To a woman struggling in her marriage and considering her options, Ralph writes (3/8/98 on the Journeys list):

... I'm glad you found this community online--it <is> by and large a very respectful bunch of folks. So far they've even tolerated <me>, an opinionated straight who cares a great deal about health and wholeness for gays! So don't give up hope!
 
 

I am so left of Side A that I have no residual interest in discussing whether the Bible condemns homosexuality...

... But as a Christian minister I do try to pay attention to Bible study material, because some Christian friends who still struggle with that may find it useful.
 
 

(Faith, 2/6/98):

... So as a Protestant Christian I must always <begin> my search for theological foundations-- for sexuality, as for any other topic-- with the Bible. But I will never <end> it there. 
 
 

To a young woman who described some traumatic school experiences of being gay-bashed, (3/2/98 Journeys):

I'm writing this note to say to you how sure I am that you're among friends here, and that this group can be part of the healing of the wounds you've experienced. 

Secondly, I want you to know that I'm a straight, male, minister--and that I am absolutely convinced that there is nothing wrong with you--either psychologically or spiritually--just because you've discovered that you are probably a lesbian...
 

To Sonia who came clean on the list about misunderstanding (before she got to know him) the tone of one of his earlier questions (3/3/98 Faith):

I can hear how I may have sounded like some sort of objectified rationalist, which I most certainly am not. I've just seen too many Christians equate evangelical passion with proximity to All Truth, without feeling any great obligation to THINK, read, study, do research. But no, those who know me best don't think of me as over-intellectualized, I don't think. I've spent too many years in therapy and supervision to have <too> much of that left. 

I'm a straight married white male, a native of Kansas (with all the attached white-bread-and-mayonnaise ethnicity appropriately ascribed to that region), and a Presbyterian minister (PCUSA). I have a degree in music, a seminary degree, and two graduate degrees in pastoral counseling. Some people think that makes me smart--I'm not convinced. I continue to do about as many dumb things as I did before I had any graduate work, though perhaps in different areas. I'm not very self-impressed in a lot of areas, and struggle still with some forms of low self-esteem, confusingly blended with some areas of half- conscious arrogance. I have a gift with words, which is sometimes a blessing and sometimes a weapon that I end up using to hide (or hide from) my feelings. 

I'm currently a psychotherapist (pastoral counselor) and executive director of a small Samaritan pastoral counseling center in Lake Charles, Louisiana. This is state number seven for me as an adult (nine, counting TN and KY in childhood)--I've lived, worked, or gone to school in KS, NJ, PA, VA, AL, MI, and LA. My degrees are from Sterling College in Kansas ("a small Christian college for small Christians"), an evangelical school from which I was in recovery for many years; Pittsburgh (PA) Theological Seminary; Princeton (NJ) Theological Seminary; and Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia--the last three all, in my opinion, excellent schools. 

I grew up in an evangelical/conservative intact family, the eldest of four children, and have learned to describe myself as an "adult child of an engineer." My parents were the first in both their families to go to college at all, and my father the first to get a degree. Their four children have, among them, ten degrees, so somewhere we got hooked. I used to enjoy a couple of half-truths: "My sister has a degree in counseling, so she's working as a musician. I have a degree in music, so I'm working as a counselor." One sister has a graduate degree in church music, my brother is a board-certified family practice physician, and the other sister is a school teacher--all three live in Kansas. 

I suffered through the collapse of a long-diseased marriage somewhere past the 20-year point, and have to my continuing astonishment been very happily remarried for about eleven years. I have three adult children--Laurie, the mother of three of my grandchildren, in Bloomington, Illinois, and a graduate of Westminster College (Fulton, Missouri); Bruce, an independent Internet marketing consultant and father of my newest grandson, in Valle Crucis, North Carolina, and a graduate of the University of Alabama; and Kirsten, a writer in San Diego and graduate of Beloit College (Wisconsin). I'm very proud that Kirsten spent her junior year in college at Fudan University in Shanghai, learning to speak fluent Mandarin, then came home and graduated cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in biochemistry. My wife, Rosanne, teaches psychiatric nursing at McNeese State University. 

I grew up in a tiny town in a tiny county in north central Kansas, carefully insulated from contaminating contact with Jews, gays, black, Hispanics, orientals, or other alien life-forms. I wasn't even cosmopolitan enough to learn much about bigotry--the only groups we were taught prejudice against were Catholics (of which we <did> have a good many) and Southerners (of which I now "are one"). So, of course, my current wonderful marriage is to a woman who grew up a Mobile (AL) Catholic. 

Over the years I slowly began to discover in myself a real hatred for bigotry and prejudice. I first discovered it during the "civil rights movement," when I did a little to help with racial reconciliation. Then when the women's movement came along, I could find nothing in myself or my faith that could tolerate any treatment of women as second-class citizens, and I did a few things to help with that. Then when gay liberation began to emerge as a genuine social shift, I found myself in the middle of that as well, and performed several commitment ceremonies with a whole heart. 

My e-friend Patrick invited me into the Faith group. Much of what you discuss feels fairly peripheral to my life, but there are several marvelous human beings in here (and in the Faith group) whom I've come to enjoy very much, and now and then I see really well written material that is instructive to me. I am so left of Side A that I have no residual interest in discussing whether the Bible condemns homosexuality (my take: the Bible never mentions homosexuality at all), or whether homosexuality is intrinsically pathological (I think that's ridiculous). But as a Christian minister I do try to pay attention to Bible study material, because some Christian friends who still struggle with that may find it useful. 

I tend to be pretty blunt about my opinions, and at times cause hurt feelings without intending to at all. I always regret it and apologize when that happens. But I don't experience in myself any willingness to cause gratuitous pain, and would like while I'm here to be as respectful a group member as possible. If I cause offense, please try to trust my good intentions, and call me down as gently as possible. I'll listen. 

Enough and too much. 

Ralph Milligan

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