When I was [way] younger, I fancied myself as having a calling to a christian healing ministry a la Kathryn Kuhlman. Anyone remember her? Fortunately for me, I got over that delusion.
Those were the nights of riding around Newark, New Jersey listening to preachers on the radio exhorting the faithful to, "Place your hand upon the radio and feel the Holy Ghost coming through the airwaves!" Oh what a time that was...
Then came the days of ministries springing up claiming that Jesus can cure people out of their homosexual lifestyles and into a heterosexual married one. The idea itself was nothing new. In the seventies, Teen Challenge was running a program out of Flatbush in Brooklyn and there were a few people there who claimed to be "ex-gays" as well as having been delivered from the bondage of drug addiction and gang wars through fundamentalistic christianity.
What we have now though are the final death-rattles of entire programs devoted specifically to applying spiritual band-aids to human beings who are hurting because they are gay and living in a society of xenophobes. We had one such program in Albany, New York in 1987 I believe it was. Interesting enough, the program was held on the second floor of a building halfway between the Last Straw [a gay juice bar with a continual showing of two gay men taking off their sailor hats and then...it was a really bad film...but anyone who was in the Last Straw really was on their last straw] and the Warehouse where all the leather gay men and a few lesbian pool hustlers hung out.
Unfortunately, the "ex-gay" leaders of such ministries frequently fell back into the 'wiles' of their homosexuality and usually with their customers. When the venerable and the vulnerable got together, the results were not good.
The healing that was really needed-- the healing of a society that is afraid of the 'other'-- was buried under the lie of the offering of social acceptability. True healing is not a cure.
Blessings to all of us. May we all find the true healing that knows no artificial boundaries or creed.
~sapphoq
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