My schedule has allowed only snitches of time to complete reading “The Other Side of Silence” that I previously mentioned. I thought that my experiences in the Navy had demonstrated to me the common practices of abuse, violence, illegal entrapment, and humiliation that gays in American faced. By remaining firmly in the closet in spite of a romantic interlude on the Lido in Venice and active solicitation by the roommate at a beach house in Maryland, I avoided these entrapments and exposures that ruined many careers and needlessly cost lives. John Loughery poignantly relates these stories of how gays were the victims of political strategies, societal mass hysteria, police corruption, extortion, and targets of closeted gays filled with self-hatred imposed by the psychology of the times.

For decades GLBT people have been exhorted to “come out” and tell their stories and not be afraid to actively and openly live their lives in society without fear of retribution or discrimination. It takes a lot of courage to do that, particularly in some religious communities who even now actively abuse gays. A lot has been written about the success of Jesse Helms in using gays as the bogeyman in his political campaign. “Keep on Singing” is the story of two mothers who decided to fight back and defend the reputations of their two sons who died of AIDS. During my lifetime, the public perception of GLBT has radically changed from being perceived as freaks and perverts to acknowledging that as a minority we had the right not to face discrimination simply because of our sexual orientation. In the past we didn’t even have to act upon our inclination, rumors or innuendoes were all that were needed to ruin a career or kill a marriage.

Stonewall’s great achievement in the movement was the public step of moving beyond the “victim’s mentality” that immobilized us for too long and which still hampers many others in proclaiming their civil rights in our society cautioned African Americans about “playing the race card or using gender quotas” to get ahead. In spite of the widespread notoriety of the “homosexual agenda,” with the exception of a few Hollywood insiders, gays have never been able to use their orientation to their advantage. In fact, in most cases it worked just the opposite.

So what does that have to do with the current controversies within the Methodist Church? Well, we don’t live in isolation from our culture, and the mores and life views of society penetrate even the rarefied towers of church politics. From my bible studies I’ve learned that “getting back to the basics,” i.e. First Century Christianity, is a fantasy that never existed. The reality was that the scattered communities across the Roman world were so diverse in their ethnic and theological backgrounds that the Apostle Paul was routinely having to chastise them for their “deviant ways.” The influence of Greek philosophy, Roman militarism and hedonism, and cross-cultural influences of economic trade across a vast region, caused a great clash within the evolution from a small Jewish sect into what eventually evolved as Christianity. Too often people forget that Jesus was a Jew and not a “Christian.”