OK, so I concede defeat. This first time blogger just couldn’t keep up. I had hoped to send a report from every city on my book tour for Religion Gone Bad but the nights were short and the days were packed with media interviews, radio talk shows, bookstore signings, taxi rides, rushing up and down airport concourses, checking in and out of hotels, meals-on-the-run, and endless airplane flights. I just couldn’t keep up. Here’s a summary of the “adventures of Mel” in the six cities since Minneapolis.

Los Angeles: Home again with family and old friends. I spent the only free afternoon babysitting my grandson Sean who was sick with a fever. Erinn was teaching so Lyla and I joined forces to care for the newest member in our family. Just before the presentation at Book Soup (in Beverly Hills) son, Mike, text messaged me to say, “If you introduce me I’ll bolt for the door.” He and Erinn both hate it when I brag about Mike’s impressive accomplishments as a filmmaker or Erinn’s amazing success as wife, mother, grad student and elementary school teacher. Several of Mike’s Hollywood friends joined him at the signing. Lyla, who is Executive Director of the Pasadena Playhouse, brought members of her staff. Granddaughter Katie represented Erinn and Terry who were home with Sean.

I know you blog readers don’t care about these personal details, but having the whole family enthused about my new book and anxious to support its release is a symbol of prayers answered and fears allayed. My autobiography, Stranger at the Gate, tells the story of those years when I was certain that the struggle to accept my homosexuality would destroy our family and ruin the lives of my children. I prayed daily that somehow God would get us through those dark, difficult days. This visit to Los Angeles reminded me again how God had answered that prayer. There is no way to ignore the fact that the separation and divorce were painful to Lyla and the kids. But through it all, they never stopped loving and supporting me and I am forever grateful.

San Francisco: The bookstore on Market Street just blocks from the Castro was jammed with old friends and new. Richard Baltzell, once my agent/editor/muse and for at least 40 years my friend was there with his partner Chuck Gee. Corey Hidelbaugh, a very special Soulforce volunteer (now beginning his first year at Pacific School of Religion) was present. Corey and his partner Jared moved to Lynchburg without being asked to help us in our work for justice with Falwell and the students at Falwell’s Liberty University. Kara Speltz, the amazing activist who handles my email overload and other Soulforce friends and supporters also came to cheer me on.

I wish I could name all of you who came to the signings, faithful donors whose names I couldn’t remember, old friends with wrinkles, white hair, and sagging waist lines who reminded me of the times we spent together during decades past, and readers of Stranger at the Gate who told me with tears in their eyes how the book had given them hope and even saved their lives.

While walking through the Castro en route to the signing, a middle-aged man in suit and tie passed me looking scared, lonely and entirely out of place. I saw myself in his eyes and remembered my own fearful visits to the Castro (just 60 miles from my home in Santa Cruz) when I was both terrified and exhilarated by the sight of gay men holding hands and lesbian women strolling arm in arm. I never dreamed that one day the terror would be replaced by joy and I would return to that gay ghetto as a proud member of the Queer community.

But I have to admit that entering one of America’s gay ghettoes also left me feeling uneasy and a bit fearful for what might happen here and in other of our gay ghettoes across the US if we don’t wake up to the dangers that could lie ahead. In Religion Gone Bad I tell the story of a secret meeting in 1994 attended by 54 leaders of the Christian right determined to work out their long term solution for America’s “homosexual problem.”

Paul Cameron, a psychologist discredited and denounced by the American Psychological Association for his misuse of data, was one of the keynote speakers at the secret meeting in a castle in the Glen Eyrie conference grounds in the foothills above Colorado Springs. “Unless we get medically lucky,” he had said a few years earlier, “in three of four years, one of the options discussed will be the extermination of homosexuals.” Former Surgeon General C. Everett Coop, himself an evangelical, warns us that Cameron was recommending the extermination option as early as 1983.

Journalist Mark E. Pietrzyk writes in the New Republic, “At least twice Cameron has advocated the tattooing of AIDS patients in the face so that people would know when they were meeting with an infected person. The penalty for trying to hide the tattoo would be banishment to the Hawaiian island of Molokai, a former leper colony. In the event that a vaccine was developed to prevent AIDS, Cameron has proposed that homosexuals be castrated to prevent them from ‘cheating’ on nature.”

Cameron has called for gay bars to be closed and gays to be registered with the government. In spite of the fact that the Southern Poverty Law Center calls Cameron “…one of the most thoroughly discredited researchers in America” it is Cameron’s data that is still used by Dobson, Robertson and the others to caricature and condemn lesbians and gays. When you read or hear the ridiculous statistics about us they probably originate with Cameron. It was Cameron himself who was called to address the leaders of the Christian right in 1994 gathered to create a strategy that would demean and dehumanize us, deny us our civil rights, and drive us back into the closet.

