‘We won.’ Time to forgive church’s anti-gay history

Re: Furor flames again as Fort Lauderdale honors church with anti-gay history, March 17

I am a white gay man who has been active in the South Florida LGBTQ community for more than 30 years. I applaud Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis’ honoring of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church.

As is widely known, the church and its pastor, the Rev. D. James Kennedy, waged a fierce battle against acceptance of LGBT people for decades.

In the 1970s, Kennedy invited Anita Bryant to speak about the grave moral threat LGBT people posed to society. In the 1980s, the church produced videos about the AIDS-HIV crisis, saying it was started by gay men’s “promiscuous” behavior. In the late ’90s, the church and Kennedy started the Center for Reclaiming America, which bought ads in nine newspapers with a circulation of 8.7 million that showed “former homosexuals” who “overcame” their sexual orientation through prayer and the help of “ex-gay ministries.”

In a 1995 letter to church members, Kennedy said, “The radical homosexual movement has been making astonishing inroads into our culture — selling their perversion as ‘normal’ with greater and greater success. They got the president to welcome homosexuals into the military. They mounted an effort to bless homosexual marriages in Hawaii. They’re fighting tooth and nail to preserve special rights and privileges for homosexuals.”

In 2011 the Southern Poverty Law Center tagged the D. James Kennedy Ministries as a hate group, an organization that “vilif[ies] others because of their race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation or gender identity.”

So where are we now? LGBT people have full legal rights and protections.

They serve in the military. They can marry and raise children. They are recognized as a valuable part of the Fort Lauderdale community. As a gay man, it looks to me like we won. I think we have the strength and character to be both magnanimous and forgiving.

Fred Fejes, Fort Lauderdale