The Gay Samaritan

By Thomas Arthur Nelson

Because his one son happened to be gay and had attempted suicide early in his life, the author has spent more than forty years working in ministry to the gay community. He relates some of the experiences of this lengthy career. The stories he tells are of real LGBT people engaging in heroic charity. These tales conflict with the cultural stance most often supported by religion. He has a particular focus on the Catholic faith, as that is his own origin. The stories of LGBT people do truly fit the title, The Gay Samaritan. His critique of the negative impact of the religious right raises a significant challenge to their hypocritical adherence to Jesus's command for us all to love one another.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781638601722

Book preview

Chapter 1

The Culture of Me

Adversity is born of living; learning is born of adversity

—Anonymous

It was nearly forty years ago that I discovered my only son was gay. Since that time, much has happened to my life’s journey because of that fact:

I found out that my beloved son had attempted suicide, an event, precipitated by his being gay, that he narrowly escaped only through divine intervention;

I reevaluated all the things I had been taught through sixteen years of Catholic education and awoke from an intellectual coma;

I became active in PFLAG¹ and began a forty-year odyssey of activism advocating for the gay community.

My son, whom I consider the greatest blessing of my life, along with his five sisters, have taught me more than I could possibly have taught them. I think it is one of the more obscure benefits of parenthood.

In my life’s journey, my ministry to the gay community has taught me things that I would never have learned in any other way. Most importantly, it has been the single most important factor in revealing to me the true essence of life: loving.

Through the years, because I have seen many families of gay persons up close, I have been privileged to observe their life stories, which are delightful stories of amazing love lived and constantly displayed. At the same time, I have also witnessed too many bleak and depressing stories of love denied, most often by some parents and relatives of gay people—people who are suffering from an affliction of religion-bred bigotry and ignorance, which are reinforced by pompous religious leaders. It is what I call the priest or Levite syndrome. All these experiences are ones that I will never forget and of far greater learning benefit than any possible academic endeavor. It has been a very intense process of learning about who the gay person is and of learning that not all religion is good. Witnessing the terrible injustices inflicted on the innocent and exceptionally loving people by the unwitting ignorance of people who claim to be disciples of Jesus Christ has been perhaps the most difficult for me. It is a drama that reveals the proclamation of Christian love to be, all too often, a sham. This experience has inflicted an unexpected struggle for me. I wage a constant battle against a cynicism that pushes me toward a condemnation of all religion. Intellectually, I know this would be wrong, but emotionally, it is very difficult. There is this constant battle to suppress my anger and disgust over the terrible injustices I see promoted in the name of the all-loving God. There are terrible tragedies that are ongoing, which are the direct result of religious fanaticism, hypocrisy, pride, and deceit. Many of these self-proclaimed religious persons today declare that gay people need to be subjected to conversion therapy. What I have learned over these many years says to me that it is the religious extremist who is in need of therapy. They need to be converted to loving, as Jesus would have us love. They need to stop being judgmental and look in the mirror to see the plank in their own eye. They need to stop and aid the injured man on their own personal journeys to Jericho.

Of course, there are many exceptions to this sad tale, but I have seen firsthand the reality of the obscene hypocrisy displayed by many of those posing as the most strict and prominent Christians. Granted that their hypocrisy is probably most often born of an ignorance of modern hermeneutics and scientific understanding, but it is one that nevertheless displays an undeniable arrogance and one that blatantly claims to know the mind of God, an error which Saint Augustine specifically warned of centuries ago.

I think few would dispute that the world today is a mess. War, terrorism, mass murders, poverty, and political discord—the list seems endless. A brief look at virtually any daily newspaper would confirm that we have a long way to go toward loving one another. Daily murder rates in big cities are a routine statistic, garnering little attention unless they involve some unique circumstance that attracts the media. The love deficient ailment of our culture pervades nearly every aspect of daily life. We routinely witness it and too often practice it on the highway by our lack of courtesy and, sometimes, with road rage.

In America, we have become especially proficient in our self-centered focus, which is daily demonstrated by our well-developed primary concern for number one. Take a walk along any US highway or local street and observe the trash that litters the vicinity. It is clear that many folks view the world as their personal waste bin, a place where they can dispose of their unwanted plastic bottles, empty drink containers, cigarette packs, fast-food wrappings, and an endless list of junk items. The disgrace of America’s littered highways is an ugly testimony to the popular culture that seems to say, If it feels good, just do it. Don’t want it? Throw it out the window Okay, if it’s easy. Not okay if it’s hard. Self is number one. And Love my neighbor? What’re you talking about?

It is a narcissistic hedonism, and it is reflected by the mostly empty trash containers in public places that are frequently surrounded by litter. Much of our nation has become overly obsessed by self-interest, with little concern for their neighbor’s welfare. As I am writing this, America is in the midst of a federal government led by a person who appears to be the most narcissistic leader the US has ever seen. He fits well into the sad decline of our country into the culture of me.

Admittedly, I am presenting a very negative view of our country here. I know there is no paucity of good Americans who lead loving lives and are trying to be good neighbors and conscientious citizens. They are many. They are not self-centered nor hedonistic. I am not focusing on the healthy ones but on the infected element. We need to see the problem and understand it. We need to resist the problem because, yes, there is a problem. And the infected element seems to be growing.

