Since I believe so strongly in the power of stories, here's my own experience of getting kicked out from seminary.  As a straight person going through pastoral training, I got caught in the gay and lesbian dragnet. I wasn't really the target, so I found a way back into the program.  Many gay and lesbian friends did not.  Today, 18 years after my experience, the ELCA is still putting pastors on trial just for getting caught being gay.

The following excerpt is my personal introduction to LGBT injustice and the spark that ignited my passion for justice and equality. If this story connects with you, you may want to purchase Straight Into Gay America and read the full story.

(EXCERPT: Straight Into Gay America)
As we drive away, my mind is stuck on the image of the 50-year couple’s civil union. The irony of my own life is that the church didn’t prevent my marriage, the church forced it. In some ways I feel I’ve been packaged my whole life, from the buzz cut at the Air Force Academy, to my time at seminary. Without my seminary experience I would not be riding Straight Into Gay America today.

In 1987, the year before I started seminary in Berkeley, four high-achieving students had returned to school from their internship year, reporting how much they liked being pastors, and by the way, “We’re gay.” The students narrowly missed approval for ordination. By the time I entered seminary the next fall, a full-scale reaction had begun. The targets were any gay and lesbian students who wouldn’t pledge celibacy. The Rev. Craig Settledge came from ELCA headquarters in Chicago to announce new Visions and Expectations for pastors. In my second year of seminary, my local synod went further in defining the acceptable package for a conforming pastor, creating a statement for each student’s agreement and signature.

The only appropriate place for genital sexual activity is within the confines of a heterosexual married relationship.

The targets of this statement were gay and lesbian students, but I ended up in its sights. Anne and I were living together at the time, committed to exploring our possibilities for a lifetime of marriage together. We were choosing to live together, not to make light of marriage, but because we took marriage seriously. Both of us had family issues we hoped to uncover, to see how we could fit our lives to one another.
The day of my candidacy committee meeting, we met on the seminary campus, six of us gathered around a dark walnut table that had seen many of these events before. I’d been through two other meetings like this, and both had gone well. This meeting concerned only the signing of the agreement.

“I could sign your statement,” I agreed, “but no gay or lesbian pastor with a partner could sign this without lying.”

Based on our two previous meetings, my candidacy committee offered encouragement for my prospects as a pastor, “But we need your signature.”

The meeting lasted an hour. I explained reasons why Anne and I were choosing to live together. I explained how the previous spring we’d announced our engagement and already set the date of our wedding for the following June 23rd. I explained that signing this statement allowed me a way forward, but it closed the door on gay or lesbian students, unless they chose to lie to get past the gatekeepers.

I asked them to approve me without forcing me to sign. At the end, I felt positive about our meeting. My pastor mentor had come along for support and together we stepped out while the committee conferred in private. Ten minutes later we returned to the room to hear their decision.

“We regret to inform you,
we are recommending your removal
from the ordination process.”

I still find it hard to return and retrieve all the emotions from this time. I remember attending worship at seminary the next day, the annual Founders Day worship, a traditional service with those presiding dressed in extravagant robes. Following a centuries old ritual, raising their hands to heaven, begging for God’s blessing, I found myself crying at the incongruity between this worship and my meeting of the day before. Worship seemed so false after the prejudice of the church had just kicked me out.

Everywhere before in my life, I had discovered connections between reasons and actions. Now the thread fell apart. Seminary had been teaching us about the freedom of the gospel, and how Jesus constantly had his attention on the outsiders, and how the gospel of love provided the pattern for our lives. Jesus demonstrated this over and over again. Whenever there was a conflict with the custom or tradition of the times, Jesus chose the outsider, the blind man, the sick woman, the tax collector, and the prostitute. The only people Jesus had a hard time with were church and civil authorities.

Now the church was once again excluding outsiders, this time gay and lesbian pastors. For myself, I never claimed Anne and my living together was perfect. But we were trying, as best we could, to develop and honor our relationship to each other. During the whole process, not one committee leader would talk with us about the work we were seeking to do for our life together. We were simply rule breakers, non-conforming to the acceptable packaging of the Lutheran church. One of the professors in my evaluation group was even a favorite Christian Ethics teacher. A month later she would promise to me during a meeting, “I will never again do to another student what I did to you.”

In the meantime, I felt
all alone, me against rules,
learning more about prejudice and packaging
than I ever wanted.

The recommendation of my committee passed on to the full candidacy committee for their final recommendation. I spent two weeks on the phone with every committee member I could contact, arguing against their judgment. “How,” I asked, “does this statement have anything to do with evaluating whether compassion is present?” I asked them not to remove me from seminary.

When word came back from the full committee, I received an option. Get married quickly or leave the seminary at the end of the term.

"Good,” I replied, “we already have our wedding date set for June 23rd in Decorah, Iowa. That’s just eight months away.“

“No,” replied the person enforcing the decision. “The committee meant ‘very quickly.’ You need to be married within two or three weeks.”

If I’d been alone I would have left, but seminary wasn’t just about me anymore. Anne and I talked for days. We spent hours with our mentor pastor, Steve Jackson. Both
of them encouraged me. “You have lots to offer once you get through seminary.”
Steve counseled me from his own experience at the edge of the church. I knew how hard it was for him to stay on that knife-edge between the inside and the outside of the church. His art background; his visits with despair; he stayed as a pastor only because of the truth he’d found in the Christian tradition, that God is sensed most deeply in the suffering and the mystery of the world. He rebelled against the church’s push for programs and success. All Steve wanted was to hear stories, and share stories, and find those places where people could see that gift and grace lay hidden under all our everyday assumptions.

