April 8th, 2000

Conference to be held at St. Paul's Memorial Episcopal Church in Charlottesville, Virginia

Carlton Dickerson, Music Director, Trinity Episcopal Church and Metropolitan Community Church, will present a program of music arranged for the conference. Rehearsals for the choir are starting very soon! If you would like to sing at the conference, contact Carlton Dickerson at: [email protected]

Who Should Attend?

The EVER conference is for those who are questioning, curious, apathetic, oblivious, puzzled, resolute on either side of the issue of civil rights for sexual orientation minorities and who wish to inform their opinions. This includes community leaders, religious leaders, laypeople, and all citizens.

About the Keynote Speakers
Morning Keynote Speaker: Rev. Mel White

Mel White and his partner, Gary Nixon, have traveled across the country, during the past six years, speaking on university campuses, teaching the "soul force" principles of Gandhi and King, organizing people of faith to do justice, and confronting religious leaders whose anti-gay rhetoric White believes, "leads to the suffering and death of God's lesbian and gay children."

In 1997, in Atlanta, Georgia, the Rev. Dr. Mel White was awarded the ACLU's National Civil Liberties Award for his efforts to apply the "soul force" principles of Gandhi and King to the struggle for justice for sexual minorities. Currently, Mel is writing a sequel to his best-selling autobiography, Stranger at the Gate: To Be Gay And Christian In America. With tongue-in-cheek, Mel calls his sequel Storming the Gate. In fact, the sequel will be a dramatic look at nonviolence at work in Mel and Gary's life as "militant gay activists."

It may seem premature to write another biography, but much has happened to Mel and Gary since Mel's autobiography was released in 1994. On February 15, 1995, Mel was arrested for "trespassing" at Pat Robertson's CBN Broadcast Center. The story of his arrest, the 22 day prison fast, and the "little victory" that followed, made news across the nation.

For 30 years, Dr. White had served the evangelical Christian community as a pastor, seminary professor, best-selling author, prize-winning filmmaker, communication consultant and ghost writer to its most famous and powerful leaders. His ghost-writing clients included Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, D. James Kennedy, Ollie North, and Pat Robertson.

Mel and Gary met and fell in love fifteen years ago at All Saints Episcopal Church where Mel served on the vestry and Gary sang baritone in the Coventry Choir. Gary was a property manager for the Weyerhaeuser Corporation, in charge of corporate properties across Southern California. In 1993, Gary and Mel began their justice ministry and have worked together full time as activists.

On Pride Sunday, June 27, 1993, Mel White was installed Dean of the Cathedral of Hope Metropolitan Community Church in Dallas, Texas, with 10,000 congregants, the nation's largest gay-lesbian congregation. After almost 3 decades of counseling and "anti-gay" therapy including prayer, fasting, exorcism, and electric shock, Mel White was able to reconcile his Christian theology and his sexual orientation. At his installation, Mel proclaimed his own, heart-felt statement of faith: "I am gay. I am proud. And God loves me without reservation."

In the months that followed, Mel's story was featured in the L.A.Times, the Washington Post, and in media across the nation. He was interviewed on hundreds of radio and TV broadcasts including Larry King Live, National Public Radio and the BBC. In 1994, Mel, his partner, Gary Nixon, and his former wife, Lyla, were featured on Sixty-Minutes.

In April, 1994, with the publication of his autobiography, Mel comes out of the closet to give hope to other gay and lesbian Christians, to confront the misleading anti-gay rhetoric of the radical right, and to launch his own fight for justice and understanding for God's gay and lesbian children.

On January 1, 1995, Dr. White was appointed national Minister of Justice (an unsalaried position) for the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches, the only Christian denomination with a primary outreach to gays and lesbians. The Reverend Elder Troy Perry, founder of the U.F.M.C.C., and its Board of Elders, asked Dr. White to represent the denomination's 300 churches in the current nationwide struggle on behalf of justice for all who suffer, gay and non-gay alike. In the summer of 1996, UFMCC moved into their newly acquired world headquarters in West Hollywood, California. To be closer to their families (especially Mel's granddaughter, Katie), and to UFMCC leadership, Mel and Gary sold their home in Texas and moved back to southern California.

On September 1, 1996, Mel and Gary began a two week Fast for Justice on the steps of the United States Senate, inviting people of faith across America to join in this prayer vigil that God would change the minds and hearts of Senators about to pass the so-called "Defense of Marriage Act." Passing DOMA would be the first time in U.S. history that the entire lesbian-gay community would be singled out as second-class-citizens, denied by law the 1,047 rights and protections that go automatically with heterosexual marriage.

When the Senate passed DOMA (85-14), White moved his Fast for Justice to the White House steps where he, his partner, Gary, and 7 others were arrested while praying on the White House sidewalk. Dr. White asked his critics, "How can we stand by in silent acceptance while the President and the Congress sacrifice lesbian and gay Americans for some 'greater political good.'"

