Questions about being gay for my school paper

[Rev. Jim Cunningham]

From: ‹íÍí›Courtney‹íÍí› (Original Message) Sent: 4/20/2008 1:35 PM
Hello everyone. My name is Courtney and I'm a college student majoring in Gender Studies. I'm working on a paper about homosexuality and religion and was hoping for your help. I'm curious in finding out what's it's truly like to experience the conflicts gay Christians have faced. Below is a list of questions. Feel free to answer all or just a few. Post your answers here, or email me ([e-mail]) - whatever you're most comfortable with. Thanks for your help.

Did you grow up in a religious household?
How did your religious beliefs affect your feelings about your own homosexuality? Were you conflicted?
When did you "come out" to your family? How did they react?
Do you attend church? Do you attend a church that openly welcomes GLTB members?
How do you feel about Christianity's position on homosexuality?
Do you think that gays & lesbians should be accepted into the ministry/clergy?
Why do you think most Christian churches continue to speak out against homosexuality?
Why do you want to be a part of an institution that almost universally condemns your behavior, choice of partner, and right to love another person? (Let me just say - I know this is a tough, somewhat harsh question. But this is the question I truly want an answer to most. Please help me understand.)
Thank you so much for taking the time to look at these questions - I would appreciate any insight you have to offer.

[Rev. Jim Cunningham]

From: Manager Rev. Jim Sent: 4/23/2008 1:56 AM
Hi Courtney,

I’m Rev. Jim Cunningham, creator and host of Gay Christian Survivors. I’d be glad to answer your questions. Before I do, it must be said that certain things about my mother will be mentioned merely for the sake of explaining the events as they happened, but is in no way meant to bring accusation or guilt or dishonor to her. She and I have made peace about the past, I have forgiven her, and these things that I mention will not be brought to her charge on Judgment Day.

A little background... I’m a 39 year old Caucasian “80’s city boy” of Scotch, Hebrew and Mexican descent, with two younger brothers, both of whom are heterosexual. I am the only “out” member of my entire extended family, though I’ve seriously questioned the true sexual orientations of my late father, late grandfather and uncle after certain “family secrets” came to light several years ago.

1) Did you grow up in a religious household?

I grew up with a very devout, very strict, yet very loving Christian mother in a very conservative home (no rock & roll, cable TV, or movies rated higher than G permitted, the “rod of correction” was used often, curfew began when the street lights came on, bedtime was 8pm, until I was 17). Until I and my family left the religion of Rome for Biblical Christianity when I was 14, I was an altar boy and had seriously though secretly considered the priesthood. My step-father, who was the only father I knew from 3 to 15 years old, was not religious in any sense of the word (and when he stormed into the church rectory one Sunday when I was 10, after he heard that I’d been literally ejected from church by the ushers because the only clothes I had to wear was a pair of shorts and matching tank top, I seriously thought he was going to throttle the priest); but my mother always brought us to church every weekend and to various home Bible studies throughout the week. Because we had no vehicle, yet a true sense of faith, most of the time we walked long distances to church. While my younger brothers found church boring, I generally enjoyed going to church as a child because even then I truly believed the Gospel and I loved God and loved hearing about Him. Jesus was never the cruel and vengeful God to me that others had painted Him as.

2) How did your religious beliefs affect your feelings about your own homosexuality? Were you conflicted?

Actually, though I had often heard in church that homosexuality was a sin, I simply did not believe it. Some Scripture verses were used to “prove that homosexuality was sinful, and both then as well as now I believed that God truly did say those words. However, I knew myself, I knew that I was gay from four years old, and while I always agreed that fornication is sinful I knew inside that being myself was not wrong, and therefore I presumed that they were obviously misunderstanding the verses. As a result, I never felt conflict within me, I never felt that I was going to hell just because I was something different from most people, and in fact I knew that I was deeply loved by God.

3) When did you "come out" to your family? How did they react?

My mother was the first family member that I came out to. Discussing sex with my mother (who once slapped me across the face when my chest inadvertently brushed against her breasts when I hugged her) was a difficult enough subject, let alone discussing homosexuality; especially knowing that she would automatically associate homosexuality with flagrant fornication. While I was never ashamed to be gay, I did not come out to my mother until 1990, when I was 21 and had moved across the country, because up until then I was afraid I would be sent to an insane asylum, dragged in front of the church for exorcism, or worse. The occasion which led me to tell her was that my partner of three years had left me for someone else. I was devastated, with pain that I never imagined a human heart could feel, and I simply needed Mom. Between heaving sobs I told her over the phone what had happened. When I’d finished, there was silence on the other side of the line. When she finally broke the silence, her words were icy cold as she told me that it was my fault for “choosing that lifestyle”. The rejection of both my partner and my mother was too much to bear and I came very close to suicide. It took a number of years to come anywhere close to healing, during which time I had stupidly turned from God. My brothers were uncomfortable with the issue when I came out to them, but they have never rejected me or made me feel unwelcome. Since that time, in regard to my sexuality I have taken to heart a movie quote which says, “There’s nothing I need from anyone except love and respect, and anyone who can’t give me those two things has no place in my life.”