 “If you stay,” he told me, “it’ll be lonely, but you’ll find your place in the margin. You’ll find your closest friends there.” His words felt like blessing while church was feeling like a curse. I knew he wanted company.

Anne understood what Steve was telling me about theology, but I heard her words differently. They reached me as a promise then, of how she would view me, of how
she would respect me for my journey and my decisions, even in the tense times.
 Maybe Anne views me as she does because she’s a special education teacher. That’s been her seminary classroom, where she learned her lessons about grace. I’ve watched her work in her classroom, watched her use her own hand to form a child’s small fingers into the sign for cup, then lift the juice so the kid could drink, then wipe the drool as if it was the most regular thing in the world. Sometimes after half-a-year of this the kid would learn to make that sign when he or she was thirsty. Sometimes the kid would not. 

I’ve watched Anne talk with parents thrust out to an edge of society they did not choose, terrified about all the implications of raising their special-needs child and all the decisions involved in providing life-long care. So many challenges. Everything from home behavior to dealing with state and federal agencies for assistance. Anne never denied the challenges, but her talent was to raise up the gift. “Special-needs children help us learn how to love. They show us what’s important in life. They have a lot to offer.”

 Maybe Anne views me as she does because her oldest brother is paranoid schizophrenic. She spent her teen years adjusting to the valedictorian son of the family moving home from graduate school to pace the hallway at night, tapping on the walls, trying to find the source of the signals that were spying on him.
 Whatever I learned at seminary about the edge of life, Anne learned just by getting out of bed each day. After fifteen years, this part of Anne is still rock solid. She still reminds me I have a lot to offer.

After a week of those conversations about whether or not to get married to stay in seminary, Anne and I walked to the Oakland County Courthouse. On November 5, 1989, we signed the piece of paper that transferred me into an acceptable category.
We’d already been planning our honeymoon, a six-month tandem bicycle tour in Europe, and we had some gear, including a new tent. The night of signing the marriage certificate we set up our tent in the living room of our apartment. Anne cried all night long, tormented by the contradictions of our decisions.

My final meeting with the candidacy committee took place one month later, in Los Angeles. We met in a hotel conference room near the airport; I remember the glass table and the white fabric of the chairs. The evaluators were all different people than from my previous meeting. And I was different. Taking my seat I held my marriage certificate in my palm, and I slapped it onto the table. I slapped it hard.

“You seem angry,” observed the convener of the meeting.

“You’re damn right I’m angry. Without this piece of paper I was nothing. With this piece of paper I can be a pastor. Of course I’m angry. You don’t care about me. You only care about this piece of paper.”

Amazingly, now that nothing remained to do or say, they seemed to understand. I went home with a verbal apology from the committee, and two weeks later a long letter of written apology arrived in the mail. They’d even agreed to recommend my internship year be moved to my fourth year to accommodate our honeymoon and the extra classes I’d taken to graduate early.

Coming to classes at seminary turned into hard duty for the rest of the school year. Some gay and lesbian students were kicked out. Others lied to stay in seminary, their only way to get through the hoops to ordination. My stomach turned in knots every time I crossed Grizzly Peak Road and entered seminary grounds. My anger did not leave.

One final meeting. One final shock. At the end of the school year, barely a month before our wedding, the professors met to grant formal approval of fourth year internships for students. Anne and I had made our plans based on the recommendation of my Los Angeles committee. The faculty refused to grant approval. As the dean relayed to me, 

“The faculty have serious doubts
about your ability to do ministry.
You have seemed so angry this year.
They need you to return to seminary
after your internship so they can evaluate
your suitability for ordination.”

Anger is a serious double bind, even for Lutherans. If you’re nice and polite, leadership can ignore you. If you show frustration or anger, leadership gets anxious. Victims of injustice end up taking the blame for the discord. Martin Luther King Jr. played this out with the FBI.

 In the month before our wedding, Anne and I scrambled to rearrange all our plans for the coming two years, including internship and hospital chaplaincy.
Two years later, returning to seminary for my last quarter of classes, I went to the familiar book-lined office of my advising professor. When I asked him about the “serious doubts,” he said he didn’t recall that conversation of the faculty committee. He was a kind professor, and I liked him, but the biggest event of my life never made his radar screen.

For years I could not share this story without all my emotions of anger and frustration boiling over. I warned people I felt like an outdoor propane tank with the big lettering that warns, “No Flammables Within 100 Feet.” More recently I’ve come to recognize this experience as the greatest gift I received at seminary, a taste of the edge. Without this experience I might never have known life as an outsider. I might have stayed inside acceptable social categories.

If I had stayed within proper boundaries, I would have still trusted institutions, still assumed leadership will ultimately do the right thing, even if the process takes time. After seminary and after my forced marriage, I lost faith that organizations, even churches, will necessarily pursue justice.  END EXCERPT

Remarks:
So, it's no surprise that the ELCA trial of Bradley Schmeling brings up strong feelings.  I'm creating this Pastor on Trial resource section because these trials have been going on far too long and causing far too much damage to individuals, families, congregations, the church at large, and society. 

Once again, thousands will be mobilizing to help our ELCA focus on gospel love rather than condemnation and retribution.  I'm adding my voice for equality, hoping that my story can make a useful addition.  Thanks for visiting here at www.StraightIntoGayAmerica.com.

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