

the love she testifies of: the love for her first-born, a love she keeps

swallowed up in her breast. What religion is this that loves but does

not love?

I live the love I know, the love I have, the gay-love God has given me

that I, too, should live to the fullest. The moment is mine, it belongs to

those who love. I'm gay. I love. I’m present. I’m alive.

It is my mother who is still-born, tethered to a by-gone, man-made

church-based heterosexist moralistic era from which she cannot now

escape, forever closed-off to her son, knowing only the heart-beat of

her own lonely heart, making the choice to never see, or hear from,

her son.

She hurts.

And who is he who loves her, my mother, oh so tenderly, when she

hurts; who with sympathetic eyes looks deep into her own? It is my

father who late in life became a popular lay Baptist pastor in Central

New York, who became enamored with a new found prestige and

power, who when I said, as a married adult with four children, that ‘I

must tell my mother I’m gay because someone who loves me must

know,’ said to me, grabbing my throat with both his hands and raising

me bodily two inches completely off the floor by the strength of his

rage, “I will kill you if you tell your mother.” It is he, my father, who

comforts her, my mother, with goodly words like “Follow me as I follow

God.”

A year or two will pass before I call again and say, as I did yesterday, “I

just wanted to hear your voice, mom.” “OK” she will manage to say.

And just before hanging up, without the slightest hint that my one-way

conversation with her is over, will whisper “I love you, I always have.”

The phone will go dead and she will go on dying one day at a time,

believing she is honoring God and honoring her husband by aborting,

again, her mother-son relationship, believing she has made this holy

choice of abortion on her own accord when in reality she is tethered.

Tethered to an out-dated God who is majestically ascribed by some

worshipers as “the same yesterday, today and forever,”

misappropriating the sacred text to shield themselves from whatever

changes in society or in life they cannot face.

It is my father who cannot face life as he knows it. He is a homophobe

for reasons, he only knows, found deep in his dark heart. Reasons he

attempts to hide from others. What is it that makes him especially

hateful towards gays that he would say to his own son “I will take a bat

to your head if you attend your grandmother’s funeral?” or “All gays

should be taken out and hung” or “Your ten-year old son should never

see you, or your partner, again – what all gays ever do is molest

minors” or “If you ever tell your mother you are gay I will kill you” or

“I've told your children [ages 10 – 16] what kind of deviant, pervert you

are, and I am not sorry for having told them.”

Such hateful statements are as telling as they are hurtful.

Many argue that such hatred for gays is really a hatred of self because

of one’s own homoerotic feelings. It is not unthinkable that my father

falls into this category: a self-hating closeted bisexual or gay man. His

refusal to attend his granddaughter’s wedding (on the basis that it

would amount to adultery, being her second marriage); his refusal to

be his brother’s best man (same reason, a second marriage and

therefore legalized adultery); his refusal to acknowledge a shower for

his new-born grandchild (because the live-together parents had not

yet decided to be wedded and so they are, therefore, living in

fornication); and his insistence that his grandchildren should separate

from the man their sibling sister was to marry because he was outside

of the faith, all point to a hyper vigilance, and in most cases to a hyper

vigilance for moral or sexual purity.

It is not hard to see how my father’s hyper vigilance for sexual purity

and his open hatred for gay men may indicate a preoccupation with

unwanted homoerotic feelings.

One of the most telling accounts of my father’s fear of his homoerotic

feelings is this: When I was in seminary studying to become a pastor,

my father – much to my surprise – became a lay pastor (as I stated

above). This was in the early 1980s. He was in his late 40s. He had no

education beyond high school, no formal training in Bible or

counseling. I was about to be married. He wanted to give me some

father-to-son, pastor-to-pastor, advice about the marriage bed. He

told me this: “Let me tell you what I tell all the couples I counsel before

marrying them. I tell them not to practice oral sex on the male partner

for this reason. It will only increase the husband’s desire to look for

more of the same outside of the marriage and he will find himself

seeking out men who will provide the service.”

I was shocked to hear my father tell me he was giving this advice to

couples he marries, that, in fact, according to him, the heterosexual

marriage bed would, in deed, in this one case, foster desires on the

part of the husband for same-sex sex.