In Religion Gone Bad I describe that strategy and show how one-by-one the Christian fundamentalists are meeting their goals for us. What happens to us if terrorists explode a dirty bomb and close down a major American city? What happens when Falwell, Robertson, Dobson and the others rush to blame us for the tragedy? What happens if the President declares martial law and we are denied our basic rights while barbed wire is being strung up around our ghettoes?

I think the most dangerous rumor going around these days are these four words: “It couldn’t happen here.” I want to quote that Jewish mother who brought her children to meet “gay people” in 1994 when we were fasting in front of Dobson’s headquarters.”Last time they took you first,” she said. “And I just don’t want that to happen again.”

I end the Preface to Religion Gone Bad with these words: “I hope I can persuade you that the struggle for ‘gay rights’ is the next stage in the broader struggle for civil rights in this country. Consciously or unconsciously fundamentalist Christians are using their anti-homosexual campaign to see how much intolerance the American people will tolerate. The intolerance must end. By working to achieve liberty and justice for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans, we are actually working to preserve and protect liberty and justice for all Americans. This is the time to rediscover our own progressive moral values, reclaim the spiritual high ground, and resist those who demean and dehumanize any of God’s children. This is not just a struggle to win civil righs for gay Americans. It is a struggle against fundamentalist Christianity (to use their words) “for the heart and soul of the nation.” It is a struggle we dare not lose.

In Minnesota, the publisher of Religion Gone Bad, the Jeremy Tarcher/Penguin Group, selected the Wayzata Community Church for my talk/Q&A session/book signing. The church hosts a distinguished author series every year featuring at least 12 authors and their latest books.

For clergy or laity shopping for a creative new idea to reach out to your community consider launching an author’s series of your own. Publishers provide (without cost) an author already on tour. A local bookstore delivers and sells books and even uses their customer mailing list to advertise your event. And you pack your sanctuary with people who have never darkened the door of your church and might never come for any other reason.

After snacking with the pastoral staff, including one of my students from those long ago and far away days when I taught preaching at Fuller Seminary, I entered the modern (and very attractive) sanctuary and found it packed with members of the larger Minneapolis Community who applauded enthusiastically and then purchased over 100 copies of Religion Gone Bad.

Driving back to the residence of Randi and Phil Reitan, my hosts for the weekend in Minneapolis, we spoke enthusiastically about the “evening’s success.” There was reason to celebrate. Selling 100 books at one signing is a record for me. The next morning, I learned that James Dobson, Tony Perkins, Gary Bauer and other fundamentalist gurus would soon hold a rally in downtown Minneapolis to support an amendment to the state constitution that would deny gay and lesbian couples the civil rights and protections of marriage.

Get this. The first 8,000 people who attend the Dobson event will be given a free copy of his book dehumanizing our relationships and calling for Americans to deny us the 1,047 rights and protections of marriage. Not only is Dobson’s “save the family” dog and pony show scheduled for the largest auditorium in Minneapolis, but in the weeks before the November 7 election they are taking their fear-mongering campaign to major cities all across the nation.

Just when we think we’re making progress, the Christian right sets out to recruit millions of voters and tens of millions of dollars using the so called “gay agenda” to create fear and loathing of sexual minorities across the US. I’m dragging my old body across the nation appearing in book stores to a handful of people while Dobson and his crew fill the largest arenas in America with Christians cheering his toxic rhetoric against us. While I’m celebrating the sale of 100 copies of Religion Gone Bad, Dobson is giving away 8,000 copies of his false and inflammatory booklet to the first 8,000 people who attend each of his political crusades.

When will we realize that how dangerous it is that we are out-numbered, out-financed, and out-organized by fundamentalist Christians on their way to claiming total power over church and state alike?

Last night on an LA NPR affiliate the Rev. George Regas told the story of the current IRS attack on All Saints Episcopal Church for his remarks the Sunday before election that the war with Iraq is not a so called just war and that President Bush hasn’t told the truth about the war and its tragic consequences to the American people. Now the IRS is trying to strip All Saints of its tax deductible status.

The NPR station then spent an hour with me describing what Jerry Falwell said on that same Sunday. Here’s a sample of his words from his sermon that day.

“This election is clearly light against darkness. Vote Christian and it doesn’t take a lick of sense to know what that means. Until this year, the Amish haven’t voted. This year they will vote for George Bush. I’m taking my plane immediately after this service and picking up Sean Hannity, Bill Bennett, Ollie North and Zell Miller. Together, until midnight tonight, we will do Pennsylvania for George Bush. For the past weeks we’ve done Ohio and Florida. May God bless America one more time…

“Osama Bin Ladin was used of God (see Psalm 76:10) when he threatened the Bush family on Thursday because it will stir up a few extra millions Americans to vote for someone who will not be soft on terrorism, who will hunt down and kill this evil man. If we lose on Tuesday, I will spend the next years raising up another extra million voters to guarantee that Hillary will not get it.” (In Religion Gone Bad: The Hidden Dangers of the Christian Right, pp 223-224.)

