Bill's Journey - Homophobe to Advocate (Belleville JUSTICE NEWS)

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Belleville JUSTICE NEWS - Fall 2009
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Justice NewsWritten in Belleville, IllinoisJustice News is a project of the Coalition for Economic and Social Justice.

Vol. 1 - Fall 2009

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Bill's Journey - Homophobe to Advocate

(Feature Story)

This is an account of my journey from prejudice to understanding, acceptance and knowledge that human sexuality is a continuum with everyone occupying a point on the long line between heterosexuality and homosexuality.

I was raised in a traditional family and there was never a doubt as to my sexual orientation. I was profoundly heterosexual and the thought never crossed my mind that there might be persons with a different orientation. Oh yes, there was that classmate that didn't seem to fit into the male norm but it never crossed my mind that there might be a question of his sexual orientation.

Many years later I learned that he was gay. In the locker room and on male only get-togethers there were the inevitable jokes about queers but it never dawned on me that these "queers" might be real people.

After college I entered the United States Air Force and ultimately rose to the rank of Colonel. Though I had been raised by my parents to attend church, during the years that I was in the Air Force, I unconsciously used my frequent moves and overseas assignments as an excuse to not attend church.

In 1980 my wife Helen and I moved back to her childhood home to take care of her mother who at that time had bladder cancer. We attended the church that Helen had been raised in and I found a church home.

The people were friendly and the church did bring a sense of belonging to something larger than myself. Helen and I immersed ourselves in the life of the church and volunteered to help where ever possible.



I served on the church governing body and during my last year on this body was President of the Congregation. This led to wider church activities and I was elected to the Board of Directors of the Conference, one of the adjudicatory bodies for the denomination.

On my first Board of Directors meeting I was confronted with an issue that
would challenge me; a young woman preparing for the ministry had revealed that
she was in a committed lesbian relation. The Board was to vote at the next meeting
as to whether she should be continued in preparation for ministry or removed.

I consulted my pastor and re-read the passages in the Bible that seemed to be
relevant to the issue and voted with the majority to remove her from preparation for the ministry. Six years later I joined another Conference committee and at the first meeting I attended the same young woman had petitioned for reinstatement.

To the committees credit they decided to engage in an in depth study of the issue of homosexuality. This study made me question whether I was acting in a fashion consistent with being a good Christian. So a short time later I joined a study group on the same subject at my church.

The study at church was valuable, we did in depth Bible study. For the first time I met openly gay persons (male and female) and found that they are just like you and me. We also talked to parents of gay persons and discovered that in many cases when they found that their child was gay and turned to their pastor for solace, the pastor told them was that their child was an unrepentant sinner; hardly a Christian message.

With the study at the Conference committee and at church completed I was totally convinced that many persons use the Bible as a screen to hide their prejudice and homophobia. Jesus never mentioned homosexuality and was proactive in support of the marginalized. The New Testament message is Love and God's grace, freedom from the laws of the Old Testament. Time and again the message is - all are acceptable in God's sight; then how can I defy God?

In the years following my conversion to acceptance and understanding I have many friends who are gay or lesbian; they are good Christians and worthy people, working, paying mortgages, attending church, leading normal lives just as their heterosexual friends and neighbors do. This would be a better world if everyone would put aside their prejudices and live in harmony with all.



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