Book Tour Day 2 Sept. 7 Washington, D.C.
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.”
Dearest Mel & Gary,
In the twenty five years you have been together as family you have helped so very many people as they witness the beautiful love you have for each other and hear again and again the truth about that love. You are a gift to us all and we can never say thank you enough. May this book tour wake America to the truths about the Christian Right. Safe travels, Mel and love to Gary and Bentley holding down the fort in Lynchburg.
Our love always, Randi & Phil XXOO
Comment by Randi and Philip Reitan — September 9, 2006 @ 2:57 pm
Mel - Surprisingly, I just read your first book, “Stranger At The Gate”. I discovered you were exactly ten years ahead of me at Santa Cruz High School. I graduated in the class of ‘68. I recognized most of the places you described. I must read your current book soon. Although we did not meet, my husband, David, and I were with you in Colorado Springs in July this year. I am sorry that Fargo, North Dakota is not on your tour schedule as I would like to have an inscribed copy of your book. Thank you for your taking a stand for truth as well as witnessing God’s Love and Mercy. May God continue to bless you and your work.
Love always, Pastor Jon
Comment by Jon Landre — September 9, 2006 @ 5:12 pm
Isn’t it fair to assert that you studied the Bible like a Mormon would? To prove your beliefs?
There is nothing to support a person engaging in homosexual behavior anywhere in the Bible. Not one place.
Comment by Al — November 26, 2006 @ 4:09 pm
You are just way out there.
The bible does not say that homosexuality is ok.
It says God hates it and destroyed an entire city because of it.
You are trying to change what our country was founded on and my peace is in knowing that one day you will have to answer to God for misleading so many people.
Comment by monica j fox — February 17, 2007 @ 1:29 am
Mel:
Very nicely worded, very eloquent as always. You’re a really good writer (which is probably why you “ghostwrote” so many of the fundies speeches.)
However:
Your entire screed was based on sidestepping and mischaracterizing your fundamentalist “opponent.” That’s pathetic.
First, you neglected to give any actual answer to the issue supposedly raised by the “Liberty University Student.” If there ARE actually “happily-married former homosexuals with children” whose situations are actually working out, then you need to address that fact. (You did this same dishonest little dance at the end of your “the verdict is in” video, when you — grudgingly — admitted that “choice” COULD indeed play a role in some people’s sexuality, but then denied that such choices had any relevance whatsoever.
Now, I’m not a fundamentalist by any means, nor do I “agree with” or “support” various of their positions, but, truthfully, I can see the appeal: They stand for values and morality AS THEY PERCIEVE THEM TO BE, and strive to live up to that vision.
From a Fundamentalist perspective (as you yourself should already know) the modernist idea of “sexual orientation” is of no soncequence whatsoever, by way of excusing indulgence in particular behaviors. True, some may have a “homosexual orientation”, but Fundamentalists would counter that some have an “orientation” towards drunkenness, adultery, gluttony, or any number of other acts which their scriptures would seem to denounce. The “fallen” and “sinful” nature of mankind — they would say — allows for all sorts of wicked “orientations”.
Morality from the Fundamentalist point of view is ABOUT curbing those ‘orientations” — drawing a distinction between thought and deed, and acknowleding that while thoughts — inclinations — may not be “chosen” or controllable, ACTIONS CERTAINLY ARE.
(An obvious application of this principle is just because, for example, SOME chronic alcoholics fall “off the wagon” — succumbing to their ‘inclinations’ — that in no way implies either that the quest NOT to do so is faulty OR that the behavior in question isn’t “a choice.”
So Fundies aren’t going to be particularly swayed by the idea that your choice to ACT on an “inclination” that they find immoral should be “tolerated”.
I think they should be applauded for their principled denunciation of what they percieve as rampant wickedness WHETHER YOU SHARE THEIR MORAL PRECEPTS OR NOT.
Secondly, you exhibit the classic pattern of “embittered former adherent run amok, and trying to destroy his former belief-system.” Classic pattern. Look at “Critics of Scientology”, or most of the militant atheist websites (”Ex-christian.net” for example.)
All of your efforts — from Soulforce, the “justicenet”, to your current book tour — just look like frenzied attempts to damage, curtail, or even completely silence and destroy that of which YOU no longer approve. Pathetic from an apostle of “tolerance” such as yourself.
Third — and perhaps most damning of your whole effort — are your Soulforce tactics themselves. Martin Luther was heroic to the extent that — seeing what he percieved to be evil and corruption — he BROKE WITH THE EXISTING church-organization of his time and in so doing sparked the Protestant Reformation. YOU and your Soulforce cronies on the other hand, take a different — and far less defensible — approach: the attempt to basically hijack denominational policy via publicity stunts and media manipulation.
In other words, you’re every bit as much of a propagandist as your fundie apponents. If you had ANY sense of historical pattern, you wouldn’t be attempting to ram your agenda through the existing denominations: you’d be attempting to set up your OWN denomination (which could be as “Gay-Friendly” as you wanted it to be). You and your cronies won’t do that, however, because to do so wouldn’t generate NEARLY as much media “buzz” as public sit-ins, protests, and highly-ritualized arrests captured on videotape.
Another major problem is your (dishonest) comparison between yourself, Dr. King, and Mohandas Ghandi. Ghandi was NEVER part of the British Colonial government of India. Dr. King was a black man who was NEVER in any position to either support — or enforce — legally-mandated Racial segregation.
You, Dr. White, are nothing like that. You were ONE of the fundies you now battle so strenuously. You, in fact, were a WELL-PAID shill for their agenda. The closest thing I can find to compare you with is an ex-KKK activist against racism, but at least the ex-Klansmen have usually renounced their previous tactics, in that they don’t go around lynching and beating Klansmen to “stop racism”.
YOU, on the other hand, use the EXACT tactics of media-manipulation and denominational politics, and “intolerance toward the intolerable” as the fundies. In other words, other than the pro-gay thing, you haven’t changed a bit.
Don’t misunderstand me, Dr. White: I know full well that you’ll probably attempt to shrug off all of these statements as symptoms of “homophobia” just as so many militant “minority” persons use the accusation of “racism” to silence valid debate, but that’s fine: I realize that as a “former” Fundie pundit you can’t help but resort to epithets and Straw-Men if it gets you what you want.
Bye now.
Comment by Henry Emrich — April 4, 2007 @ 4:35 am
Well very said Henry. This is exactly what our dear Mel is doing, promoting a strawman fallacy.
Comment by smart guy — October 19, 2007 @ 11:09 am