A recent UNICEF report² showed that more than one in five American children falls below a relative poverty line, which UNICEF defines as living in a household that earns less than half of the national median. The United States ranks 34th of the 35 countries surveyed, above only Romania and below virtually all of Europe plus Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. This statistic surely reflects the dominance of our individual self-interest infesting the national scene. Does this statistic not pose the question: Who cares about their neighbor? What American can be proud of that statistic? There are other measures of American shame. The lopsided distribution of wealth to the ultrarich is well known. The disparity of political influence favoring the wealthy top 1 percent is another. We are drifting toward a system which might be termed a new nation, a new royalty. Yes, there is a problem.

The self-interest mantra is a philosophy that is obviously rampant in Washington. Our political representatives do a proficient job of constantly practicing self-interest. Perhaps, one could say they truly do reflect their constituency in that respect. Lack of civility between parties is the norm. We’ve entered a new realm where it’s news when legislators compromise to pass needed new legislation. Everywhere you look, only self-interest is in play. It hasn’t always been that way. I remember several decades back when compromise in Washington was the norm. What has happened?

Many proudly proclaim that America is a Christian nation. Perhaps, if the measure is by church affiliation, that may be true. But if the measure is by loving one another, then Christians are a very small minority. Sometimes, I wonder if any even exist. Any denomination, whether Christian, Jew, Muslim, or other, may proudly proclaim the truth of their faith, yet does such truth shine through our hedonistic culture? Is there any true faith, as it is practiced today, that promises solutions to the world’s problems? Does our Christian America practice the commandment of Jesus to love one another? Does our Christian nation ever turn the other cheek? When has that ever happened? Anywhere? Has any politician ever even suggested we do such a thing?

Loving one another is admittedly not an easy thing. Looking back, I realize that it took me nearly six decades of living to finally come near comprehending the depth and real meaning of those words of Jesus. While most of us experience love in our lives, few of us ever achieve it in the fullest sense that Jesus had in mind, even momentarily. Yet loving one another unconditionally is the truest challenge for any Christian. It is not an easy task. I know that I constantly struggle to be the loving person I want to be. On the rare occasions when I think I have achieved some success, I realize I was the recipient of some unusual grace. My conclusion is that there’s not a lot of good we can do without the help of God. The thing is, we need to want it before God will give it. Ask and you will receive. At best, our loving it is confined to family members, rarely to our neighbors. For all of us, it is a lifelong challenge. Yet loving is the ultimate human endeavor. Loving is living. To truly live is to love. Everything else falls far short of the love experience. There is a joy in loving that surpasses all other human experience. For most of us, our faith is too small and too weak to really accomplish loving as broadly and as fully as Jesus asked. Consider this: What tragedy besetting humanity today would not be alleviated if all involved would simply love one another? It’s a scenario that would be hard to imagine. In all of history, it has never been tried, except by him who gave us that command. (And he got nailed to a cross.) To consider that it will ever happen on a worldwide basis seems to be sheer fantasy.

Today, the world is facing an ideology that is the antithesis of love. It is called terrorism or by some radical Islamism. Yet it seems to have nothing to do with Islamism other than usurping the name. It is devoid of love and fosters hate. Terrorism succeeds in substantial measure by utilizing the Christian weakness for not truly loving one another.

So that is our challenge: Love one another. Diarmuid O’Murchu, Irish priest, author, and psychologist, has said that humanity is in a constant state of evolution. We experience a continuum of two steps forward, one step back. Surely, we are mostly in the one-step-back phase of that process in the present time, yet there are some among us who are definitely taking two steps forward or more. And it would undoubtably surprise many of us to know just who is making those forward strides. It is mostly the gay people.

We will examine this idea of loving one another in forthcoming chapters. Who loves well? What are the signs of loving well? Whom should we love? How does one love well? Why do we not love one another as Jesus asked? Must we love gay people? Do gay people really love in the sense that Jesus proscribed? I will attempt to show that gay people do in fact love one another far better than is known. It seems far better than do the rest of us straight people.

Early Navajo Indian culture understood gay people to be special. They were considered to be two-spirited and gifted. But then the Navajos became civilized by Christian missionaries. Today, the Navajo people struggle under the same homophobic Christian influence, much like the rest of our country.

In the following pages, I will tell you some stories. The stories I will tell you are true stories, stories of ordinary gay people—gay people I have known and gay people who do in fact love one another. I call them Gay Samaritans.

I will also tell you some other stories, stories of straight people and their failure to love gay people while practicing a non-Christian-bred hypocrisy, a homophobia that is the antithesis of the love-one-another command. I begin by telling the story about one of these false Christian stories, parents whom I consider examples of the all-too-common modern-day priest or Levite.

I can tell you these stories because I have been blessed to know hundreds of gay people on my journey. It has been a delightful, amazing, enlightening, and rewarding experience.

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¹ PFLAG stands for parents, family, and friends of lesbians and gays.

² www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2013/04/15/map-how-35-

countries-compare-on-child-poverty-the-u-s-is-ranked-34th.

Chapter 2

Loving One Another: One Priest or Levite Approach

You snakes!