With his experience in theology and media, Dr. White is uniquely qualified for his justice ministry. While completing his B.A. degree at Warner Pacific College (1962) and his M.A. degree in communications at the University of Portland (1963), Mel produced and hosted a weekly NBC television series, "The World of Youth" (1959-1966).

While working on his Ph.D. in communications and film at U.S.C., Mel won a Rockefeller grant to begin a doctorate in religious studies as well. Mel completed his doctorate at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, where he also served for more than a decade as a professor of communications and preaching. In 1973, Mel was appointed Senior pastor of Pasadena's First Covenant Church.

In 1965 Mel founded Mel White Productions, Inc. and in the next 20 years produced 53 prize-winning motion picture and TV documentaries. Since 1972, Dr. White has also written 16 books, 9 of them best-sellers including David, the story of David Rothenberg, the child burned by his father (a 1988 NBC movie of the week with Bernadette Peters) and A Gift of Hope: The Tony Melendez Story, a July, 1989, HarperCollins release, condensed in the June, 1989, issue of Reader's Digest.

White has served as consultant to major film studios including Warner Bros. ("The Mission") and Universal Studios ("Cry Freedom"). From the beginning of his career in media, Mel has searched for stories that would inspire and inform the struggle to be human. He directed documentary film crews in Vietnam during the last years of the war, documenting the spiritual dimensions of that conflict on its victims.

Mel has produced and directed television specials in Africa, Asia, South and Central America His book, Margaret of Molokai, is the story of the last leper to leave the Kalaupapa peninsula and a fascinating analogy for the current AIDS crisis. Mel's Aquino (Word Books, 1989) is the biography of Ninoy and Cory Aquino, the martyr and the president, and the amazing spiritual story of the People's Revolution in the Philippines.

After studying the lives of his nonviolent resistance heroes - Gandhi, King, Bonhoeffer, Dorothy Day, Audre Lorde, and Aquino - Dr. White is writing Storming The Gate, his sequel to Stranger at the Gate. "Across this country," Mel explains, "our gay brothers and lesbian sisters are the victims of a tidal wave of intolerance, discrimination, and violent crime flowing directly out of the anti-gay rhetoric of the radical right. We people of faith, gay and straight alike, must take our stand to end the suffering."

After Dr. White's 22 day fast in the Virginia Beach City Jail, Pat Robertson visited him in jail, heard White's plea and went on the air to say clearly that he "abhorred the growing violence against gay and lesbian people." "Pat Robertson is not our enemy,' White said later. "He is a victim of misinformation like we all have been. In the spirit of Jesus, Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. we must go on believing that Pat and the others can change."

Dr. White has dedicated his life to a ministry of change. "Until this nation accepts God's gay and lesbian children as full members of the human family," White explains, "we must go on telling that truth in love, whatever it might cost us."
 

ALICE PARKER TURNER is a retired counseling psychologist, co- founder of Innisfree Villiage (an alternative community for mentally handicapped adults). She has been on the board of many community organizations, including being an early supporter and board member of FOCUS, a woman's resource center. She is the wife of Dr. Ulysses Grant "Jim" Turner, mother to nine, and grandmother of 17. She was married for ten years to James Hormel with whom she shares five children. After their divorce, James Hormel came out, became a leading gay rights advocate, served as a delegate to the human rights convention in Geneva and is currently Ambassador to Luxembourg. Dr. Turner and her family have experienced the struggles that James Hormel has suffered. As a life-long Episcopalian, Alice Turner feels passionately that the silence of good people must be ended. She believes that reconciliation and healing can take place as we listen in love to one another.
 

Directions to St. Paul's

From the East: I- 64 W to exit 29A (North) on 29 bypass, take Ivy road exit (right turn) and head east. Proceed through 4 lights, church is on left across from UVA Rotunda.

From the West: I- 64 E to exit 29A (North) on 29 bypass, take Ivy road exit (right turn) and head east. Proceed through 4 lights, church is on left across from UVA Rotunda.

From the North: US 29 South exit right on 29 bypass (South), take Ivy road exit (right turn) and head east. Proceed through 4 lights, church is on left across from UVA Rotunda.

From the South: US 29 North continue on 29 bypass (North), take Ivy road exit (right turn) and head east. Proceed through 4 lights, church is on left across from UVA Rotunda.
 

Conference Program

 Welcoming Ceremonies

Morning Keynote Speaker
9:25 am - 10:00 am

The Rev. Dr. Melvin White Minister, Metropolitan Community Church, Laguna Beach, California, and Founder of Soulforce

The Morning Workshops
10:15 am - 12:00 noon

Afternoon Program

Dr. Alice Turner Psychologist, Charlottesville, Virginia

The Afternoon Workshops
1:30 pm - 3:00 pm