Stranger at the Gate: To be Gay and Christian in America
by Mel WhiteHe grew up an evangelical Christian in the 1940s and 50s. His grandmother had gone town to town preaching and his family's plan for him was to save him from hellfire and to hope that he would save many other people. Young Mel, or Jim as he was called, Believed. He witnessed to everyone he met, he ran a bible study class, he went to church and he
believed. And he prayed that God would take away his secret, his attraction to men. He learned to avoid looking at guys he found attractive. He already knew not to discuss what he was feeling. Jim witnessed and dated a fellow senior in high school, Lyla, who later became his wife(she wrote the Forword to this book). He attended a Christian college, where he sometimes counseled other gay students, but didn't admit to his own homosexuality. One of the students he counseled cut off his own testicles in an attempt to escape the evil he was sure he was. His brother Denny died biking off of a cliff while visiting Mel. Perhaps spurred by the thought that God had punished him by killing his brother, Mel went to see a christian psychologist, and admitted that he was attracted to other men. The psychologist advised him to tell his wife. He did. Then Mel started down a long road which led him nowhere, multiple attempts to change his sexual orientation. These attempts include electroshock therapy, staying on an island alone for three weeks, and prayer. A devoutly Christian friend of Mel's dies of cancer, and Mel thinks,
If God won't heal him, why would heal me?, and doubt creeps its way in. Mel successfully makes many movies promoting Christianity, and ghost-writes for many leaders of the Christian right. Mel and Lyla adopt a daughter and nine months later have a son. But Mel cannot keep his homosexuality in check, and he has an affair. Then he gets a boyfriend, and another. He tries living with Lyla and having a boyfriend on the side(with Lyla's approval!), but it doesn't work out. Finally Mel attains a divorce. He moves in with his boyfriend. However, he is still leading two lives; one acknowledged by his heterosexual friends, and a different home life. Eight years into his relationship with his partner, Gary, Mel closes the closet door behind him, and comes out to his former friends, to new friends, to the world. He becomes a gay activist, fighting for the right to be a gay christian.
White combines his account of his life with attacks on the christian and political right in America, as well as a history of gays in America and elsewhere. He compares the rise of the Christian right to that of the Nazi in the 1930s. However this book was published in 1994, and a decade later, gays in America have not lost the
rights White feared they would. White discusses biblical passages used by Christians to condemn gays. He points out that there is no evidence and little likelihood that the sin of the sodomites was what we call sodomy, that most christians wouldn't think of following the other prohibitions accompanying the verse in Leviticus(although he doesn't mention it, some do follow those rules). White argues that it is UNchristian to damn gays. He argues that if he could have changed his sexuality he would have. He can't.
Read.
