“Forever In Love” (Kenny G)

By Ronald Peyton

My wife and I have often been asked how we can be gay-supportive when we are so firmly ensconced within heterosexuality. The answer lies in education. Specifically, it is the education obtained through association with those of whom we once had no knowledge other than the typical societal ignorance and misunderstanding.

As an Adventist pastor, I delivered typical Adventist sermons, citing homosexuality as one of the prime examples of the total depravity of society that showed we were living in the end times. I even quoted from the pulpit Pat Buchanan’s hateful remark concerning the AIDS crisis: “The poor homosexuals. They challenged nature, and now nature is exacting an awful price.”

By coming into contact with gays and lesbians during my ministry, both in evangelism and in visiting AIDS patients, I finally allowed the light to shine through and dispel the ignorance and darkness I had harbored. Another aspect of my path toward enlightenment was seeing the incredible hatred and insensitivity of church members. This was so out of harmony with the gospel message of Christ’s love that we claimed to believe in.

Through the avenue of evangelism, one of the greatest educational experiences that I received in this area was meeting a lesbian couple, Dot and Barbara, and, through them, a gay male couple, Cliff and Gavin. Life is full of interesting twists and turns. While I thought I’d be educating them, little did I know I was the one who was about to receive the most important and life-changing education.

In 1983 I conducted a Revelation Seminar in San Antonio, Texas. The two women, Dot and Barbara, came faithfully to every meeting. Barbara was a retired Lieutenant Colonel from the U.S. Army. One day while I was visiting them, Barbara informed me that medical tests had confirmed a spot on her lung. This meant a terminal condition since the other lung had already been removed because of cancer. The doctor had given her less than six months to live.

In the Revelation Seminar, based on a literal application of Biblical texts, we covered the concept of building one’s own “country home” in heaven. Dot told me how she and Barbara were sitting on their back porch one evening looking up at the stars and talked about how they looked forward to building their country home together up in heaven. Even in my naïveté and denseness I had figured out that they were lesbians. I couldn’t understand why they spoke of being in heaven at all, much less together, since they were lesbians and obviously wouldn’t find a place in the kingdom of God, anyway! Fortunately, I kept that piece of ignorance to myself and decided to simply minister to them and leave their case with God. I never encouraged or gave them an invitation to join the church. They began attending church faithfully, and I suppose we figured that was okay “as long as they weren’t members.”

I remember visiting Barbara in the hospital. Dot was at her bedside and pulled out a notebook to show me. It was a 24-hour chart, broken down into timed segments with friends assigned to sit with Barbara so she would never, ever be alone while in the hospital: 10–11am, Patricia; 11–noon, Sue; noon–2pm, Janet; 2–5pm, Jane, etc. And, when the time came for her to expire, she would not die alone. Such a display of love and devotion was phenomenal, rarely seen in heterosexual marriages, and certainly was not to be expected within some “perverted” arrangement. I questioned if such people were indeed so inherently evil, and whether they really were rejected by a holy God and would be denied entrance into heaven.

When Barbara died, I was asked to conduct the funeral. As a veteran, she was accorded full military honors. When the officer folded the flag, instead of following custom and giving it to her mother who was the next of kin, the officer handed it to Dot and then gave a crisp salute. I later found out that had been a request Barbara made sure would be honored at her funeral. Dot also informed me of another interesting request Barbara had made—she had requested that she be buried with no jewelry. I immediately knew the significance of that. Since Adventists have historically shunned jewelry, I suppose Barbara decided that if we would not invite her to join the church, then she was at least going to be buried looking like an Adventist!

Gavin, a friend from Alabama, had come to help Dot care for Barbara. Gavin was a dignified gentleman in his 70s, a “larger than life” type person who had such a quiet dignity and bearing that made you feel you were in the presence of someone special. He was like the dignified godfather of his circle. When Gavin spoke, people listened with respect, not wanting to miss even the nuance of his verbal nuggets.

At Barbara’s funeral, Gavin introduced my wife and me to his husband, Cliff. We found out that a gay priest had secretly married Gavin and Cliff in 1946. They then introduced us to their 15-year-old daughter, Susan, who was Cliff’s niece. When she was an infant, Susan’s parents were in an automobile accident that killed her father and seriously injured her mother. Cliff and Gavin took Susan home to care for her while her mother recuperated in the hospital. When her mother was released from the hospital, she informed Cliff and Gavin that she did not feel that she could care for her daughter. So when Cliff and Gavin offered to adopt Susan, her mother agreed and signed adoption papers. Susan grew up calling Cliff “Daddy” and Gavin “Mama.” She graduated from high school, got married, and within several years made Cliff and Gavin proud grandparents.

Cliff and Gavin attended a local Baptist church. While the preacher was uncomfortable with them, he found it difficult and embarrassing to express his discomfort with them. When Cliff and Gavin cornered him one day and asked him precisely what the problem was, he stammered and finally said, “Y’all sing out of the same hymnal!”

