Gay Today: World

Falwell-White Meeting Sparks International Attention

Compiled By GayToday

Lynchburg, Virginia-- 'Religion Journal' by Gustav Niebuhr in The New York Times began Saturday by beating drums of approval prior to the weekend's much-heralded meeting between former Jerry Falwell ghostwriter, Rev. Mel White, now an openly gay minister, and his former employer who has an unexcelled record, according to some, as a font of anti-gay hate speech.

Rev. Mel White (top) met with the Rev. Jerry Falwell last weekend

The meeting itself, which much of the media has now dubbed "historic", was not, however, open to the press. Outside the doors of the Thomas Road Baptist Church, a virtual circus was in progress Saturday with protesters (including a "God Hates Fags" brigade from the Westboro Baptist Church, including Rev. Fred Phelps himself) remained apart from 200 gay Christians and 200 Falwell supporters also congregating.

Falwell was reported to have apologized for past misstatements and said, "I'm a preacher of the Gospel for 47 years...I cannot compromise what it says. But I surely do want to reach out lovingly." On CNN, however, Falwell and White's press conference showed a less loving side of Falwell as he castigated gay men and lesbians as sinners akin to alcoholics. White predicted hopefully that "down the road" Falwell would become more charitable.

There were those who strenuously objected to the ministers' meeting. Oral Majority activist Bob Kunst was joined Saturday by a coterie of lesbians from Roanoke. Together, with a facsimile of Tinky Winky in tow, they protested what they believed to be a ministerial side-show cooked up to make Falwell look more reasonable than he is.

Florida's foremost gay scholar and longtime activist Jesse Monteagudo, when asked by GayToday to comment on the Lynchburg meeting, said:

Related Stories from the GayToday Archive:
The Stranger Has A Date

Jerry Falwell Meeting with Mel White Causing an Uproar

Jack Nichols Talks Back to the Fundamentalists

Related Sites:
Soulforce

GayToday does not endorse related sites.

"To tell you the truth, I think this meeting will benefit no one but Mel White. Jerry Falwell will not change his opinions on gay people, perhaps because he believes in the traditional Biblical take on homosexuality but certainly because the issue of homosexuality has been very useful to him politically for the past twenty years.

"Mel White, like Troy Perry before him, itches to become the 'Martin Luther Queen' of the gay movement, and hopes his 'summit' meeting with Falwell will help him achieve it.

"Unfortunately, having Bob Kunst lead a pro-gay protest alongside Fred Phelps's anti-gay demonstration will only give White and Falwell the opportunity to portray themselves as 'moderates' and Kunst and Phelps as radicals. If I were able to, I would just ignore the event. Unfortunately, it has become such a media circus that we can't."

Bishop Steven Charleston supports the pursuit of gay equality in the Church

An earlier, less-publicized effort by Christian clergy to ease gay-Church tensions was launched October 1. While the Falwell-White meeting was still in the planning stage, an initiative to rally religious voices against antigay violence was set in motion by Bishop Steven Charleston, president and dean of Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Bishop Charleston wrote the October 1 Cambridge Accord, a statement he sent to Anglican bishops worldwide, stressing that no gay man or lesbian "should ever be deprived of liberty, personal property or civil rights because of his or her sexual orientation," and that the Christian faith must never be used to justify discrimination, or violence.

Nearly 80 bishops signed Bishop Charleston's statement, the most widely-known of them being retired Archbishop of Cape Town and Nobel Prize winner, Desmond Tutu. .