How My Father's Gay Marriage Trial Re-Ignited My Calling To The Ministry
Tim Schaefer
Eight months ago, I sat at my desk struggling to put into words my painful coming-out story. My father, Rev. Frank Schaefer, was about to face an ecclesiastical trial within the United Methodist Church (UMC) for violating the denomination's Book of Discipline when he performed my same-sex marriage. What was missing in the media coverage leading up to the trial was my story of growing up as a pastor's kid struggling to reconcile my sexual orientation with my denomination's abusive homophobic rhetoric. For the first time, I was asked to share with the world how this harmful language of the Church I loved and served as an adolescent had driven me into a deep depression and to the brink of committing suicide. To my surprise, our family's story ignited a chain of events that led me down an unexpected path.
In late November, the day after my dad had been found guilty by a jury of his peers of violating Church law, I sat at the witness table in a makeshift courtroom at a UMC youth camp. This second day of my dad's trial was about determining his penalty, and I was being asked to share my coming-out story in hopes it would explain to the jury exactly WHY my father felt obliged to officiate at my wedding. After years of shame and confusion brought on by the Church, I felt like I was standing up to my childhood bully as I shared my story. As I scanned the crowd, I saw my dad sobbing at the defendant's table. Sitting in the gallery behind him were my mother and sister surrounded by a sea of spectators wearing rainbow-colored stoles--supporters of my father's. It seemed that almost everyone was in tears. It was difficult to get through my testimony, but it was even more difficult to hear the many supporters come to me afterwards to share their own heartbreaking stories of being excluded from the UMC. One man, twenty years my senior, remarked that my story was so similar to his own that he was disappointed to discover nothing had changed in two decades.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tim-schaefer/rev-frank-schaefer-son-minister_b_5647907.html?utm_hp_ref=religion