During a revival, Susan responded to an altar call, which placed the preacher in a predicament. He refused to baptize her because her parents were two men, and at that point Cliff and Gavin decided it was time to move on and look for another church. They were willing to endure bias and discrimination and prejudice, but wanted to protect their daughter from suffering, especially when it came to the point where she was denied baptism.

They found a small Baptist church outside Mobile where the people accepted them, no questions asked. They were just looked upon as being two lifelong bachelors caring for each other and being so Christian as to raise their niece and provide a Christian home for her.

Several years ago, when I was serving as senior pastor for a local Adventist church, Cliff and Gavin came to visit us. At that time, we were trying to help a young church member come to terms with his sexuality without letting him feel threatened because we knew of his minority orientation. His family’s social standing, background, and ethnicity all but demanded denial. Seeds of information could be planted that would make his dawning awareness a positive one when the time came for him to deal with such issues.

When we told the young man that Cliff and Gavin were coming to Chicago, he was extremely curious to meet these “two queers.” When Cliff and Gavin arrived, we took them out for some of Chicago’s famous deep-dish stuffed spinach pizza at Giordano’s and invited the young church member to join us. He was excited! He had a friend from the academy who was spending the weekend, and he asked if he could come, too. We picked them up, and they piled into the backseat with Cliff and Gavin.

We later asked Cliff and Gavin if the young man came across to them as being gay. In typical southern manner, Cliff said, “Oh, Lawd, yes, tain’t no question ’bout it.” I asked him how he could tell, as the child appeared to be a normal child for his age with none of the obvious signs most people would look for, such as effeminate mannerisms. Cliff said something very profound and insightful that makes perfect sense. He said, “Aside from the obvious” (whatever he meant by that), “when them two boys climbed in the back seat, the straight one stuck his hands straight down in his pockets, but the gay one was very open and comfortable being on our laps. He was just more comfortable being close to another man—more so than the straight boy was.” It was nothing sexual—just the unconscious comfortableness of the proximity, as though being physically close to another man was the most natural thing in the world. Through our socialization, Cliff and Gavin could help the young man without ever letting him feel threatened or know that “they knew.”

Gavin once told a funny story of an encounter with an evangelist who had preached a revival series at their old church. The pastor, the one who had finally verbalized his problem with Cliff and Gavin as being “Y’all sing out of the same hymnal,” decided he would invite an evangelist from Florida to preach a series on morality and the traditional family. Cliff, Gavin, and Susan faithfully attended each evening while this visiting evangelist railed against homosexuality as the “unspeakable sin” that is destroying the American family and bringing God’s wrath down upon our nation.

One afternoon during the week of the revival, the pastor and evangelist paid a visit to Cliff and Gavin. It was a hot summer day, and Cliff was out mowing the lawn in loose shorts. When the pastor and evangelist arrived, Cliff came in and they visited in the kitchen around a long counter where they had bar stools. Because Cliff had been wearing loose shorts to mow the lawn, one of his testicles was half hanging out of the side of his pants.

As they were sitting at the counter sipping iced tea, and the pastor and evangelist kept trying to engage Cliff and Gavin in an argument concerning their personal living situation, Gavin noticed the evangelist kept looking down at Cliff’s pants, leaning the bar stool he was sitting on further and further back for a better view. Finally, he leaned too far back and fell over, breaking the bar stool. He got up, embarrassed and apologizing, and Gavin looked directly at him. And right in front of the pastor Gavin said, “You wouldn’ta busted up our furniture if you hadn’t been so intent on getting an eyeful of my hubby’s nuts. I suggest you come to terms with your own self before you come here preachin’ to us.”

When Cliff and Gavin purchased their burial plots, Gavin asked the funeral director “which side is the wife buried on?” When the funeral director told him, “On the right side,” he said, “That’s where I’m to be.” In September 1994, I received a call from Cliff that Gavin had died, just a few years shy of their 50th anniversary. Cliff asked if I could come down and assist their Baptist pastor in conducting the funeral. It was touching and heartening to see the love and support this Baptist church provided. Cliff and Gavin had finally found a church family that had accepted them fully and completely and did not question or pry into their personal lives.

As Cliff was shedding tears over Gavin’s casket and wailing, “Oh, dear God, what am I gonna do?” one elderly lady came up and put her arm around him and said, “I know it hurts, Hon. I lost my husband two years ago, but he’s in a better place now; and with time and the good Lord, it’ll get better.”

As an interesting aside, Gavin’s last name was Lott. Trent Lott, the gay-bashing GOP majority leader senator from Alabama who curries favor with the religious right, is a distant relative of Gavin’s.

To see Christians in a conservative religious culture from a southern town being so nonjudgmental and accepting of a gay couple was nothing less than mind-blowing. It shows that there is hope for people when they’re willing to be educated. And, even if they remain uneducated and filled with misconceptions, they can at least be willing to reach out with love and compassion, regardless of their opinions; and let God be the sole judge.

My wife and I know several gay and lesbian individuals from a Seventh-day Adventist background and culture. We know many of those whose stories appear in this book. We hope these stories will help provide that education and enlightenment that many Seventh-day Adventists and other Christians need regarding God’s gay children everywhere.

Ronald Peyton is a former Adventist pastor who lived in the Midwest.