How un-insightful, on the part of my father, to fail to know that, at this

juncture of the counseling session, he was telling on himself! For all

his hiding and hyper vigilance to keep his homoerotic feelings unseen

and in tow, it was here in the counseling chambers of the pastor’s

office that he completely, unwittingly, let his secret escape him, telling it

to couple after couple.

So, yes, it is in this homophobic context that my mother squanders out

the last days of her life, living in mindless religious isolation with her

moralizing, parading, husband, separated forever from her gay son,

tethered to a homophobic God who is made over in the image of the

man who impregnates her with decades of his self-loathing, self-hating, because of his homoerotic feelings.

If time allows, and if I can muster it, I will phone her again months down

the road, and she will quietly say as she prematurely hangs up the

phone, “I love you, I always have,” while beseeching her asexual God

to forgive her once more for having bestowed a mother’s love upon a

despicable, God-forsaken son.

I will hear her words of love; I will be thankful for it; yet I will always

carry an amount of sadness that life, in her case – in our case, could

not be lived to the fullest as parent-child, as God had intended when

he created family.

Although my father's homophobia overshadows and beclouds my

mother's ability to clear her head and think, there are her own long-

standing, debilitating fears that play into my father's homophobic

disdain for his son.
 

From what I know of her puritanical lecturing over the years, this must

be added: it would appear that my mother's mother-son miscarriage is

due, in part, to an irrational fear she has of sexual misconduct

occurring in others, especially in others close to her. She spoke of this repeatedly, in one form or another, over the years.

So now, when you tie religion into all of this, you have both father and

mother, man and woman, paralyzed before a wrathful Edenic God who

created humankind as sexual beings and who, subsequently, sent

them out of the garden because of their disobedience. Sex, God and

their complex, internalized fears, all tied to gather, complicating their

relationships with others.

My parents always were their own, unscripted, abiding moral guides. The father, homophobic, forming his world and life view during the McCarthy era, was very much guarded - obviously so - as to what is and what is not masculine in himself and in his two sons. The mother, truly doomsday shocked, since the 50s and Elizabeth Taylor and Alfred Kinsey, at the new norms society was forging and re-forging, became the house spoksperson in the sex-revolution 60s for moral

awareness, for what is sexually right and wrong.

Now enter their seminary graduate, preacher-boy son, father of four,

divorcing his wife, openly gay, openly celebrating his new-found same-

sex lover.

My parents immediately resolved, without discussion or further

thought, and as a matter of course, due to their good Christian

character (rooted in their irrational respective sex-laden fears), to

never accept their son again, to never see him, to never talk with him,

to never acknowledge him. He is, after all, what they each fear most:

sexual misconduct in others (my mother) and dreaded homoerotic

feelings (my father).

A pervasive, long standing fear, or any negative emotion that rules us,

is a hard taskmaster, crippling our ability to freely love ourselves and

others. That was and is my parents. Throw in religion, and now you

have my parents unknowingly disguising themselves from themselves,

preventing themselves from seeing themselves.

It brings me some comfort, however, to know that, while they are not

able to love me, neither are they able to love other people like me,

including other immediate family members, who openly cast off

traditional moral values. Such people with "immoral life styles" bring

my parents too close to their own gripping fear that their own marriage,

or their own standing in religious society, could be compromised, some

day, some way, at some unguarded moment.

My mother's words, as important and as significant as they are to me,

that "I love you, and I always have" fail to empower her to actually live

in a loving relationship with her son, her fear of sexual misconduct in

others overpowering whatever feelings she may have for her son.

She must address her gripping fears, along with her husband's fear of

the homoerotic, and only then, I feel, will she free herself to openly

love me unconditionally and others like me who do not adopt her moral

values as their own.

My husband and I, we would, of course, welcome unconditional love

from my mother and father, but with every passing year it seems less

likely, especially knowing that religion, in their case, is their enabler,

that is to say, their brand of religion permits them, encourages them,

reinforces them, celebrates them in their resolve to disown their son

and his partner and others like us, gay or straight, who compromise my

parents' standard of moral integrity.

Essentially, It is their kind of religion that leaves them little to no room

for self-reflection or self-analysis as to what are the real factors,

rather than their religious code, that may be pushing them towards

cutting off all dealings with significant others.