The IRS is NOT threatening Falwell or his massive congregation’s tax exemption rights. But they are making a full out attack on Regas and ASC for simply using the words of Jesus to condemn this unjust war.

Lessons: that the dangers of the Christian right are real, that we are living in a defacto theocracy, and that gay Americans, Muslim Americans, women Americans, immigrant Americans, and everyone else who disagrees with the fundamentalists must stand together against their war to make this “a Christian nation once again.”

Action: Join me in sending an email to the IRS including Falwell’s quote above, DEMANDING that the IRS go after pastors and churches on the Christian right who politicize religion and use their pulpits regularly to support candidates determined to deny us our civil rights and drive us back into the closet.

Apparently, there is a way to file complaints through the Treasury Inspector General: http://www.treas.gov/tigta/

With Salvation Army band music blasting from the car stereo at full volume, I rode the 45 minutes from Midway Airport to the Hotel Monaco with Daryl Lach, my long time friend, guide and “chauffer for the day.” En route he described the ghosts who haunted every Chicago neighborhood complete with vivid details of gangland slayings, high rise tenement, elementary school and sweat shop fires, winter storms off the lake that buried the city in snow or summer heat waves that killed the old and young alike. Sometimes there’s a price to be paid driving with an historian, archivist, and tour guide.

Daryl is the patient and all suffering man who for the past 12 years has collected the antigay print, radio and television rhetoric of the Christian Right. The hundreds of examples I use in Religion Gone Bad (and the carefully documented source for each and every quote) are a testimony to Daryl’s skills and determination as a kind of gay spy. It’s a wonder he’s not gone mad in the process.

Can you imagine listening to Dobson’s Focus on the Family or watching Pat Robertson’s 700 Club on a daily basis? Then throw in Hagee, LaHaye, Kennedy, Bauer, Perkins, and the other fundamentalist Christian leaders (including Benedict XVI) and you’ll understand why I love, appreciate and honor Daryl as a kind of saint, a weird, wired and witty saint who is also a registered nurse who tends to children on ventilators, a faithful son who cares for his mother suffering an advanced stage of Alzheimer’s disease, a child of the Salvation Army who though rejected by American Salvationists writes eloquently and prophetically for the British War Cry and on Friday and Saturday nights plays (and twirls) his tambourine as a finale to his stand up comedy at clubs around Chicago.

After dinner with Daryl, I entered my room at the Hotel Monaco to find a gold fish on a table near my bed that the concierge had provided so that I “would not feel lonely so far from home.” The instructions suggested that I name “my temporary pet” but trust the hotel to feed and care for it. I wished I had smuggled my dog Bentley on this book tour when I discovered that the hotel also provided every canine guest a dog box, a dog bed and a “turn down dog biscuit.”

In my room that night, I opened an alarming email article by Ethan Jacobs reporting for Bay Windows. The bold headline reads, “Family Research Council Plans Liberty Sunday Boston Broadcast.” Quoting FRC President, Tony Perkins, this Liberty Sunday simulcast (to be seen October 15 in homes and churches across the nation) “…will describe same-sex marriage as a grave threat to religious liberty in Massachusetts and beyond.” In a letter to his national prayer team, Mr. Perkins enlarged on the purpose of this live telecast just before the November 7 election from Boston’s historic Tremont Temple Baptist Church

“There will be preaching from America’s great pastoral leaders, testimony from civic leaders, policy experts, and everyday Americans whose religious liberties are already being trampled due to same-sex marriage and the homosexual agenda. Americans will see and learn why same-sex marriage and religious liberty cannot coexist. Religious liberty, the cornerstone of all our liberties, will die an untimely death if Bible-believing Americans fail to pray and act now to defeat the legitimization of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts and elsewhere.”

That same night I opened an email review of Religion Gone Bad by the fundamentalist Christian editor of the Dallas Observer, an excellent writer with a very sharp pen. Calling herself “Bible Girl” the editor summarizes her reaction to my belief that Christian fundamentalists are waging war against homosexuality and homosexuals in these words. “…the, well, fundamental problem with Mel White’s argument is that every good God-fearin’ Christian is out to get the gay community.” Later she adds with obvious sarcasm that “White believes that ‘fundamentalists’ are hell-bent on erasing every civil right enjoyed by gays and abolishing the separation of church and state in America.”

Frankly, she’s absolutely correct. I made that claim and I support that claim with at least 100 fear mongering quotes by fundamentalist Christian leaders themselves. Just re-read the words of Tony Perkins quoted above. In a telecast that will be seen in churches across America guest speakers will demonstrate

…that the “religious liberties” of “everyday Americans…are already being trampled due to same-sex marriage and the homosexual agenda.”
…that “Americans will see why same-sex marriage and religious liberty cannot coexist.”
…that “religious liberty, the cornerstone of all our liberties, will die an untimely death if Bible-believing Americans fail to pray and act now to defeat the legitimization of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts and elsewhere.”

