Mel White, once a prominent writer for leaders of the Religious Right, and who ghost-wrote books for both Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, came out of his "religious closet" in the early 1990s to give testimony against the homophobic outbursts his well-known former employers indulge. The author of Stranger at the Gate - To Be Gay and Christian in America, Dr. White is also Minister of Justice for UFMCC (the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches), the largest gay-inclusive Christian denomination.

Dr. Kameny is the father of gay activist militancy, having been the first citizen to approach the U.S. Supreme Court to protest his firing as a government astronomer in the late 1950s. Kameny was also the first gay activist to run for Congress in the early 1970s, and has, since 1961, been on the founding boards of leading national gay and lesbian activist organizations. His accomplishments on behalf of gay and lesbian civil rights are legendary and have been detailed in a plethora of history books.

GayToday's weekend communication from Dr. White finds him taking a dim view, predicting dire political consequences for gay men and lesbians on the heels of Kenneth Starr's investigation. The situation, he says in alarm, is as far more grave than is now generally perceived. He offers solutions, nevertheless, based on Gandhi's and Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s principles.

Reverend Dr. Mel White's Statement Reads:

They will say that turning to God is the nation's only hope. They are sincere, but they are sincerely wrong. For their god is a graceless, angry, intolerant, mean-spirited god, The fundamentalist god who will 'purify the nation' through their temporary reign. And with the fall of Clinton and the potential collapse of the world's economy, their reign is in sight. Now, comes the opportunity to find scapegoats for the world's woes.

We are it, the first of many.

The purge will begin slowly. In fact, it has already begun.

They've set the stage with full-page ads, mass mailings, TV and radio jeremiads.

They've said that we are sick and sinful, That we threaten the family, undermine the nation's values. And at least half the nation has been confused by their false and inflammatory rhetoric. Now we will see what they really meant by loving the sinner and hating the sin. Under their reign, the intolerance will be carried out with a sad smile and a knowing nod.

They will exercise their power to end our rights. They will do their best to drive us back into our closets. If not worse.

So, how do we respond?

Soulforce, satyagraha, the relentless nonviolent resistance of Jesus, Gandhi, King. Soulforce is our one real hope. To acquiesce, to go silently into that dark night, is not an option.

To respond in violence will only lead to more suffering and more death. Jesus shows us the better way. It is the way we have proclaimed but never really had to follow. Love your enemies, he said, without condition, without apology, without footnote. It is the way of the cross and of the empty tomb.

It is the way of weakness that is in fact strength. It is the way of failure that is in fact success. It is the way of suffering and death but more it is the way of resurrection.

Gandhi and King were personally transformed by Jesus' way. They turned the principles of the Sermon on the Mount into practice. They trained Soulforce volunteers in those principles and took to the streets. They didn't dress in white and go up into the mountains to wait for their deliverance. They didn't mourn the overwhelming odds.

They didn't rush back into the safety of their closets. Nor did they arm themselves and go to war. They waged the war of love and they died. But just before they died, they lived. And in their living the world saw "the way" and were stunned by it.

We cannot win the anti-homosexual battles about to be waged in the Congress or the Courts; though we must fight them. We cannot stem the tide of anti-homosexual laws, ballot initiatives, and constitutional amendments; though we must try.

We cannot stop the anti-homosexual rhetoric that leads to suffering and death; though we must answer it with truth in love relentlessly. But we can win the war by out-loving our enemies wherever we face them.

And the enemies we must love include the "religious right." Loving them means bringing them the truth...lovingly, relentlessly. Loving them means standing up to their untruth... unafraid and unashamed.

Loving them means refusing to hate them for the violence that flows out of their campaign against us or to retaliate in kind. Loving them means forgiving them before they ask. Loving them means seeing them as we see ourselves, children of a loving God, members of the same human family, our sisters and our brothers. Out-loving our enemies will change the minds and the hearts of the nation, One heart and one mind at a time.

It is time to call our community to learn and practice Soulforce. It is time to train ourselves in relentless nonviolent resistance. It is time to take Jesus's talk of love seriously again for the first time. It is time to hear his voice,

And the voice of Gandhi and of King, Bonhoeffer and Dorothy Day, of Chavez and Romero. At last, the options are clear. Now, we must decide. Will we take him seriously, take them seriously? Will we walk in the way of our heroes and sheroes? Or will we, like the rich young man, turn away sorrowing, holding on to what we have and in the process losing everything we ever dreamed?"

Dr. Franklin E. Kameny offers a different kind of response. He tells GayToday that:

Unfortunately he was too cooperative then, and handled the situation badly thereafter, creating a true tempest in a teapot, and very much ado about really nothing, to the detriment of all of us, of the Presidency, and of the nation.

Contrary to Mel White's dire forebodings, this will pass, and fairly quickly, whatever the outcome. Either Clinton will stay, or he will be succeeded by another good friend, Al Gore.

The moral fascists on the religious right will continue to be on the run on our issues, as they have been for quite a while, and which is why they are increasingly strident, as losers often are.

They certainly have neither won nor are they winning, and there is no indication either that, on our issues, they will gain from the instant foofaraw or, in fact, that there will be any direct adverse impact, aside, perhaps, of a few fewer friends in Congress after November.

We certainly can and will continue to win whatever anti-gay battles eventuate both in Congress and in the courts, as we have done increasingly in the recent past, because we are right, moral, and American, and the moral fascists opposing us are wrong, immoral, and un-American.

The tide has been with us, it is with us, and it will remain with us, L'affaire Clinton notwithstanding."