It is their sort of religion that leaves them with no ability to adapt to society's changes around them, so that to say "I love you, I always have" is, sadly, a window to the past, a lamentation of what once was, a polite way to say "This is the parting of our ways."

 

______________________________

By clicking here, this article can be viewed at Other Sheep Exec Site, the site where Steve Parelli and Jose Ortiz share their stories, especially the stories of their travels for Other Sheep.

 

Burmese Baptist Christians Translate, Print and Distribute book on the Bible and Homosexaulity

November 3rd, 2012, Book Launching Event Held in Thailand; Distribution Begun

by Rev. Steve Parelli

Other Sheep Executive Director

Florrissant (St. Louis), MO

November 11, 2012

Saw Yuri Galler, 2009, then President of Myanmar Gay Education

An openly gay Burmese Baptist Christian, Yuri Saw Galler, who was formerly the president of Myanmar Gay Education and a popular gospel singer in Thailand and Burma, working with Other Sheep and LifeJourney Press under a written contract agreement, recently oversaw the translation of the book The Children Are Free into Burmese, and the printing and distribution of 1000 copies.

In an email dated November 6, Yuri said the November 3^rd book launching event, held in Thailand, was successful with over thirty guests attending, including individuals from NGOs (non-government organizations) and journalists who reported on the event.


 

David Aye Myat, in 2009, as Support Executive of Myanmar Gay Education, assited Yuri in the organ-izing the Other Sheep seminar.

Yuri further reported that the 1000 copies are being distributed free of charge. Already, copies have been distributed to Burmese Christians among the Burmese migrants in nine different refugee camps along the Thailand-Burma boarder. Other copies, said Yuri, are being "sent back" to Yangon, Burma, for distribution there, mainly to the parents of our LGBT Christian community.

The project, overseen by Yuri and totally funded by his friends and associates, needs to print additional copies. "1,000 [copies of the book] is not enough," writes Yuri, "but God will provide."

 

Printing costs per copy of the book is about $1 USD each. Donations to the printing of additional copies of the Burmese The Children Are Free, can be made by check to "Other Sheep" and designated for "TCAF Burmese Printing" and mailed to the following address: Susan Fazio, Treasurer, c/o Gordon Herzog, 16768 Old Jamestown Rd, Florissant, MO 63034-1409.

---------------------------------------------------------

A Forward to the Burmese The Children Are Free 2012 Edition: Other Sheep's significant role in bringing the inclusive message to the Karen Burmese Christians

The following forward was written by request of Yuri, the initiator and overseer of the translation, printing, distribution project.

A Forward from Steve and Jose of Other Sheep

In 2009, as husband and husband since 1997 and as co-laborers together since 2005 in an inclusive Christian ministry called Other Sheep, we travelled to Thailand, by invitation of a local seminarian student, to network in Chiang Mai among interested theological students. One person, living in Mae Sot, who took a great deal of interest in Other Sheep, was Saw Yuri Galler, President of Myanmar Gay Education, his mother a teacher at a Baptist theological seminary in Burma. Other Sheep (www.othersheep.com) is an ecumenical Christian ministry that works worldwide to empower LGBT people of faith.

Just days before our departure from Thailand, and while we were in Bangkok working Other Sheep, Saw Yuri phoned us and told us he had made arrangements for a small gathering of Karen Burmese Christians living in Mae Sot, Thailand, to hear our seminar on the Bible and homosexuality. Could we please come, he asked. We accepted

