I believe that most Christians have difficulty accepting homosexuality in the church because they are unable to accept any sexuality as a means of God’s grace.

I wrote this in my first book, Uncommon Calling--A Gay Christian’s Struggle to Serve the Church. In it I describe how difficult it was for me, at the time a fundamentalist Baptist and biblical literalist, to move through various stages of acceptance of my homosexuality. First I thought of it as both sin and sickness. When God didn’t change me despite my prayers, I moved into another stage, believing that my sexuality was my thorn in the flesh or my cross to bear. It was only when I fell in love with my best male friend in college and found a Presbyterian church unafraid to deal with sexuality that I began to understand that my sexuality was truly a gift from God.

My ministry since has been about reconciling externally what I believe the Spirit reconciled internally: my sexuality and my spirituality. So, my work has been about reconciling the church and the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community. While an M.Div. student at Yale University Divinity School, I began a gay Christian support group in 1974. During a campus ministry internship at the Christian Association of the University of Pennsylvania in 1976, I founded a Gay and Lesbian Peer Counseling Service.

I was the only openly gay member of the Presbyterian Task Force to Study Homosexuality, whose report recommending ordination for gay people was rejected by our national governing body in 1978. Thus I was denied ordination. I became founding director of the Lazarus Project, a ministry of reconciliation between the church and the LGBT community initiated by West Hollywood Presbyterian Church in California and funded by the Presbyterian Church nationally, serving from 1977-1987. I also led Presbyterians for Lesbian & Gay Concerns as national coordinator and editor of its newsletter, now called the More Light Update, for which I've written many articles and edited many prayerbooks.

Since then, I’ve devoted myself to writing and speaking. My writings have appeared in The Advocate, Christianity & Crisis, The Christian Century, Newsweek, and a wide variety of newspapers, church and gay publications. I have written nine books so far, and am working on another. My speaking has taken me from universities to retreat centers, churches to community auditoriums all over North America and in Europe. I give sermons, lectures, and talks, and lead retreats and workshops on themes ranging from spirituality to being LGBT and Christian.

Since 1998 I have been editor of Open Hands, a quarterly magazine for congregations welcoming of LGBT people in seven mainline Protestant denominations in the United States and Canada.

What I enjoy most in my travels is witnessing what people all around the world are doing to change the hearts of their families and friends and neighbors, as well as their spiritual and political communities, about LGBT people. In the almost 30 years I’ve devoted to this cause, I have experienced real progress that we have made in overcoming ignorance and fear with knowledge and love.

I believe we have unique sacred gifts to offer our spiritual communities. One of those gifts is our discovery that sexuality itself is a means of grace, that is, a way in which God touches and caresses and pleasures us, with tender, loving care. Another gift is our reminder that Jesus identified with the spiritually abused--those outcast by religious leaders--and wants both to stop and to heal spiritual abuse.

When not dealing with the relationship of sexuality and spirituality, I focus on the broader theme of discerning and developing a spiritual life, utilizing the Bible as a primary resource and Jesus as a primary guide. Prolific spiritual writer Henri J.M. Nouwen was my professor, mentor, and friend, and shaped my spiritual direction. I’ve led retreats on his life and writings, as well as general spirituality retreats. My morning prayer time undergirds all I am and do. To bask in God’s unconditional love both comforts and challenges me.

Originally from California, I now make my home in Atlanta with my golden retriever/labrador named Calvin (named for the theologian!), whose book, Unleashed The Wit and Wisdom of Calvin the Dog, I translated from the canine in 1998. Click on the link to read some of the excerts from Calvin The Dog's book. See his website, too www.calvinthedog.com. We have recently been joined by little Hobbes, a homeless golden lab mix we met on one of our walks, who now makes her home with us.