When will we finally realize that fundamentalist Christians are spending millions of dollars to dehumanize LGBT people, demean our relationships, deny us our civil and religious rights, and drive us back into the closet or worse? When will we be angry enough (or frightened enough) to rally our own progressive forces and respond to their half truths, hyperboles and lies with truth? November 7 we have an opportunity to at least break their hold on the House and Senate. Register to vote. Donate to the candidate who will stand for justice. Put up signs of support in your front yard. Call party headquarters and volunteer to knock on doors or telephone voters in your area. If we don’t see progress on November 7, it will be a long time before we have that chance again.

Johnny Lochner, a friend in Dallas from Cathedral days, picked me up at DFW and without even asking delivered me straight to our beloved Black Eyed Pea for fried corn on the cob, turnip greens boiled in bacon fat, pickled okra, smashed potatoes smothered in white gravy, fried green tomatoes and of course black-eyed peas. Hot cornbread and fluffy dinner roles smothered in butter and dripping with honey set the stage for this culinary orgy accompanied (need I say it) by endless refills of ice-cold Texas sweet-tea.

Wallowing in starch is a Texas tradition. The closest we come in Lynchburg to this feast of fat is the Golden Corral (a carbohydrate palace Gary nicknamed ‘the golden trough’) a franchised restaurant chain dedicated to keeping Virginia in first or second place on the nation’s obesity index. I could hear the plaque rushing to block my arteries and feel my pulse rate rise to meet the challenge. It’s a good life, if you survive it, and you have plenty of time for regretting later.

Just before the book signing at Crossroads Market Bookstore and Café, I was surprised by a car load of friends who had driven the 3-4 hours from Austin including Jeff Lutes, our new Executive Director, Paige Schilt, another new member of our Soulforce team who has skills in public relations, and Paul Dodd, once a Southern Baptist Chaplain in the U.S. Army and now a close friend and faithful supporter of Soulforce and a member of the Advisory Board of SLDN (Service Members Legal Defense Network).

Once again, the bookstore filled with people and the books sold out. It is fascinating to see how many of my LGBT sisters and brothers know almost nothing about the Christian Right let alone the tragic consequences of their rhetoric in our lives.

I spent the next two days attending a “Bishops & Elders Conference at the Hyatt Grand DFW where Christian leaders whose organizations touch the lives of 98 million Americans gathered to build a movement “to end the homophobia and heterosexism in churches and to reaffirm Jesus’ message of love, welcome, and acceptance of all people.” On September 11, while the nation mourned paused to remember those who died in the Trade Towers, the Pentagon, and on Flight 93, the leaders assembled in Dallas for a press conference to make the following statement.

STATEMENT BY BISHOPS AND ELDERS COUNCIL
“On September 11, 2001, some leading Christian extremists portrayed the tragedy of 9/11 as God’s judgment on America for the presence of gays and lesbians. The intervening years have witnessed an alarming escalation of religion-based, anti-gay attacks by both political leaders and religious groups.

“Today, on the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, we, as leaders representing organizations that touch the lives of 98 million Americans, are united in our rejection of all forms of fear-based religion, all political manipulation in the name of Jesus, and governmental hostility toward gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender persons, especially that hostility that uses Christianity as an excuse to divide society and demonize minorities.

“Today, as Christian leaders who have gathered in Council in Dallas, Texas, we proclaim that discrimination, rejection, scapegoating, and oppression of gay people and their families are incompatible with the Christian ethic of love - and are not spiritual, democratic, patriotic, or fair.

“Today, we announce that the anti-gay agenda against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender is effectively over. Thanks to a rapidly growing movement of churches and faith leaders in communities across the United States, thousands of churches now embrace Jesus’ message that “whosoever will may come,” and open their doors in welcome to same-gender-loving people of faith. Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Christians, along with their families and allies, now have the option of nurturing their spiritual lives in faith communities that celebrate and welcome all of God’s creation.

“Motivated by our Christian faith and to further our nation’s founding goals of justice and equality for all, we call upon all people of goodwill to work actively for an end to discrimination against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender persons by:

• “Realizing that the relationships of same-gender loving couples are equal in every way to heterosexual couples and are worthy of both the right to civil marriage and the rites of Christian marriage;
• “Reaffirming the rights of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgender persons to full equality under the law, including adoption rights, employment and housing protections, and the right to openly serve in the U.S. military;
• “Refusing to cooperate with or support political or religious leaders who caricature and condemn the lives of gays and lesbians;
• “Refuting the ex-gay notion that sexual orientation and gender identity can and should be changed.

“As unified followers of Christ, reclaiming our faith, we commit to speak boldly with our own communities and the larger culture from out of our experience as those who have been both oppressed and oppressor. We will communicate God’s incessant call for justice, wholeness and peace and work to equip ourselves and others to take concrete action to achieve God’s loving shalom.

“The Bishops and Elders Council further commits to continued work on behalf of all people oppressed or marginalized by poverty, immigration policies, HIV/AIDS, addictions, classism, sexism, ageism, or violence.”