Joyce Hanks, a feat- ured speaker at the 2009 Mae Sot Other Sheep seminar

Steve, not yet knowing that Yuri and the small group that would attend were from Baptist churches, remarked, with tears in his eyes, to Jose over their first wedding anniversary dinner celebration there in Bangkok, that the opportunity to minister in Mae Sot to Burmese Christians was personally very meaningful. As a formerly ordained Baptist minister, Steve had unsuccessfully attempted to have dialogue with his Baptist peer-pastors in upper New York State about the Bible and homosexuality. Now Steve was half a world away from his own Baptist associates, yet presenting his Biblical findings to Burma Christians where Adoniram Judson (1788 - 1850), the famous Baptist missionary and first Protestant missionary from North America to Burma, had brought the Gospel. With Yuri's invitation, here in Thailand, Steve experienced a measure of deep gratitude that he was, in some real meaningful way, tying-in with his Baptist roots and addressing his contemporary Baptist detractors by presenting the message of Other Sheep to Christian Burmese living in Thailand.
On Friday, August 28, following our morning seminar in Bangkok, we drove ourselves by rent-a-car to Mae Sot (perhaps a seven hour trip) to meet Yuri and David Ya late that evening and to present, the following morning, our seminar on the Bible and homosexuality - that God is no respecter of persons. At the seminar, we distributed copies of the book The Children Are Free in English. Following the Mae Sot Burmese seminar, we hurried our way back to Bangkok where, that evening - tired and exhausted yet exhilarated, we boarded our return flight to our home in New York City.

Above Photo:  August 29, 2009, the Mae Sot, Thailand, Other Sheep Seminar to the Karen Burmese Christians

Left to right: Steve Parelli, David Myat, Joyce Hanks,

Yuri Galler, Jose Ortiz

Three years later, with the translation and publication of this book into Burmese by Saw Yuri, those last two adventurous days in Thailand in 2009 have become all the more significant as treasured memories.

To Burmese Christians everywhere - gay and straight, lay and professional, may you eagerly receive this book from the hands and heart of the messengers who introduced it to Thailand and Burma: a one-time Baptist pastor and his beloved husband whose undergrad work was also in theology and world missions.

Together, as a gay Christian couple whose first love is, as best we know how, centered in God and others, we say to you, the message of this book will set you free.

Rev. Stephen R. Parelli

Executive Director of Other Sheep

sparelli2002@yahoo.com

Jose Enrique Ortiz

Other Sheep Coordinator for Africa and Asia

bronzprjo@hotmail.com

Tuesday, October 9, 2012, Bronx, New York, United States

NFL Player Matt Birk vs. the Iowa Supreme Court on Gay Marriage

by Rev. Stephen Parelli

October 4, 2012

Bronx, New York

 

While supporting the right of his teammate Brendon Ayanbadejo, a Baltimore Ravens linebacker, to publically declare his support for same-sex marriage, Matt Birk, a center for the Baltimore Ravens, took issue with him and advanced his own counter-view on the marriage equality debate by authoring an opinion editorial that was recently published in his home state, in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

 

Birk offered but one argument for defining marriage as between a man and a woman:  “The union of a man and a woman is privileged and recognized by society as ‘marriage’ for a reason, and it's not because the government has a vested interest in celebrating the love between two people.  With good reason, government recognizes marriages and gives them certain legal benefits so they can provide a stable, nurturing environment for the next generation of citizens: our kids.”  Later, in the same piece, he repeats his argument:  “Marriage redefinition will affect the broader well-being of children and the welfare of society.  As a Christian and a citizen, I am compelled to care about both.”

 

This NFL player’s opinion needs to go up against the big league.  How about the Iowa Supreme Court? 

 

In their April 3, 2009, ruling that decided “the state statute limiting civil marriage to a union between a man and a woman unconstitutional,” the Iowa  Supreme Court examined the argument that “the optimal environment for children is to be raised within a marriage of both a mother and a father.”  The Court, after hearing “an abundance of evidence and research,” and confirming the findings by independent research, “that the children are served equally by same-sex parents and opposite-sex parents,” concluded that opposition to same-sex marriage “is less about using marriage to achieve an optimal environment for children and more about merely precluding gay and lesbian people from civil marriage.” This conclusion led the Court to further remark that “stereotype and prejudice, or some other unarticulated reason [rather than optimal environment for children], could be present to explain the real objectives” to same-sex marriage.

 

At the end of their ruling, after having rejected other arguments against same-sex marriage, the Court writes:  “Now that we have addressed and rejected each specific interest advanced” in defense of marriage as limited to a man and a woman “we consider the reason for the expulsion of gay and lesbian couples from civil marriage left unspoken . . . : “religious opposition [emphasis mine] to same-sex marriage.”

