[HeartStrongList] New Article About HeartStrong

[press at heartstrong.org]

Anger Builds a Place of Help for Others
Kay Mehl Miller Ph.d.

Marc Adams is a powerful speaker. The son of a fundamentalist Baptist
preacher and a former ex-gay, Marc is the executive director of a
volunteer organization that ministers to gays and lesbians educated in
religious schools. He had me in tears when he spoke to our Santa Rosa
PFLAG group recently.

Adams is crackling with anger, the kind of anger that demands action. In
Marc's case, he founded HeartStrong, the only organization of its kind in
the world. After 10 years HeartStrong has helped nearly 1000 students who
were abused, harassed, intimidated and/or isolated by their religious
school experiences.

Marc's father was so conservative that he considered Jerry Falwell
liberal. Marc and his siblings were allowed to watch only religious
programs on TV and only the beginning of the Jerry Falwell show, which
featured music and readings. When Falwell sermonized, the TV was shut off.

When Marc was 15, he was watching the beginning of the Falwell show when
Falwell himself appeared and started to talk about homosexuality. Instead
of condemnation, Falwell spoke of help for those willing to change. It was
the first time Marc had experienced hope.

Marc's life was so filled with religion as a child that his point of view
was narrowed. He describes religious fundamentalists as people whose
mission is death oriented, thus they live a life worthy of earning jewels
for a heavenly crown, which, upon death, they present to God. Nothing else
matters, Marc says, so they kill every human inclination within them until
they are incapable of empathy and compassion for others.

It was this description that brought me to tears for I thought of my son
who became a Mormon, married a convert from Chile, and, partly because of
my gay activism, hasn't spoken to me in eleven years. I lost the chance to
see grandchildren grow up. It was heart wrenching to think that my son may
have killed every good loving instinct for his ticket to heaven.

When Marc said that his family had forbidden contact with his grandmother
because she was a sinner, and that in her later years, she met with Marc
and became a loving force within his life, I was overwhelmed.

How much greater the pain must be for young people who are gay and lesbian
and in schools that won't acknowledge them as they are÷who preach against
their very humanity and call it perverted÷who, worse, humiliate them by
insensitively outing them to parents and punish them with expulsion if
their secret is found out.

Because Marc's organization is on the Internet, more youth are being
helped. Marc has heard it all. He told us of a young girl whose mother
threatened to severely burn her hands if she found out the girl was
lesbian. HeartStrong at www.HeartStrong.org is there to comfort youths
like her.

Because of Falwell's words, Marc decided to go to Falwell's Liberty
University. There, at age 16, he didn't find an ex-gay ministry, but he
did find a boyfriend for the first six months. Terrified that he would be
found out if he talked too openly, he sought an outside organization for
treatment. He found out that he would have to fight his nature daily ÷that
he would still be gay, but he couldn't act on it. After 3 years at Liberty
University, Marc left, knowing he didn't want a diploma with Jerry
Falwell's name on it.

During his time there, Marc worked on himself, stopping thoughts in his
head that told him he would go to hell if he were gay or that he was a bad
person. Bit by bit, he convinced himself that he was a good person and
that being gay was not an evil thing to be, that he could love and accept
himself just as he was.

He moved to Los Angeles, and it was there that he and his grandmother came
together. At their first meeting at dinner, he could not bring himself to
tell her he is gay. She wrote to him afterwards and told him that she knew
from the time he was a little boy that he was gay and that she loved him
just as he is. When Marc changed his name, he took his grandmother's
maiden name as his own.

Marc today is a man with a mission. His most popular book is The
Preacher's Son, which is his autobiography and includes his struggles with
being gay and being religious, "the only way I could live was to die," he
wrote. His new book is (lost)Found, essentially an essay on love. Reading
it, I was struck by the hunger for love, how difficult love is to accept,
and how wonderful love can be. Love, I know, is validation and acceptance,
particularly for those whose lives have not been blessed with parental
love.

It is good that Marc is still angry. With the energy created by that
anger, he does important work in helping others to validate and accept
themselves as they are. Maybe, too, his work takes some of the mystery out
religious fundamentalists and their opposition to living the abundant life
on earth that many religion works promise.

Kay is the author of Talking It Over: Understanding Sexual Diversity,
Email her:kaymill at aol.com.