The conference was co-chaired by the Rev. Dr. Nancy Wilson, Moderator, Metropolitan Community Churches, Bishop Yvette Flunder, The Fellowship, and Rebecca Voelkel, Program Director of the Institute for Welcoming Resources.

Besides Soulforce, the Fellowship, and MCC organizations present included GLBT and allied Christians from DignityUSA (Roman Catholic), More Light Presbyterians, That All May Freely Serve (Presbyterians), United Church of Christ Coalition for LGBT Concerns, Lutherans Concerned, Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists, Brethren Mennonite Council for LGBT Interests, National Baptist Conference of Welcoming and Affirming Churches, Reconciling Ministries Network (United Methodist Church), the Evangelical Network, the Intern-Denominational Conference of Liberation Congregations & Ministries, Reformed Catholic Church, Universal Anglican Church, National Black Justice Coalition, Room for All, The Fellowship, and HRC’s new Religion and Faith Program, and the National Religious Leaders Roundtable of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

I can’t tell you how exciting it was to see LGBT Christians gathering to hold up another Jesus for the world to see than the antigay Jesus of Robertson, Falwell, Dobson and Benedict XVI. Soulforce membership includes people of all faiths or no faith at all, but this gathering in Dallas was an attempt by Christian leaders to launch a movement that will speak directly to the half-truths, hyperboles and lies of the Christian right. Here’s hoping and praying that this new movement will help people who are victims of their false and inflammatory rhetoric to see Jesus as he really is, one who loves LGBT people exactly as we are.

Today, I was met at Union Station in Washington, D.C. by Paul Peachy, the first of many “author escorts” the publisher has hired to guide me through the media maze that I will encounter in each city visited. Ken Siman, my man at Penguin, was kind enough to lodge me in “the penthouse” of one of the nation’s oldest hotels, the Tabard Inn on N St. NW. As described on their website “Washington D.C.’s quintessential small hotel located on a quiet tree-lined street just five blocks from the White House.”

Gary loves antique. (Thank God. Maybe that’s why he still loves me.) I on the other hand love modern and though the sheets had been changed and the pillows fluffed I am certain that George Washington slept in the very bed where I slept. The massive attic room, reached only by climbing a narrow circular stairway five floors above the lobby (no elevator, of course), was filled with furniture that Pilgrims brought with them on the Mayflower (where is Mitchell Gold and Bob Williams when we need them?) I bathed that night in a cast iron tub with claws.

Living in the Tabard Inn, once a distinguished private mansion, was a step back into history. There may have been no real ghosts in that place but after dining on Chef Pedro Matamoros’s spring rolls stuffed with tender beef and plum sauce, house-smoked salmon, onions and capers with a finale of freshly baked blueberry scones and cream, it was not difficult to imagine ghosts floating about the place.

Like the old Inn, Religion Gone Bad is peopled by ghosts who carried to this city and to our nation the religious teachings that made same-sex intimacy a “sin.” A doctrine invented by the Vatican in the Middle Ages (to punish what they did not understand), the “sin” became a crime in 1533 under Henry VIII and that “crime” migrated to the “new world” with the Protestant settlers who founded the first American colonies.

Gay historian, David Bianco, reminds us that although there were colonial laws making “sodomy” a crime punishable by death, from 1624 to 1740 there were only twenty recorded “sodomy” cases in the colonies with the death penalty enforced just four times. And though those four deaths were tragic and unconscionable, we can take some comfort in their very small number over a period of approximately 116 years. It illustrates that our founding fathers were not preoccupied with “sodomites” or with arresting and prosecuting those who participated in same-sex intimacy. (Religion Gone Bad, pp 134-140)
That is no longer true. Today I’m visiting Washington, D.C. where the President himself has joined other leaders of the Christian right in calling for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would deny gay and lesbian Americans more than 1,000 rights and protections that go with marriage and make us outcasts in our own country. During a live appearance on Sirius Radio’s the “Young Turks” the two hosts, though sympathetic to the current state of LGBT rights in this country, just couldn’t believe that Robertson, Falwell, or Dobson were sincere or that we should take them seriously. They delighted in caricaturing these leaders from the Christian right as “phonies” and “money grubbers.” They didn’t seem to understand that these fundamentalists are true believers and that over the years while liberals laughed at their antics, these same leaders of the Christian right slowly and surely took power over church and state alike. Getting our friends and allies to take the fundamentalists seriously may be the biggest challenge I’ll face on this trip.

During an interview with Katherine Volin, a reporter with the Washington Blade, and a recorded XM Satellite Radio interview for “The Agenda” with Joe Solmonese, the new Executive Director of the Human Rights Campaign, I was delighted to point out that there are lesbian and gay leaders who are equally concerned about the fundamentalist Christian rise to power. Just recently, Harry Knox was appointed director of HRC’s brand new Religion and Faith Program and Jake Reitan represents Soulforce on the National Religious Leader Roundtable of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

This morning during a cab ride across D.C. en route to National Airport we drove through the relatively new World War II monument with its granite pillars and bronze wreathes memorializing the Americans who died storming the beaches of Normandy or raising the flag over Iwo Jima. At one end of that impressive mall the Washington Monument pierced the sky and at the other end the Lincoln Memorial glowed in the early morning sunlight.

