Fundamentalists such as Southern Baptists and Catholics promote the problems seemingly with a vengeance, declaring homosexuality itself a sin. Capped by the exhilarating moment of their reunion years later, this wonderful book is filled with love, laughter, and heartache--but has a happy ending.

Unable to bring herself to tell her supportive but very upright Catholic parents, she hid while pretending to be on tour, then entered the safe haven of a convent home for unwed mothers. I have read that Carl Sandburg was once asked what he thought was the ugliest word in the English language. Now I know that gays and lesbians do not choose their orientation, for they are created by God, in his image with an unchangeable orientation which is good and with a God-given purpose.The last time my wife, Anna Marie, and I visited her she shocked us with a statement, repeated in the first sentence of this Letter, about her brother’s being gay. There are nationwide laws against discrimination on the basis of race and national origin, but only one-fifth of our states have laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation–there is no federal law. It’s like the race hatreds and segregated churches of a few decades ago; most church people know better now and our churches are at least open to all. And that is evil, they say, because sex must be between male and female, and it is evil because sex must be in marriage; it is as simple and black and white as that.

Some want to say that same-gender sex acts are condemned by the Bible, and it doesn`t matter by whom they are committed. Once we understand what marriage is, we can see what marriage would mean for us, and why it is worth fighting for. If they vote it down because they have not studied it, then they are voting on the basis of pre-judging, that is, prejudice.

When homosexual unions are faithful to God’s rule, manifest its power, serve its aims and bespeak its hopes and joys, the basic question of readiness for ordained ministry has been met. Freud accepted it and discussed homosexuality rather extensively in the first half of the twentieth century. Louise, one of the first things I realized when I started to think about this subject was that the millions of gays and lesbians in this nation will never, with few exceptions, darken the doors of our churches, because they know our attitude toward them is one of hatred and condemnation.