TITLE

Keeping the faith

AUTHOR(S)

Quittner, Jeremy

PUB. DATE

July 2004

SOURCE

Advocate;7/20/2004-8/3/2004, Issue 919, p34

SOURCE TYPE

Periodical

DOC. TYPE

Article

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the efforts of gays and lesbians in the U.S. to reclaim their beliefs after years of being left behind by most organized religions. When Jason Warner began his freshman year at Lee University, a liberal arts school in Tennessee owned by the Church of God, he had not yet told his parents he was gay. After all, his parents had raised him in a very rigid Pentecostal world where homosexuality was said to condemn a person to hell. Warner readily suppressed his attraction to men. Warner was touring with Christian rock groups across the country, and he dreamed of being a solo artist. But after his first year of college Warner tired of living two lives and worked up the nerve to come out to his band mates. What could have been a devastating moment instead placed Warner on his own religious quest to make peace with the fact that he was a gay man raised in a conservative faith that shunned his lifestyle. Warner attended a service at the Sunshine Cathedral in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, one of the first churches in the United States founded for the express purpose of ministering to gay men and lesbians. Warner allegedly reread the Bible, poring over Old and New Testament verses that mention homosexuality.

ACCESSION #

13771444

Tags: HOMOSEXUALITY -- Religious aspects;  GAYS -- Religious life;  LESBIANS -- Religious life;  HUMAN sexuality -- Religious aspects;  SEX in the Bible;  GAYS -- United States;  LESBIANS -- United States

 

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