I am an American. I love my country. I get chills riding past the monuments and memorials honoring the brave men and women who have sacrificed their lives to protect this nation from tyranny. Now, however, a new tyranny threatens. With Christian fundamentalists exerting their all-too- powerful influence over the Executive, Legislative and even Judicial branches of our government, we must mobilize another generation of brave men and women who will risk suffering and sacrifice to keep democracy in place and oppose with relentless determination those who would oppress us. Like tyrants and would be tyrants through the ages, our current President has declared a so called “war on terror” to deceive and distract us from the real dangers that threaten the world’s oldest democracy.

Yesterday, the whole nation stopped to remember the tragedy of 9/11 and the men and women who died in the Towers, the Pentagon and on Flight 93. I’m certain that the President and Mrs. Bush were experiencing real grief as they lay flowers at Ground Zero and bowed in prayer. But the President and his handlers know well that it is a necessary evil to fan the flames of fear and loathing against Muslim terrorists to keep the American people from dealing with the real issues of prejudice, oppression, and injustice, of war, hunger, poverty, illness, ignorance, disease in this country and abroad.

The President and his fellow fundamentalist Christians are playing the blame game for the nation’s current dilemma. One day after the Towers fell and the Pentagon exploded into flame Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell (in a slight of hand worthy of Houdini) blamed 9/11 (at least in part) on the nation’s growing acceptance of homosexuality and homosexuals. They explained to the millions of Americans who hear their powerful media voices that 9/11 was not just a despicable act of terror by a handful of Muslim extremists but a warning from God that “he will lift his hand of blessing” from this great nation if homosexuality is every considered “normal” or homosexuals are given recognition as a protected minority.

In my book store appearances across the US, people are fascinated by readings from Religion Gone Bad that explain how fundamentalist Christian planned and have been systematically carrying out their “solution” for this so called “gay threat.” In 1994, an impressive group of fundamentalist leaders gathered in a castle in Glen Eyrie, a conference grounds just outside Colorado Springs. We found tapes of those secret sessions in the Tufts University Library, transcribed them, and present them for the first time in chapters 4-5 of Religion Gone Bad. Step by step these fundamentalist leaders have implemented their “homosexual solution.” Amending state constitutions and eventually the US Constitution to limit the rights and protections of marriage is the next stage in their attempt to demonize and demean our relationships, deny us our rights, drive us back into our closets and worse.

Muslim terrorists are not nearly the threat to this nation as the Christian fundamentalists who terrorize us with their literal understanding of the Bible and their determination to superimpose these religious beliefs on the nation through federal and state legislation and constitutional amendments. Their teachings trickle down to discrimination, intolerance, suffering and death. We must mobilize an army of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans and our allies to confront those teachings and the Christian terrorist who exploit them.

In 1837, just a few years before our nation was divided by civil war, Abe Lincoln spoke these words: “At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer if it ever reaches, it must spring up from among us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we ourselves must be its author and finisher.”

Our freedoms are at stake. Democracy is on the block. If we don’t rally to defeat the lies and defend the truth, we have only ourselves to blame for the oppression that will follow

Actually, Religion Gone Bad was launched by my publisher, Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin (a member of the Penguin Group) at Barnes&Noble in Lynchburg two days before the official book tour began. Gary and I arrived at the bookstore afraid that we would spend the evening alone smiling with embarrassment at the shoppers who would pass my stack of books without pausing to eyeball the cover let alone take out a credit card and buy a copy for me to sign.

Instead, the chairs were filled and the aisles were crowded. After being introduced by the store’s manager on their PA system, the whole place grew silent as I explained why I had written so extensively about the dangers of fundamentalist Christianity.

Lynchburg’s Barnes&Noble anchors a shopping mall directly across the street from the world headquarters of Jerry Falwell’s massive new 6,000 seat sanctuary, his radio and television ministries, and his rapidly growing Liberty University. When I declared Liberty Mountain a “toxic religion zone” the crowd broke the silence with enthusiastic applause.

One of the Liberty students present asked how I felt about ex-gays who had “left the lifestyle” and were happily married with children. I answered simply, “Please don’t caricature my life as a ‘lifestyle.’ My sexual orientation, like yours, was not a choice and my life doesn’t resemble in anyway the ‘lifestyle’ demeaned and dehumanized by Jerry Falwell and his fellow fundamentalists as ‘a threat to children and the family.’”

I can’t tell you how difficult it has become for me to answer with love and respect those who are still determined to convince me that my sexual orientation is a sickness and a sin when I know without a shadow of a doubt that my sexual orientation, too, is a gift from God to be accepted, celebrated and lived with integrity. It has become especially irritating when fundamentalists like this 18 year old Liberty student discount my life and my life experience so easily.

