Listen to this chapter:
“I Left My Heart in San Francisco”
You would think that a city like San Francisco should have the most gay-friendly churches in the country. Not so! While some may view San Francisco stereotypically as a gay Mecca, it is also filled with an extremely secular, religion-despising population. Except for the historically gay-supportive denominations like Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) or United Church of Christ (UCC), traditional churches view San Francisco as a “mission field,” a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah. They see the Wicked City as their God-given duty to convert before God rains down the destroying hellfire and brimstone and turns the disobedient into pillars of salt. One young married woman was recently told by a well-meaning but ignorant person, “I pray that God will send an angel as He did for Lot to lead Stephen and [you] out of the city before it gets destroyed.”
So when I moved from an extremely conservative and homophobic Texas in 1996 and began attending SF Central Church with my new partner Lina, I fully expected to be ostracized by the denomination I had grown up in and thus be forced to join the ranks of the godless heathen in San Francisco. However, the pastor who was reviewing my church membership request to SF Central asked me this question: Am I keeping the seventh commandment? That was easy! Of course I was not committing adultery. I was faithful to Lina. So Lina and I continued to be welcome at SF Central, and we held church office as practicing church musicians.
A few years later, under a new pastor, one of the gay brothers in the church decided that SF Central needed to have a Gay/Lesbian Ministry; and he drew up elaborate plans, including a website, which he called “God’s Rainbow.” Gays and lesbians were to be encouraged to take an active part in church life, would be accepted equally with their straight counterparts—including holding church office, and would have opportunities to minister to the gay community of San Francisco, as well as with and for the other gay members in the church. They could even exist within the church as same-gender partnered couples.
There was just one caveat. In order to be in alignment with the denomination’s official position on homosexuality, “God’s Rainbow” had to state a belief in celibacy within any relationship outside of heterosexual marriage. But they also stated that it is “neither the right nor responsibility of the church to pry into the private lives of persons” as “it is the work of the Holy Spirit to determine conviction.”
During this period, many—most—of us came out publicly to the congregation, even from the pulpit. We took part in church services, held church offices, and even led Children’s Ministries and taught a Kindergarten S.S. class on a weekly basis. We were visible at the Castro Street Fair, offering health screening services and consultation on how to boost one’s immune system naturally. We held weekly and monthly small group encounters, soup suppers and discussion groups, which were open to anyone—gay/lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and supportive straight people—all of whom attended our small groups. Some of our regular church attendees during that time included everyone from a local transvestite to a lesbian family with three young children. SF Central Church became known around the world—as far away as Europe, Australia, Brazil, and the Philippines—as a safe and welcoming worship environment. Many gay Christians visited SF Central to worship whenever they were in the Bay Area.
Then, overnight, everything changed. Our loving, supportive pastor left and was replaced by someone with an ultra-conservative background, someone who considered himself “supportive” of gays but, in reality, demonstrates a great lack of human sensitivity and understanding of the whole topic of homosexuality. The “God’s Rainbow” founder’s partner of 38 years passed away and the grieving widower moved upstate. The first of the final blows came in 2004, just a week after Lina’s and my commitment ceremony in Portland, Oregon.
SF Central had had an influx of young adults, many of whom came from California’s conservative, homophobic Central Valley. Two of them, in particular, blatantly proclaimed to have been given a charge directly from God to “purge the sins” from SF Central Church; then they used deception, stubbornness, and unethical, unchristian behavior to destroy, in one summer, everything that had been accomplished at SF Central Church for the GLBTI community over the previous five years. At the same time, they split and destroyed the budding Young Adult Ministry of which they had become a part.
Suddenly Lina and I were forcibly removed from almost all that had been the focus of our church life for the past three years, the most important of which was our work with children. We were not allowed to hold church office, and no longer allowed to have anything to do with children. The one thing that hurt the most was how none of our older adult friends—those who had supported and affirmed us during the era of “God’s Rainbow”—spoke up now on our behalf. Complete silence. They and the pastor seemed virtually helpless to prevent or counteract what was happening.
My gut-instinct reaction was one of “flight”—I distanced myself from the church, and attended my local UCC as often as I could. I continued in the background as webmaster for the SF Central website but came very close several times to letting even that go. Lina’s instinctive response was one of “fight”—not against those who had stripped her of her service to God, but in the act of stepping into other areas of church work with adults, with or without anyone’s “permission” but God’s.
Fortunately, the two troublemakers married each other and moved out of state, though they continued to harass SF Central by email several months later, condemning the church and its leadership for still allowing those “sinful homosexuals” to stay in the church.
After a year of proving her value in the adult S.S. program, in 2005 Lina was once again allowed to hold church office—but only if the office she held did not put her on the church board. She focused on her position as head organist and director of the adult choir, since she was not allowed to work with the children. She continued to serve the adult S.S. program until 2006, when she was told she could not hold any church office or participate in any church activity that would put her on the platform, facing and speaking to the congregation. So she started a handbell choir, where she stood with her back to the congregation and spoke only through the music.
In the summer of 2006, one of the homophobic church elders started an adult S.S. class on the topic of homosexuality, using a totally biased book by an eccentric preacher from Africa, who twisted both Scripture and logic in really bizarre ways, even including a condemnation in print of the now-defunct “God’s Rainbow” ministry at SF Central. I felt total repulsion at the very idea! However, encouraged by my gay Christian friends and straight supporters on an email discussion group I’m part of, I decided to attend the elder’s class and speak up on behalf of my gay brothers and lesbian sisters, as none of our straight church friends had done for Lina and me in 2004. The class continued for five long, grueling months. It was only by the power of God that I was able to attend week after week, to give a logical, scripturally sound defense to the ignorance being promoted as fact. My mantra became, “It’s not about me; it’s about God and God’s gay children everywhere.”
Now it is 2007. The transvestite has disappeared. The transgenders have either moved away or have declared their vows of celibacy and “miraculous” transformation into being heterosexual. The lesbian moms have not attended for a long time now. They were not allowed to teach an adult S.S. class as they once did, or even to serve as a cantor during the worship service, as that would put them in front of the congregation. The gay men remaining in the church are either closeted or single. No longer do we have openly gay Christian visitors from around the world or from southern California. Or even from Silicon Valley, 35 miles from here. I’m attending again, cautiously, if only to get photos and news info for the church website and to support Lina in the choir and handbell programs.
And this is what hurts the most. That my beloved church has so wounded these fragile souls and closed to them the door to God. It hurts me that I cannot invite gay people to worship and serve at SF Central. Fortunately, there are support organizations that serve the gay “outcasts” of nearly every major denomination in the United States. Lina and I are blessed to be part of one of those organizations and, through it, can still minister to our gay brothers and lesbian sisters. God has promised (Isaiah 56: 5, 7), “Even unto them will I give in mine house and within my walls a place and a name better than of sons and of daughters: I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off…. Even them will I bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer: their burnt offerings and their sacrifices shall be accepted upon mine altar; for mine house shall be called an house of prayer for all people.”