In the Life: Ep. 1702, "Breaking New Ground" [repeat]

on this edition of in the life a sense of urgency it was democracy in action creating a character that's my constant effort to make them bigger to be more fun buoyant to queer them up a little bit a leap of faith I sort of figured well you know somebody comes right out and says are you a lesbian I'm gonna say yes all this and more on America's gay and lesbian news magazine in the life is funded in part by the H Vans hammering and foundation additional support provided by the Ford Foundation and by the arcus foundation and by the Gill Foundation and by the annual support of in the Life Members like you [Music] welcome to in the life I'm Anthony Rapp and I'm excited to introduce you to some extraordinary people on tonight's program our first segment takes us back to the early 1980s a time when lesbians and gay men appeared to be worlds apart their politics were different they socialized separately but then AIDS hid the urgency of this crisis spurred many lesbians to join forces with their gay brothers to fight this disease in 1987 the organization act-up was born out of anger at the government's passive response to AIDS act up quickly gained a reputation for its in-your-face aggressive tactics started by a small group of gay men act up soon became a home for lesbians who quickly understood that aids would spread beyond the gay community together the men and women have act-up collaborated and forever changed our understanding of AIDS and the nature of what queer politics could be tonight we featured the stories of some of the remarkable women who embraced the AIDS crisis as their own [Music] it was a remarkable time we were coming off of the sexual liberation of the 70s and gay Lib and feminism I had been demonstrating against the Vietnam War in the late 60s and in the feminist movement in the 70s I was starting to see friends get sick gay men were just dying in alarmingly growing numbers people were sick and dying and dying in shame no one knew how you got HIV there was a new disease that had absolutely no cure and that almost immediate death sons we're dealing with an epidemic we're doing with a war and people were dying in this war and the government had turned his back there was rage like no one's doing enough no one's talking about it's not on the news it is time to wake up you've got to wake up and you've got to make some changes people are dying and it's going to get worse [Music] I became incensed and just livid about all this someone told me about act up and that this was a group that was going out in the streets and demonstrating [Music] friend of mine said hey I heard about this group that's meeting at the community center and they're doing stuff around AIDS and let's go and I welcome to this room we've got 400 men and like four visible women two of whom are straight and I went like okay I was impressed by the energy by the dedication by the intensity by the ideas one idea a minute it seemed like chaos initially at those meetings very valuable very dramatic people screaming out stuff everybody could say what they wanted no one was in charge there was no leadership hierarchy and that was kind of the beauty of it it was a very it was democracy in action let us celebrate together tonight the end of the last day on which Ed Koch can tell himself that the communities which are being decimated by this epidemic are so weak and so divided among themselves that he can keep serving us this kind of tomorrow morning we will begin to learn the truth racked up was made up of many people of big wild Queens and and and you know mothers of three and old and young a lot of people who had cut their teeth on the civil rights movement of the 60s and the anti-war movement to the late 60s and early 70s joined act up many of us found ourselves in the act up meetings kind of looking around the room for other women and this group that found each other really derived support we have the endless width and Northup giving her soundbite [Applause] there definitely were other women because that's what I was fascinated by I saw an North Road didn't know her and thought she was really dynamic and amazing and you know she snapped her finger and those boys listen while Mike asks you politely to step forward I'm gonna ask you more strongly than that and I'm gonna tell you it's your duty to speak up you must represent yourselves and you must speak directly to the public we cannot be intermediaries and have an effect you have to speak directly so please the beauty of act up was that it was one of the few places where a roomful of men would actually listen to women and ask us for guidance and education and help every time a new lesbian would come in we would we would say hi we sort of bring her over okay and then one night we decided that we would just have dinner together to talk about why we were in act-up why were a bunch of lesbians and act up doing work around AIDS I know what brought me there it was homophobia the fear of it the real exhibition of how blatant homophobia was because of the way it was operating for the gay men I saw who were sick for me it really was about my understanding of the larger issues that this was in fact exactly like the US government waging the Vietnam War or the issues in the feminist movement it was about the government letting people die although each woman had her own motivation to join act up as