They just can’t accept the reality that I am a 66 year old gay man celebrating 25 years in a loving, committed same-sex relationship, that we are not sick nor sinful, that we are people of faith who love God and our country and that we live responsible and productive lives.

They honestly believe that ex-gay therapy would “cure me” in spite of the fact that I spent 35 years of my life in “transformative” or “conversion therapies” from prayer and fasting to exorcism and electric shock before realizing the disappointment, anger, guilt and frustration that comes sooner or later to most ex-gays.

They think they know more about the six passages used to condemn me even though I earned a doctorate in the nation’s largest evangelical seminary so that I could study those passages in their linguistic and historic contexts and that in the process I discovered for myself that the biblical authors knew nothing of sexual orientation as we understand it today and therefore wrote nothing to approve or condemn it.

They haven’t even bothered to read my 32 page pamphlet, What the Bible Says – and Doesn’t Say – About Homosexuality, let alone the two books I have written – Stranger at the Gate and Religion Gone Bad - demonstrating clearly that Falwell, Robertson, Dobson and the others are misusing the Bible to support their war on homosexuals as the Bible has been misused over the centuries to support bloody inquisitions and crusades, slavery, apartheid and segregation.

They won’t even take into consideration what I’ve learned while counseling literally hundreds of ex-ex-gays who had tried everything to change what cannot and must not be changed or what I’ve experienced burying others who killed themselves instead of facing one more day the condemnation of their Christian parents, pastors, priests and professors.

The fundamentalist’s ability to ignore all the evidence is standard fundamentalist behavior. That’s the scary part. As some wise bard has said, “You can’t reason someone out of something they didn’t reason themselves into.”

John Shelby Spong writes; “Those whose religious security is rooted in a literal Bible do not want their security disturbed. Fundamentalists are not happy when facts challenge their biblical understanding or when nuances in the text are introduced or when they are forced to deal with either contradictions or changing insights. For biblical literalists there is always an enemy to be defeated in mortal combat.” (Religion Gone Bad, p.12)

As I launch the tour officially tonight in Washington, D.C. I wonder if fundamentalists will appear at every bookstore signing or media event. Will they see me as “an enemy to be defeated in mortal combat” or worse, will they just ignore me altogether? I can’t wait to see what will happen in DC, Dallas, Chicago, Minneapolis, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Palm Springs, New York (and the cities that will be added along the way). I’m guessing that about now it’s wise to paraphrase Betty Davis and say, “Hang on. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.”

September 7, 2006 Day 1

This morning at 4:30 a.m. Gary and Bentley drove me to the train station to board the Cascade 20 Amtrak to Washington, DC. I think the hardest part of a trip like this is leaving Gary and Bentley to keep the home fires burning while I traipse across the country one more time.

Gary kissed me through the open window. After all these years together he’s still a little bashful about kissing me in public and no wonder. Gay men and women have died for less. But it’s dark and we’re in an almost deserted parking lot. He doesn’t say much before he drives away, just “Be safe” and “See you soon,” but I know what he’s feeling. Sometimes I think we’ve spent most of our 25 years together saying goodbye.

What we both miss most during these times apart is that last hour of the day when Gary settles up against the pillows (why do gay men insist on so many pillows) and I sit between his legs, lean back against his chest and enjoy the absolute luxury of having him massage the knots in my shoulder while we watch a movie or listen to music and wait to see who nods off first.

As they drive away, Bentley presses his nose against the window. I can see the sadness in his dark brown eyes. We adopted this little black, mixed breed dog from a rescue agency just before he was “put to sleep.” Apparently, the animal control officer found him wandering the streets of Orange County, abandoned or lost by his former owners, starving, sick and crawling with worms. Gary didn’t want me to have a dog because I was gone so much but one day without warning he stopped at an outdoor display of animals up for adoption, pointed at this sick little runt and said, “Mel, if you still want a dog, it has to be that one.”

I’ve never understand Gary’s intuitive powers let alone his timing, but I’ve almost never doubted them. I was stunned. I had given up on having a dog. Then suddenly Gary says, “There’s your dog. Walk him around a little and decide if you want him.” The volunteer placed the sick little animal on a leash and said quietly, “His name is Bentley.” I walked “B” to a nearby grassy knoll in the middle of the mall’s huge parking lot. For a moment I sat on the curb just staring down at this motley little creature. “So you’re Bentley,” I said. “Are you the dog for me?” He didn’t move. He just sat there staring up at me trembling. The moment our eyes met the decision was made. The orphan had found his home.

Bentley and I take long walks almost every day that I’m not traveling. He waits by my desk until about 5:00PM and then puts his paws up on my knees and stares at me until I stop typing. “OK,” I say, “get your leash.” Immediately he runs for the closet where the leash is kept (and looking back over his shoulder to be sure I’m not typing one last sentence or answering one last email) he waits for me to fasten his leash, get a pocket full of treats and a plastic bag or two for emergencies.

