A REAL Love Story

.?A few  weeks ago, I was surfing Facebook and saw that someone had posted a video about the Bishop of a local mega-church who came out of the closet to his congregation.  Thinking that it was my former pastor, I clicked on it and watched Bishop Jim Swilley gently and with great care and love explain to his congregation how he came to the place where he knew it was time to share his truth - that God had created him as a gay man..As I watched it, I cried.  I could feel his pain and know how difficult it can be to have lived a life where you have surrounded yourself with fundamental evangelicals and know that by just giving them new information about you will cost you the love of those people.  It will cause them to shift their way of thinking about you from a good, loving friend to a disgusting, insane pervert.  And you didn't even do anything!  You just told them that you have always been this way..I wanted to talk to this man.  I needed to talk to this man!.I sent the editor of a local GLBT magazine that I freelance for an e-mail asking her if I could do a story on him.  She gave me the green light and after a day of trying to get in touch with him, I got him to agree to the interview, as well as let me speak to his ex-wife and their son who is a youth pastor..I've done a lot if interviews.  I have done them for online and print publications and I usually always get something out of them.  I was completely unprepared to have my wagons loaded by this family.  With each of the 3 conversations that I had, tears flowed as I listened to them share about this painful journey..The most bitter pill to swallow in my own coming out experience was the loss of friendship with my ex.  Initially, he was loving, warm and accepting.  He knew how I must have suffered and was able to offer me comfort and the assurance of our continued friendship.  However, when he met with the leadership of our church, he came home that day a different man.  A man who was instructed that shunning me would be the best route to take.  He was instructed to move from a place of support to an adversarial position.  The church "supported" him by announcing my sin in a public worship service to clear his name.  As a result of their "support" of him, he has massive legal debt, no friendship with me or my parents, and more responsibility that he can handle. The church got what they wanted from him and he is left to pick up the pieces of a life that didn't even need to be shattered.  What a destructive force!.THIS IS THE INTERVIEW that I did and I hope you will read it.  This couple is how I wanted to be with my ex... how it could have been if he were able to stay in a loving place and not see things from the viewpoint of how is this all going to affect him, but rather how this must have taken a toll on me and how hard I tried for 18 years to change.  I can't fault him for his reaction, but I can wish that his response would have been more like the wife in this story.  I hope that you will click on the link and read this amazing, touching story of Jim & Debye Swilley - a love story in the truest sense of the word. 

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