a group they shared a common goal to let the world know that women get AIDS too nobody was talking about women with HIV no one no one and even though the first cases of women with H we were found at exactly the same year as the cases for men and that burned us up I mean you know the fact is that women were being overlooked in this epidemic one day after an act up meeting we were sitting in a diner we being this group of women who had found each other on the floor of active and as we were sitting there talking someone came in with the current edition of Cosmo and said oh my god you know they dropped it on the table and they said I can't believe this the article is basically saying straight women with male partners who have unprotected sex don't need to worry about ever getting AIDS even if you had sex with someone who was positive it went so far as to say the women have act up immediately scheduled a meeting with dr. Robert Gould a psychiatrist and the author of The Cosmopolitan article an act up member videotaped this session why did you choose cosmopolitan as the place to do this when you knew there would not be the possibility of substantiating some of your claims with the kind of footnoting and bibliography that is crucial to any kind of serious work on this issue really fortuitous Myra Appleton with the articles editor is a good friend of mine she knows my thinking when we talk about things at dinner one here another and she said you know I think this would be they clicked these for alligators and I thought about Cosmo and would always give those people in power a chance to say okay we're just gonna change it you know instead of like immediately having a demonstration we would say well maybe you can talk to them let's say you say can I be current sexual activity with a person who does carry the AIDS virus caused you to develop a not if you subscribe to the theory supported by considerable fact which I have just put forward that you don't get aids from sexual activity with a man as the disease or carries the virus unless you engage in anal sex or there is an open lesion in the vagina when you are having vaginal intercourse that's wrong it's a different point of view I really can convinced from all the people I've talked to and all the work that I have gone over that I am NOT on the wrong track I do happen to think that the statement the women have act-up demanded a formal retraction by dr. Gould and Cosmopolitan magazine their demand was denied and right then in there we started putting together an action to protest Cosmopolitan magazine for running this article it was the very first action women organized [Applause] so we picketed picketed picketed in front of the cosmo building we kept trying to get in we went to move the barricade out and one of the cops said you can't do that and we said oh no the demonstration is over oh he said oh and he opens it up now anyway don't go to bed with cosmo anyways just started chanting again the women of act up were the conscience of our organization they were more mature than the guys they were more focused and the women woke us up they opened our purview and really helped us understand more about what was happening in the epidemic in 1991 three years after the cosmo demonstration act up successfully pushed the Centers for Disease Control to redefine AIDS to include women this crucial change enabled women with AIDS to receive a range of benefits for the first time act up also convinced pharmaceutical companies to lower the exorbitant prices of vital drugs making them accessible to more people through passion and persistence act up radically changed the public perception of AIDS it was no longer just a gay disease it was now everyone's disease people always say oh you can't do anything the government is so big it's so complicated there's no way you can get them to do anything and we did and I think that was one of the things about act up people had a vision people we actually believed we could change things by the women organizing we opened up the agenda and we showed that it could be done and that we weren't going to end up off on a tangent that ultimately we would always end back at the AIDS crisis one of my friends came from a rather you know wealthy Westchester world and he recalled visiting home and his mother was sitting with her you know well-to-do lady friends playing bridge and this is the women of playing cards one turn to the other side those gay people I didn't realize they got so angry and maybe that is one of the main lessons we talked that gay people were not gonna lie down and die that gay people could be angry and could fight back I was growing up in Mississippi and I had never met anyone in my life who was gay who was under the age of maybe 50 especially someone who wasn't just alone so I never really thought of that like being a possibility for me to actually come out and then have relationships and anything like that and so I was kind of I was 15 I was really angry about it I was not happy and one day my mother kind of pulled me aside and said I think there's something wrong with you and I think you're not telling me what it is but I think you want to tell me and I was just sitting in the kitchen with my sister and my mom was like doing the dishes or something like that and I just I said out of nowhere I just it just came out and I just said you know I like girls right mom she turned around and