When the same storm system strikes Florida three times in a week, is it Dire Consequences theology – punishment for attempting to write prejudice into their Constitution, or it is a random expression of the laws of nature?

My father is a minister who used to teach Dire Consequence, not so overtly, until he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, suddenly, he stopped teaching that disease was punishment for sin. People who believe it tend to have a hard time applying it to their own lives, and that provides an opening for re-examining whether it truly applies to anyone’s life.

Once you get them considering all of the bad things that happen to heterosexuals, the whole concept quickly falls apart.

If someone has decided that gay is bad, that determines pretty much his whole thinking on the subject. likewise, gay is good.

This is where I differ a little from timothy. This thought ‘gay is bad’ is the timber from which all other thinking comes. Unless forced by personal involvement (e.g., Dad, I’m gay), or some other factor, there is nothing that will really cause them to look at this basic position.

Two examples: Larry Craig and Ted haggard. Even with the evidence teabagging them on national TV, they’re still not gay. Reality will not intrude.

Many years ago, I was speaking out against an anti-gay initiative in a forum with the opposite side. She was telling the usual lives. Afterwards, I went up to her to talk. she said: ‘here’s my card. please write me.’ I did, showing her the real truth, not her fabrications. I did it politely, respectfully, and with full citations.

I ran into her at another event and asked her if she had look at what I had sent her. “I don’t have time to read letters from homosexuals.” Her contempt was far greater than her interest in truth or compassion.

So much for Christian charity and the truth shall set you free. i could tell a simiar story, though not so bile-ridden, about my parents.

Did he take you up on your offer?

I wrote to you a few days ago in response to your comments to the Mercury News. Since it was sent via email, I was not too surprised that I didn’t hear from you. So, I thought I would write again via regular mail, and hope for the courtesy of a response.

In your comments about the gay marriage issue, you said, “I’m soul-sick over this. The Supreme Court is promoting a lifestyle that is destructive. We’re not angry at homosexuals, we’re trying to protect the family.”

As an out, proud, and happy gay man, I have a lot of concerns about this statement. The first is about my so-called lifestyle. I have a life just like you. I know that it is very difficult for people who have very strong feelings about homosexuality, but don’t really understand much about gay people and what it means to BE a gay person, to conceive that we actually have lives, and that as gay people, on the average, our lives are very much the same as the average heterosexuals’ lives. It does not revolve around either being gay or the search for sex, any more than yours does. In short, it is not a lifestyle, any more than your life with your wife is a ‘lifestyle’. (I am assuming of course, that you are married). To call my life a mere life-style choice, as if I liked to dress up in a sailor suit and pretend I am Captain Nemo, is to trivialize it. Mine is full of friends, family, love, enjoyment, spiritual joy, peace, and happiness, and the blessing of a wonderful partner-in-life that I hope someday to marry, and for exactly the same reasons that you married your wife: because we love each other and wish to build a life together, as we are in fact doing. And doing, I may add, despite the efforts of people who disapprove of gay people and think that they are doing a GOOD thing by attacking us and making our lives as difficult and unpleasant as they possibly can.

However, when you call my life, as you put it, ‘destructive’, you are not merely trivializing it, you are attacking it. Using a biblical phrase, you are bearing false witness against us, because you do not know me, my partner, our families, our friends, or indeed, anything about us. You are merely repeating the same tired old fabrications, distortions, and gossip about our lives created by the anti-gay industry and suckled at the breast of prejudice, without concerning yourself that you might not be speaking the truth, whether knowingly or unknowingly. I can assure you without the slightest fear of contradiction that there exists at least ONE gay couple whose lives are not destructive. We are both of us contributing, tax-paying, law-abiding and productive members of the community, as are our friends. If you knew us at all, you would find that we are both healthy, we live active and positive lives, and are well thought of by family, friends, and colleagues, and live in peace with our neighbors. If this is destructive, then I would say more people should lead lives like this. The world would be a lot better place.

Your final statement is you are just trying to protect the family. How? By denying us marriage? Can you tell me how preventing my partner and me from marrying, from enjoying the same rights and responsibilities and benefits that you and your wife enjoy, has anything to do with, or does anything at all to protect, YOUR family? Not THE family– let’s take it out of the abstract– but YOUR family. How it will cause a husband to stop loving his wife, or a mother her children, or either not to take care of their familial responsibilities?

If you truly want to protect the family, here are some issues to consider that actually are relevant, and whose solution will greatly assist real families now: divorce, adultery, lack of birth control, children having children, air and water pollution, universal health care, unwed mothers, absent fathers, child abuse, child molestation, education, a sliding dollar, racism, poverty, unemployment, inflationary energy prices, drug abuse, overpopulation, and global warming, for starters.

If you truly wish to protect the family, then let us work together to end this unreasoning prejudice towards gay people. I can guarantee you that the prejudice directed towards gay people has destroyed far more families that I could do if I took family destruction on as a full-time occupation. I have personally known examples of children rejected and outcast by their families because they are gay. I have met many men who are heterosexually married but are not heterosexual, who commit adultery and endanger their families and careers because the positive option– having a fulfilled life with another man, with the full support of family and community– is not available to them. Three names I’m sure you know come to mind: Ted Haggard, Lonnie Latham, and Paul Barnes, to name a few. AIDS is rampant is the Afro-American community because of the down-low phenomenon, with black women bearing the brunt of the disease.

I have a friend who adopted a child with her partner– an unwanted child who would have been raised in poverty and disease, but has been given a chance at a different life with her. M. is now healthy, bright, charming, well behaved, and a joy to be around, instead of merely another piece of 3rd world refuse heading towards an early death because his heterosexual parents neither wanted him nor were prepared to care for him. How does preventing my friend from marrying another woman, thereby giving M a set of married parents and all of the benefits that the law and society allow, do anything to protect anyone else’s family? As the Supreme Court decision said, there are an estimated 70,000 children in California being raised by gay parents. Do not those families need the protection of marriage as well?

I have asked these questions respectfully and politely. I hope you will do me the favor of replying in the same vein. In fact, my partner, Paul, and I would like to make you an offer. Please come and have dinner with us at our home in Oakland. (I’m known as an excellent cook). Please bring your wife, or the companion of your choice. Learn a little about us and our lives. I’d be happy to discuss scripture, sociology, psychology, what have you.

Please let me know.

I hear what you’re saying… but I’ve found him so far to be open to hearing facts about the claims he believed.

I’m hopeful for change and I really don’t want to make this about him in specific.

I’m in communication with this individual and I would prefer if we do not inundate him. He’s rather busy at present.

I am hopeful that he will agree to base his future writings on his scriptural understanding and will not rely on claims that do not have any bearing on reality.

It’s when you go over the line to making up stuff and denying the very evidence before your eyes that it becomes bearing false witness.

I would l;ove to write this pastor. any possibilityo f getting his name?