An evangelical Christian minister from Missouri, who came to a San Francisco church to teach gays and lesbians how to become straight, was greeted Saturday by a protest led by a gay theology student who said the preacher's conversion therapy was so psychologically damaging that he twice attempted suicide when he tried it. Inside the Promised Land Fellowship Church on Market Street, 70 or 80 people participated in a daylong seminar by Desert Stream Ministries aimed at overcoming homosexuality and healing other forms of "sexual and relational brokenness."
On the sidewalk outside, two dozen protesters, many of them seminary students, held signs proclaiming, "I am openly Christian and openly gay" and "I thank God for making me gay."
"We're here because we believe ex-gay therapy is not only poor science but poor theology," said Corey Hidlebaugh, 29, a student at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, who said he used the seminar's curriculum during an eight-year attempt to overcome his homosexuality.
"I went to an ex-gay ministry in Oklahoma City, and it didn't work," he said. "I went through depression, major anxiety, panic disorder and attempted suicide."
But Promised Land's husband-and-wife pastoral team emphasized that workshop participants were there by choice and that, gay and straight, they were all searching for healthier relationships.
"I've had gay friends all my life," said the Rev. Michael Brodeur, who said he came of age in San Francisco's counterculture. "I'm not homophobic or anti-homosexual. But I am very pro-Jesus."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/02/18/BAGASO6VIQ1.DTL
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