she said what she said what and and she had this smile that she gets on her face which is just so loving and and I knew at that moment that it would be okay I just never wanted to say the words I'm gay I figured that would be really hard so I wanted her to say it for me and for me to agree and so she wouldn't do that she just said no I don't I want you to tell me and I said I don't think I can do that and then I cried and then she cried and then I started crying more because I realized I was trying to say it and I couldn't say it and then finally I said I think you know I think you know that I am gay and she looked at me and she cried and she said I'm so glad you're not pregnant the world of books is filled with gay metaphors flamboyantly dressed superheroes with secret identities and mutant x-men rejected by society perhaps that's why so many gay artists are drawn to the medium you're about to meet Phil Jimenez a successful and openly gay comic book creator who invited us behind the scenes to catch a glimpse of his imagination at work some people think of comics as the trashiest of art forms or not even an art form to me they're modern myths and I think they have all the same power as ancient myths to inspire hope and heroism and it's incredible to be a part of that over the years I've drawn just about every major character in comics Superman Batman spider-man the x-men but my favorite will always be Wonder Woman Wonder Woman is Princess of the Amazons raised on this island of women called Paradise Island a lesbian Haven many would think and she left her Island home to come teach man a better way to live on peace harmony hope love equality between the sexes what I love about Wonder Woman is that she's given me a set of rules to live by a set of rules I've tried to live high my entire life I love her and I wouldn't have the life I do today without her [Music] oh my gosh this is actually where I used to live wow they're pink I was raised in small and pink apartments wonder I'm gay I saw right down there I was a latchkey kid my father left us when I was six months old and my mother god bless her had to work so I was alone a lot what that meant was I drew all the time created my own little worlds played with my toy dinosaurs and I watched a lot of TV and it was on TV that I discovered Wonder Woman reach out and touch her she was amazing I mean she was like six foot and her stocking heels she walked around in a costume like she owned it and she was just stunning around the same time I think this was actually 1976 my mother bought me my first comic it was a Wonder Woman comic and from then on I was hooked Wonder Woman was a sexual figure with extreme power here was a woman who was incredibly beautiful and incredibly desirable as a sex object she ran around fighting crime in a bathing suit for God's sakes but she could throw a car over her head she could kill him a do so with her bare hands and then she would go home to her CIA secret agent boyfriend Steve Trevor it was something that I think I could relate to even though I'm not sure at six I could ever tell you why this was his first drawing or his first comic book so to speak on the back of printout paper that I brought home from work and he was five years old at the time she's telling Steve she's gonna get dressed dr EST and this is where she's twirling become Wonderwoman he used to do this by the hour he would lay on the floor and do nothing but draw I was by myself a lot and I think one of the reasons I drew so much was to entertain myself I do remember that it was not allowed to watch TV after a certain time but I also knew that my mother wouldn't come home til a certain time so very wisely I would watch the TV and then turn the TV off half an hour before to let the Machine cool down because when she would come home she would put her hand on the TV to see if it was still warm I felt very guilty as I say the guilt to have it - leaving him by himself but you know it was necessary at that time oh that's that's all I had I had no choice I was never wanting for food I always had my own bedroom I always have clothes and I always knew she loved me it's beyond impressive to me to think of what my mother did for me growing up and what she sacrificed because I know she had a failed marriage and bad boyfriends and I know she suffered from low self-esteem and yet somehow someway she worked really hard to make sure that I could live in this little pink apartment over there Wow see these were all strawberry fields when I grew up it's just mini monster mini mall and chain store after chain store and whenever I see a movie like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings and I think of these amazing beautiful worlds and then I look around here and I think why don't we have that this is why I don't live in Southern California [Music] I was completely fascinated by extinct animals dinosaurs mammals Sabretooth mammoths tyrannosaurus it didn't matter it was big of his Gary I loved it my grandparents and my mother would take me here to La Brea Tar Pits and they would let me realm and it's a place they would know I would go and I would sit and I would draw I would run around the museum and look at these ancient extinct animals whenever I come back here it feels like home when I started drawing my own series of the world I came back here and I took tons of reference photos I then used the photos to create several