Lynchburg has approximately twenty miles of paved walks, pathways and bicycle trails running up and down the James River and its tributaries. We’ve walked those trials together in the blazing heat of summer and in winter’s freezing cold. Gary bought Bentley a faux bomber jacket for our walks in the snow (with aviator sun glasses to block the glare that Bentley in all his wisdom refuses to wear.) When I’m traveling, I think I miss those walks more than he does, but as I watch my dog, his nose pressed against the window watching me, I am certain that he is sad and as anxious for me to end this journey as Gary and I am.

The train was sold out so Ken Siman, my publicist, counselor and tour guide at the Jeremy Thatcher/Penguin Group, bought me a “sleeper” complete with two facing seats that folded flat to make a bed. I seldom ride trains and I found the whole experience rather exciting. As we pulled away from the Lynchburg Station, I lowered the seat about half way, fluffed up the pillows and turned on my ipod to the Turtle Creek Chorale singing Rutter’s Requiem.

As the rolling green hills of northern Virginia sped past, a soprano soloist sang, “Blessed are they who die in the Lord for they rest in peace.” My eyes filled with tears when those words in English and in Latin were echoed by 300 gay and lesbian voices backed by members of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. “And may light eternal shine upon them. Lux Aeterna. Lux Aeterna. May they rest in peace.”

I complain about the endless travel, but at moments like this I remember all those gay men of faith, my friends and co-workers, who died at the very beginning of their lives who would have given anything to take this journey. Actually, in the train that morning as the choir sang, those men and others were very present, Thomas, Danny, Jonathan, Joe, Lamar and the others who died from this terrible plague, or were murdered or took their own lives. Men Gary and I have known and loved and remember. “May light eternal shine upon them. Lux Aeterna. Lux Aeterna. May they rest in peace.”

Great News! After 12 years of writing and research I have finally finished Religion Gone Bad: Hidden Dangers from the Christian Right. On September 5, 2006, I begin a month long, nationwide tour introducing Religion Gone Bad to the general public. I hope and pray that this sequel to Stranger at the Gate will sound a clear warning (just before the November elections) that the rise of fundamentalist Christianity is a threat not just to LGBT people but to all Americans.

My book tour schedule is up on the web at www.ReligionGoneBad.com/tour.php. I’m hoping that you will seriously consider joining me at an event near you and/or invite your friends and family who do live near by to spend that evening with me. I’m also hoping you will buy a copy of Religion Gone Bad for your own use or buy extras to donate to friends and family or to use as gifts. Here’s why.

The media only notice a book when a crowd gathers at the book signing events or when a book makes a bestseller list. Word of mouth is everything. When you get a copy and talk about it, word spreads.

I’ve spent the last fifteen years monitoring the Christian fundamentalist’s rise to power in church and state alike. I wrote Religion Gone Bad with the growing realization that LGBT people our friends and families could lose this “culture war” they are waging against us and lose it in a big way.

If, however, we realize the danger in time there is a real possibility that we will stop fundamentalist efforts to turn the US into a de facto theocracy ruled entirely “by righteous men.” Truth and justice can triumph over untruth and oppression but only if we take our stand. I am convinced that Religion Gone Bad could be a real help in mobilizing our community to that task.

Dobson, Robertson, Falwell, Kennedy, LaHaye, Schlafly, Hagee, Bauer, Perkins…you name your favorite fundamentalist and I can guarantee you that he or she is using his or her powerful media empire to recruit millions of American voters and to raise tens of millions of donor dollars to see us demeaned, dehumanized, deprived of our civil rights, driven back into our closets or worse. We must sound the alert!

Bishop John Shelby Spong says:

“Mel White, the gay ghostwriter for both Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, lays bare in this book, as only an insider can do, the fierce anti-homosexual agenda of organized religion from the Vatican to the American television preachers. White paints a frightening picture of what they mean when they call for ‘making America a Christian nation.’ He issues a challenging wake-up call both to those who are traditional Christians as well as to those who hold deeply to human values. A consciousness-raising, must-read book.”

For me this book is a strategic part of our Soulforce mission. To win the election in November, 2006, fundamentalist Christians will use their fear mongering tactics about same-sex marriage and adoption or gays in the church or gays in the military. If they win, we risk losing all the rights and protections the Constitution guarantees us.

I’m hoping you will buy and read Religion Gone Bad; buy a copy for a friend or a member of your family; give a copy to your pastor, Sunday School teacher or church library; offer a copy to your local public or college library. I’m hoping, too, that you will give a copy to someone you know who believes the fundamentalist rhetoric and needs to hear the truth about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. When you buy online from Soulforce, we’ll send an autographed first edition copy to you or to the person or persons you designate with our gratitude!

Sincere Thanks,

Mel White
PO Box 3195
Lynchburg, VA 24503
mel@soulforce.org