4) Do you attend church? Do you attend a church that openly welcomes GLTB members?

While I do attend church now and then, as a minister I’m usually the one leading church, whether it be through my online ministry, street evangelism, bible studies, lecturing or writing. When I do attend a church, I am more concerned with their theological doctrine than their views on homosexuality. Generally pro-gay churches tend to be either ridiculously left wing, such as the MCC churches, or they are cults such as Unitarian Universalist, Unity, or Religious Science which completely block the Word of God. The Church of the Holy SpiritSong in Wilton Manors, Florida, is the closest I’ve ever come to an all gay, Bible-preaching church.

5) How do you feel about Christianity's position on homosexuality?

I disagree with it and contend that teaching against homosexuality is a false doctrine completely out of line with the Scriptures. My website (GayChristianSurvivors.com) is a conservative fundamentalist redress of the issue, demonstrating that the Bible does not condemn homosexuality.

6) Do you think that gays & lesbians should be accepted into the ministry/clergy?

That is really a matter for cultural and societal opinion, since there is nothing in the modern church today which bears the slightest resemblance to what the Bible says a church should be. So honestly I could really care less whether some board committee of a denominational church will or won’t accept or appoint gay/lesbian clergy. At the time I was ordained, they didn’t ask and I didn’t tell. Not because I was afraid they would reject me (that hadn’t even crossed my mind), but because I really had no reason to bring it up. I was single and wasn’t dating at the time, and my focuses were on my studies, etc. Had it been known that I was gay and they chose not to ordain me because of it, I would first be shocked (because that would most certainly not be a decision based on godliness), and second, I would simply bid them goodbye and still do what God commanded: “Go, proclaim liberty unto all the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof.”

7) Why do you think most Christian churches continue to speak out against homosexuality?

For the same reason that people make fun of, beat and kill gay people: ignorance and fear. The anti-gay doctrine as we know it originated in Catholicism - which is the bulwark of ignorance in the world - with its oppression of all sexuality. From Rome and its corrupted anti-gay Latin Vulgate bible it passed into the Protestant Reformation and then into the Christian churches which use modern versions of the Bible that are translated from the Vulgate, such as the NIV, Holman, New KJV. But in the end the truth is that religion is simply the red herring. It is pure fear of people who are different that sets people off. It has always been so, even in church.

8) Why do you want to be a part of an institution that almost universally condemns your behavior, choice of partner, and right to love another person? (Let me just say - I know this is a tough, somewhat harsh question. But this is the question I truly want an answer to most. Please help me understand.)

That’s the million dollar question. Why did Blacks in the South still worship Christ even though they were in chains while Southern “Christian” preachers spoke out against them in support of slavery? Why do so many Jews become Christian in spite of the intense persecution they suffered over the centuries by Catholics in the name of Jesus? Because they discovered that “the institution” of Christianity and “biblically Christianity” have nothing in common. They found that Jesus is so much more different than those who do cruelty in His name. They saw through all the crud presented by the “institution”, and saw that in the real Jesus was hope, peace, and mercy. And that is the Jesus that gay Christians have found.

[Rev. Jim Cunningham]

From: Rubius Sent: 5/11/2008 5:20 PM
Why do you want to be a part of an institution that almost universally condemns your behavior, choice of partner, and right to love another person? (Let me just say - I know this is a tough, somewhat harsh question. But this is the question I truly want an answer to most. Please help me understand.)
Because all of these are fundamental to being a human being. As humans, being a part of the human race is everything. As a Christian, being of service to God is everything. With this forebiddence, your are effectively telling me that as a male and because I don't own a memeber of the lesser sex that I am unworthy of being a human. And since I am not human, then I have nothing to offer God and furthermore am of no use to God. You would also declare that God Makes junk and mistakes. This is in complete denial of John 3:16. It would also invalidate that Christ took the time to talk to a Semaritan Female at a social gathering place. Do you not realize the significance of this one act that Christ performed? Nowhere in the Bible previousa to this was woman of any consequence to God. Outside the book of Ruth was anything included from a woman's perspective.,Now we argue whether gays and lesbians have a soul? (c.1978) An arguement waged about females in the 1800's or so. We argue that not only do we have a soul but one that yearns to serve God to it's fullest capacity. That breeding is not necessary to validate our humanity, but to have a significant other in full intimacy of being human IS completely neccesary to being a fully completed human being.

I was introduced to religion at an early age and was asked by my cousin to accept Christ into my life at age 5. We had discussed the exhistance of God and the fallen angels. At age 8, my Mom had become a member of a fundamentalist church and I attended on occasion. Dad stayed out of reiligion altogether and would not talk about his stance. I became a member of the North Olmsted Baptiast Church under the pastorship of the Rev. Kenneth Good. A man I revered and became a student of in a sense, because Rev. Good's sermon was always a lecture of the Bible. And until recently I still had the notebook of scripture versus from those times even after the suggestion was made that I should "tie a millstone around my neck and cast myself over the edge of a boat " for the self atonement of being a homosexual. I left that church at 16. Attended a catholic retreat, a Lutheran school. And now a Presbyterian and 48 yrs. old.