scenes in the book and I knew that right there in the sky above is where I want my villains to come crashing through a door and attack the heroes right over there on this hill by the time I got to high school I knew I was different I knew I was gay it certainly wasn't something I was ready to tell anyone here we go gentlemen Cypress high school home of the Centurions this obi-wan Kenobi once said you'll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy he must be cautious and because I could draw I was friends with all the different cliques and there were definitely cliques here I drew unicorns for the girls and Dragons for really cute boys oh it turns out we're not so cute with my high school reunion I think they peaked at about 17 looking back in the coming out process and mine was certainly stifled one of the things I realized I did was turn all of my high-school crush's and the comic characters I think it was a way to work through those Kush's and create gifts for people and give signs of my affection without actually touching them doing in a really safe way so by the end of high school it had made over 50 or 60 comics for a teacher friend of mine and two attorneys had worked with on a mock trial team and I created these elaborate stories for them and then looking back on it I realized that in all this comics their wives were always getting kidnapped and the kids were usually off stage and their shirts were getting ripped off and somehow I always managed to be in those comics if I didn't know exactly what I was doing they would have to be idiots not to but I commend them because they put up with it and they tolerated it they could have easily brushed me off they could have rejected me and just told me to go away but instead they encouraged me they'd let me draw for them in many ways these three men gave me a really big gift and allowed me to be and that's actually I'm not sure any of them actually know that oh my god council no yes he was on the student council missus I really wanted to be a cheerleader was in drama student council mock trial on a roll who's who take finals and they went to Dallas for national here's my question are your mother's this proud I brought out the old pictures yes oh wow I didn't really so what's in here that was my first boyfriend with this very hairy chest yes my goodness yeah Neal Posner was my first editor and he was probably my greatest mentor at DC Comics he was an incredibly talented man with some very strong opinions about the way things should be done I developed a crush on him the minute I met him and I wanted to know more about him and I wanted to be with him all the time so I'd hang out with him at work in the offices far later than I had any reason to I would buy clothes I couldn't afford to impress him and eventually I mustered the nerve to ask him on a date and he was 15 years older than I was and he had been my boss and so against his better judgment he said yes and it actually ended up being a really wonderful relationship unfortunately he had AIDS and at the time I'm not sure I knew what that meant I knew that Rock Hudson had died of it and I knew that a lot of gay men had it but he was quite ill doing pretty well but this was far before this was years before cocktails had emerged or more aggressive medicines and I think he was very hesitant about dating you know someone so young someone who's HIV negative someone he had hired for many reasons aside from the fear of giving me HIV I think he was afraid that if he told me I would leave him and the funny thing is I think when you're that young and that romantic it doesn't occur to you you just you're in love with this person and this is what you do and so I stayed with him and I was his caretaker until he died and the funny part about this if such a thing can be said is that nobody at TCC knew that we were together they just knew that we were really good friends and so at his funeral a Jewish funeral at the Riverside Memorial on 75th Street the rabbi was thinking all these people who were taking care of him in the hospital at the end he thought the rabbi said and his partner Phil Jimenez and I could literally feel the rush of air as heads in the in the audience from DC Comics turn to look back at me because no one knew before he died Neal worked on a really famous version of Aquaman in the mid-80s after Neal died I was given the opportunity to take Aquaman's sidekick Aqualad and turn him into a more powerful hero called tempest I dedicated that miniseries to Neal and on the back page I came out publicly to the readers and to the people that supported the series and I wrote openly about my relationship with Neal he was the first man I ever asked out on a date he was my first boyfriend he was the first person had ever watched live with and died from complications from AIDS it pretty much sucks that I can't tell him I love you face to face anymore or hear him laugh or teach him how to swim or read old Legion of super-heroes stories with them his life and death moved a number of people I'm not sure if he could fathom or believe how many and every positive contribution I make to comics is inspired by and for him wherever he is the strangest part about dealing with loss especially loss of someone who is sick or infirmed and the bizarre feelings of sadness and guilt that you can actually go out and have a good time how do you move on when you feel that you have