 

Obviously, Birk is no match for the Iowa Supreme Court.  In fact, his plea for dropping the “bigot” and “homophobic” labels for “people [like himself] who are simply acknowledging the basic reality of marriage between one man and one woman” losses ground against the Court’s statement:  “Whether expressly or impliedly, much of society rejects same-sex marriage due to sincere, deeply ingrained – even fundamental – religious belief.” 

 

In place of “bigotry,” one might say Birk is “religiously intolerant” especially in view of the fact that “marriage is a civil contract” and not a religious order or rite or creed.  Just as government, says the Court, “does not prescribe a definition of marriage for religious institutions,” neither, explains the Court, in a free society, do religious institutions, through the implementation of laws, impose upon society their particular religious views and practices.  “Civil marriage,” wrote the Iowa Supreme Court, “must be judged under our constitutional standards of equal protection and not under religious doctrines or the religious views of individuals.”  In this sense, Birk is either un-American, uninformed of the American way, or simply religiously intolerant of his fellow-citizens who hold a different belief system on marriage.

 

Is he “homophobic?”  Sure he is, even in spite of the fact that his pro-gay-marriage teammate Brendon Ayanbadejo tweeted “I don’t think he’s homophobic.” Matt Birk is buying into, and playing on, people’s fears when he says: “Marriage redefinition will affect the broader well-being of children and the welfare of society.” And when he ties his homophobia to his religious beliefs by saying “as a Christian and a citizen, I am compelled to care about both [society and children]” he is displaying his religious intolerance, tempting others to come very close to using the words “religious bigotry.”   

 

If we go with the Iowa Supreme Court’s assessment, Matt Birk, on the issue of gay marriage and optimum environment for children, is prejudice, or is being stereotypical, or his religious beliefs have left him totally partial.

 

According to Jim Daly of Focus on the Family, “Maryland state delegate Emmett C. Burns Jr., a Ravens fan, wrote a letter to the Ravens owner, Steve Bisciotti, asking him to prohibit his players from offering political commentary.”  Matt Birk might do well to take that advice long enough to do his homework.  As for Brendon Ayanbadejo who was the player that upset Burns with his pro-gay marriage comments, he needs to go right on upsetting the state delegate long enough until the state delegate sits down and carefully reads, and fully comprehends, the Iowa Supreme Court decision on gay marriage.

Parelli and Ortiz featured in September 22, 2012, Martinique newspaper around gay marriage debate

"God loves gays!"("Dieu aime les homosexuels! »)
L.V. (Louvinia Valat) / France-Antilles Martinique 22 Sept 2012

To be Christians while remaining free to live one's sexual orientation: that is the credo of Stephen Parelli and Jose Ortiz.


FRANCE-ANTILLES MARTINIQUE
NEWSPAPER, Saturday, September 22, 2012, issue

FRANCE-ANTILLES MARTINIQUE NEWSPAPER, Saturday, September 22, 2012, issueArticle (originally in French) by Louvinia Valat, Journalist, France-Antilles Martinique
Translated to English by Stanley Hanks

TESTIMONIAL. Stephen Parelli and Jose Ortiz serve as director and coordinator, respectively, of the association "Other Sheep", a group which defends the idea that one can be Christian and gay at the same time, without betraying God or one's faith. This is the battle they have been fighting for over 15 years, both as a couple and as Protestant Christians. This is currently of particular relevance for us in view of the parliamentary debate over gay marriage.

Stephen Parelli and Jose Ortiz visited us in August for a few days before going to St. Lucia to hold a series of workshops on controversial subjects such as: Can one be both Christian and gay? What does the Bible say about homosexuality? Doesn't it treat it as a perversion, an abomination?

Stephen and Jose are, above all, a couple - and they have been together for fifteen years. They are Christians, and they have been legally married since 2008. We would never have had the chance of meeting them if their homosexuality hadn't made it necessary for them to reconsider their faith in the light of their sexual orientation.

In the US, their home country, and everywhere else in the world where Christians await their visit, Stephen Parelli
(Director of Other Sheep) and Jose Ortiz (Coordinator for Asia and Africa) do their best to show that "God is love"
(1 John 4). It is a love which is not exclusive or sectarian.

