No one understands this better than the gay activist and pastor Mel White. Click HERE for this reading.The sentencing of Dharun Ravi for the hateful abuse that may have driven his gay roommate at Rutgers, Tyler Clementi, to commit suicide, or Barack Obama’s public acceptance of gay marriage, prevents many of us from seeing that life for gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people is getting worse-much worse. Mel White, Clobber the Passages: Seven Deadly Verses (Palm Desert, CA: Wideness Press, 2020): pp.

(This book was re-released in 2010 as HOLY TERROR: Lies the Christian Rights Tells us to Deny Gay Equality). His latest book, Religion Gone Bad: Hidden Dangers from the Christian Right (2006) tells the tragic true story of the war fundamentalists have been waging against gays and lesbians. That struggle and his halting, poignant steps to understand and accept his homosexuality, reconcile it with his Christian faith, and express his sexuality respectfully and responsibly, are described in his book Stranger at the Gate: To Be Gay and Christian in America, published in 1994. Raised as an Evangelical Christian and taught that homosexuality was a sin, Mel fought to overcome his own homosexual orientation for decades in all ways available to him: prayer, psychotherapy, exorcism, electric shock, marriage and family. Mel White has been a Christian minister, author, and filmmaker for all of his adult life. In this Lavender Lunch Mel White discusses Clobber the Passages and presents LGBTQ+ people in a healthy new light that banishes that dark cloud of guilt and shame that hangs over too many queer people’s lives. White calls literalists to stop accusing LGBTQ+ people falsely and to start celebrating what they have achieved throughout history in music, science, athletics, politics, the arts, education, literature, the military, parenting, and even religion. Homosexuality like heterosexuality is just another of the Creator’s mysterious gifts. Instead, he blows away that dark cloud by celebrating the truth learned from America’s leading mental and physical health professionals. In his recently-published book Clobber the Passages, Mel White doesn’t bother to explain the verses again. Those verses have forced many LGBTQ+ persons to live their lives under a cloud of shame and guilt. Tuesday (27 April 2021): 12:15pm to 1:15pm (Pacific Time) | ONLINE Click here for a Zoom link for this event!įor centuries, evangelicals who read the Bible have literally misused seven verses to convince the world that homosexuality is a sin and that homosexuals are sinners. Theological Education for Leadership (TEL).Center for LGBTQ and Gender Studies in Religion (CLGS).Office of International Students & Scholars.

Certificate of Spirituality and Social Change.

Master of Arts in Social Transformation.

Stranger at the gate by mel white