To prove this, they support their case with the Bible. But without flights of fantasy or extrapolation: instead, they
apply a scholarly approach. Both Steve and Jose have concluded Bible studies at bachelor's degree level; Stephen,
who also holds a Masters in theology, served as a pastor for approximately twenty years. They base their
arguments on the text - or, to be more specific, on a reading of the text in light of the evolution undergone by
society.

IMPOSSIBLE TO BE "EX-GAY"For these two men, their battle necessarily possesses a very personal component. For years, formerly convinced
that their faith was incompatible with their love, they had attempted to stop being gay! They had tried, for instance,
by attending support groups for "Christians who are trying to overcome their attraction for people of the same sex",
praying constantly and waiting for a miracle which was not to occur - until they finally had to give up. "We finally
came to realize that it is impossible to be 'ex-gay'."

However, their mission is not a crusade for homosexuality. Rather, they are fighting for the fundamental right to be a Christian. Neither are they defending a Protestant approach as opposed to Catholic "certitudes", for, in their view,
"all Churches are concerned".

That is what inspires the two to take up their pilgrim's rod and travel the world to meet with Christians everywhere.

Their goal is to exchange views with them in a series of workshops, using materials edited and published by Other
Sheep, in the hope that these Christians will grow to understand that "God accepts gays, lesbians, bisexuals and
transgender people".

To contact Steve and Jose, or to find further information, you can visit the website www.othersheepexecsite.com.

Two Service Providers who Failed to Show us Respect as a Married Gay Couple

Excerpt: “It was as though we were on life support for equal rights, human dignity.”

by Rev. Stephen Parelli, Bronx, NY
Written September 16, 2012

We’ve been home less than two weeks after traveling abroad for two months working in five foreign countries on behalf of human rights for LGBT people, and on two separate occasions – here in the USA – Jose and I have been mistreated as a married couple by professionals who should have known better.

The first occasion occurred at US immigrations upon our arrival in the States. The officer, a Caribbean male in his 50s who checked our passports, upon learning our marital status and that our work abroad was in the area of LGBT human rights, made the comment “So, whose the wife?” In good form we answered directly that neither is the wife but that we are husband and husband. To that he said, “Someone has to be in control.” He made some other off handed, inappropriate remarks related to our work abroad.

Of course, his comments were totally inappropriate and I immediately went to his supervising officer, a Latino male in his 40s, and reported him. The supervisor was deeply apologetic and said he would handle the matter immediately and directly but that he would not have us write it up to go on record and was that OK. Yes, that was OK with us. The supervisor was obviously upset and to show he was genuinely sympathetic told us of a close relative of his who is gay.

The second occasion occurred yesterday. Jose’s doctor ordered him to the emergency room because blood tests showed his potassium to be dangerously high. Upon admittance at the ER, the attending person, a young African American woman, who called Jose by name from the waiting room to check his vital signs, looked at me strangely when I attempted to join him. (I was sitting next to Jose in the crowded waiting room when she called his name. I gathered my stuff and had to step quickly to catch up with Jose at the door of the initial examination room which was a mere 15 feet from where we sat. It didn’t occur to her that we were together, he being black, me white, both male; she had called for an “Ortiz,” so who was I.) “Who are you?” she asked me with a bit of that New York attitude tone in her voice (which is common enough). Jose answered, “He’s my husband.” I forget her reply to Jose’s introduction of me but it was pejorative at worst or a show of resigned, unhappy toleration at best.

Jose and I were both indignant on the inside, but very non-pulsed on the outside. I responded to her without hesitation, pressing the issue. “Most people congratulate us when they learn we are a married couple,” I told her politely, meaning to indicate, quit clearly, that her professionalism was lacking in her treatment of us as a gay married couple, that we should be treated like any married person and person. While attending Jose – checking his blood pressure – , she answered me: “To each his own.” To that I said, “You wouldn’t say that to a heterosexual married couple.” The conversation was over. She made no further comment; she would not apologize nor amend in any way. Her disrespect of our marriage would not be addressed, not by her. There was some moral, religious, cultural line that she would not cross. Whatever caregiver there was in her that qualified her for the ER, it did not have to include showing respect for same-sex couples.

She finished taking Jose’s vital signs and a second woman, an older white woman, entered and sat at a desk in the same room and asked Jose to describe his symptoms. The African American woman answered a phone call and, to her coworker who was taking down Jose’s symptoms, remarked loud enough for all to hear that the neighborhood kids where asking for another overnight at her home, that they spent all their time at her place, they had so much fun there. She stood next to me, talking on the phone. I noted her name on her ID badge. I typed it into my cell phone.

From this initial room we were taken to the ER room. “Not so busy today,” the supervising nurse would later remark. It appeared plenty busy to us. This is the Bronx. A not so busy day is when every bed and chair is filled. We were shown where to sit to wait. Immediately I was In my own thoughts: I need to write a letter tomorrow addressing the inappropriate way we were spoken to; but no, that’s too time consuming; I know, I need to address it now. After reading over the remarks of the offensive conversation which I had written to a note pad on my cell phone, I walked to a central desk area in the ER over which hung the sign “Registration” and I asked if I could speak to a supervisor, that I needed to complain, that we were improperly spoken to as a gay married couple.

I cited the remark that was offensive: To each his own I told the personnel who had said she could call for the supervisor. Having heard to each his own, there was no hesitation on her part. I could sense her own indignation by the way in which she urgently handled my request to speak with someone. It was as though we were on life support for equal rights, human dignity. She immediately called the supervisor who appeared in seconds.

As I registered my complaint with the supervisor, a white attentive woman in her middle years, I was genuinely kind in my remarks regarding the African American woman. I told the supervisor that I was simply raising awareness; that I did not intend for any report of complaint to be placed in the woman’s file; that perhaps the way to handle it is through staff meetings in general discussion. No, the supervisor told me in a matter-of-fact manner, she would address the person directly and apparently now. But first she made sure Jose was attended to in the ER room; then she headed off in the direction where the offence occurred.

At the end of our stay, the woman who questioned Jose on his symptoms happened to pass Jose’s bed as she was leaving at the end of her shift. She stopped and spoke with him. She was glad to hear all was well and that he was going home soon.

In complete contrast to her co-worker, the offending woman who took Jose’s vital signs and I saw each other at a distance, alone in the halls, and the situation was sadly different. I had stepped out of the ER room through a side door into the hall ways in search of a restroom. As I continued in my direction towards her, she busied herself with the empty waiting beds that lined the hall. I passed her with her back towards me. It seemed natural enough the way she busied herself; not too awkward, though somewhat.

Her indifference, expressed by her body language, represents my parents who for fifteen years now have refused to talk, have refused to acknowledge I exist. She represents that conservative, often religious, cross-section of Americans who believe the ideals and values of our country are being so undermined, so irreversibly changed, that only an ill-fated, God-judged catastrophic ending can await this young republic on account of our collective perverse sins. Because she may believe and feel these things so very strongly, I empathize, having been an evangelical Baptist minister, and I disempower my negative feelings towards her by drawing upon my understanding of the grid through which she sees life, the grid she’s never attempted to deconstruct for her own sake. And in some sense I feel sorry for her and for her son or her nephew or niece or close associate whom she will fail to understand some future day when they tell her they are gay, and by her actions and words jeopardize a significant relationship that she treasures.

As I passed her I thought she’s a great person no doubt; she’s a mother with children at home; a mother who hosts overnights for her children and their friends. If only she knew how all that family and fun stuff is what Jose and I are essentially all about.

As Jose and I walked the mile or more from the hospital to our home, we discussed the verbal mistreatment. Jose was totally supportive of my reporting it; in the ER he commended me upon learning I had reported it. After all, he’s a guidance counselor in the Bronx public schools. He addresses this kind of inequality all the time. Bringing awareness to others is part of his job.

We talked between ourselves of our past experiences of other like situations. There was recently the American missionary in Guatemala whose mouth fell wide open when we told him we were Christian and gay; there was the hotel in Africa that refused us stay when we asked for a matrimonial bed declaring ourselves legally married. But more often than not, most people do respond with cheers and smiles. More often people are genuinely happy as if they had just been personally invited to the wedding. And when we tell them we’re 15 years together, the congratulations roll with an element of delightful surprise in their voices.

But once in a while we do meet conservatives for whom we represent all that is wrong about society morally, and they have a very difficult time masking their feelings in front of us. On this most recent occasion, this hospital personnel who admits people to the ER, with all her motherly love for her children at home and her attentiveness to their neighborhood events, she just couldn’t accept Jose and me as married. And in spite of whatever professionalism she should have mustered on our behalf, she could not. We represent something too destructive, anti-society, to treat us like other human beings who are deeply in love, deeply committed, and legally married. Little did she know that Jose had just been told to go to the ER immediately because blood tests indicated that a heart attack could be imminent.

She did her basics: she took Jose’s vital signs. She could have given more heartfelt, human care – the so called “bedside manners” that often make all the difference in the world when it comes to caregiving. When Jose introduced me as his husband, all she needed to do was welcome me as she would have any married couple. Kind of simple enough to do, and oh so professional. But instead, to each his own is not a fitting remark for any hospital staff to make. Otherwise, our ER experience was totally positive. Everyone gave us excellent care. And we did our part – we raised the awareness level of what proper treatment of all individuals should be by reporting the offensive remarks we unfortunately received as a married couple.
 

Kenyan Anglican Bishop Julius Kalu reaches out to LGBT people with affirmation and hope

Anglican Bishop Kalu of Mombasa, Kenya: "Homosexuality is not a choice but homophobia is."

by Rev. Steve Parelli - an abridgement of an article by Rev. Kimindu and Joyshee Gideon

August 13, 2012

Gros Islet, St. Lucia

Rev. Michael Kimindu, President of Other Sheep Africa, in a news flash released on August 13, 2012, by email, reported that Anglican Bishop Julius Kalu of Mombasa, Kenya, upon openly meeting with Rev. Kimindu, LGBT persons and others, publicly stated that "from what I'm gathering from you, I say homosexuality is not a choice but homophobia is." 

The Bishop said this was his first time ever to see or meet with LGBTI people from Kenya or anywhere. He said it is indeed a shame for him that he has been shepherding LGBTI people in the Anglican Church without even knowing it.

The Bishop, reminiscent of Peter's words to the Jerusalem Council when he spoke on the early church's potential discrimination against Samaritans, said that wherever homosexuals manifest the fruit of the Spirit of Galatians 5:22-23 (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and self-control), "where is the difference then" between them and us.

The Bishop strongly condemned the brutal killing of Mjomba, a Kenyan living and working in Tanzania where he was murdered, as a "heinous and cowardice" act and expressed the wish that someday soon LGBTI people will live in a free world without "violence and discrimination."

Kimindu called upon the Bishop to instruct his clergy to pastor and shepherd homosexuals without discrimination. 

The Bishop agreed that his meeting and comments with Rev. Kimindu and the LGBT community were to have "wide circulation."

For the full original report, as given by Rev. Kimindu and Joyshee Gideon, click here (Changing Attitude).

News Flash: Steve and Jose of Other Sheep featured on "atv" Martinique

by Rev. Steve Parelli, August 6, 2012
Schoelcher, Martinique

At this link, select "Journal du 05 Août." The TV segment on Jose Ortiz and Steve Parelli begins at 7:02 (however, it appears you cannot fast forward).

The "Journal du 05 Août," according to reporters who made the interview with Parelli and Ortiz of Other Sheep, will be available for one week only.

It was aired last night twice here in Martinique: at 7:00 PM and 11:30 PM.

Parelli, who lived here in Martinique in 1970 (when he was 17) for four months with American missionaries, was told by an interested Martiniquean friend of 42 years who has watched the developments around Other Sheep's visit to Martinique, that evangelical Christians who know Parelli were taken back, but that the stone has been cast - that serious dialogue among evangelicals will have to follow at some point now that a familiar Christian face has been placed on the issue.

Parelli and Ortiz are in Martinique for two weeks. They are contacting pastors, laity and churches by phone, email, and in person. They are making a tour of the island by car distributing two writings to churches: one on Parelli's "ex-gay" experience and the second on what the Bible does and does not say about homosexuality. The papers, in French, are listed (and linked to) on the Other Sheep French-language resource page.

In addition to the TV news coverage, Parelli and Ortiz have been interviewed by a newspaper journalist and a radio news commentator. Both have stated that their respective news items should come out within the next few days.