unfinished business I'd like to introduce the world to Joe Hosking hello my Superman and I mean that literally so you're super n.flying there we go now remember look forward and then hold on keeping it up keep flying keep flying so Joe is not only my boyfriend but he's also my model for Superman and DC Comics Infinite Crisis that's great okay just keep serious remember think of it like the movie pretend it's the movie okay I'm gonna get one more of you from right about here and this is fantastic [Music] you [Music] you all here because we love comic books superheroes we love science fiction we're all here because in many ways were Outsiders in our own lives and here were the ultimate insiders in 2000 I was given the opportunity to write and draw Wonder Woman's adventures during her 60th anniversary this is the chance of a lifetime it literally was the thing I was the most excited to do in in my life unfortunately I had a lot of plans for the character that didn't really mesh with what the company wanted so it turned out to be sort of a bittersweet experience but I had to remember I don't own this character she is the property of Time Warner and DC Comics I was just borrowing her nevertheless it's my work on one Dolan that I'm best known for this is really good can you stand like this yeah so here's my question like why I responded this character so deeply and I always imagined the character being a little more joyous than a lot of recent depictions of her I don't want her to go to that dark place how do you feel about that I don't think she understands that far the world me too oh my god I'm so glad to hear you say that she wants to be a teacher she's not excited you said that I have a comic in my bag and he said ran into someone just like you I can get you out of it okay okay yes you're good to me a lot of people they go you're famous so people want your signature they want your drawing and I'm like that's great and I love it but when you have your very own Wonder Woman action figure a very own Superman action figure based on your drawings that's the cool part that's the stuff I live for if you ever want to know like how being gay influences my work just look at the hair because I pick up stuff nobody else does and actually working on figures like this I had to explain to the sculptor I was like you're gonna have to be patient with me but the hair is really really important and when I designed it they were like well her heads not gonna move and I don't care her head should move it's not about that it's about the hair you look at some of these characters and they're like big drag queens I'll probably get in a lot of trouble for saying that but you know they wear tights and they have capes and they fly about there's a wonderful flamboyance about them and I actually embraced that for so long even now the industry tries to minimize that to make superheroes more realistic and I try to fight that every step of the way and it's my constant effort to make them bigger to be more fun buoyant to queer them up a little bit because I think the world is a little too mundane I mean that's why comic books were invented [Music] by the time I was a senior in college nearly all of my friends had come out and they would sort of sit around and from their fingers on the arms of the chair and say well Harry well well well George W Bush had just been elected it was as if it was his first address to the nation and I figured what better time we're sitting there we're watching it and at a commercial break I was like mom I've talked to you about something and we kept bringing things up and you know eventually the topic of gay things gay people were just part of it because you know there's politics on television and things like that will just eventually come up and I asked her I'm like you know what would you do if one of your children end up being gay like have you spoken to dad about this is this something you've actually considered she's like yeah we brought it up but you know it hasn't happened you know we're not worried about it and I'm like he won't start worrying you know guess what mom I'm gay I told my stepfather first he used to come to the city um all the time on business so he took me out to dinner and I still remember sitting in a nice Chinese restaurant on the east side and well I had promised I would explain to him how I could drop out of graduate school and not get drafted because this is this is 1968 so I finally took a deep breath and said I'm homosexual and closed my eyes I remember doing this quite vividly and I was rather surprised to open them discovered that nothing had changed in 2003 veteran husband and wife filmmakers Susan and Alan Raymond spent over a year documenting the daily life of a Methodist Church and its parishioners initially they concentrated on the senior pastor who was brand-new to the church but midway through their project an intriguing character suddenly emerged to grab their attention associate pastor Beth Stroud she was on the brink of telling her congregation that she was gay and in a committed relationship the stakes were high Beth Stroud fully understood that her coming out could cost her everything that she'd worked for tonight we feature excerpts from the Raymond's compelling documentary the congregation I was never really very sure how I would handle a direct question about my sexual orientation and the ordination process and I sort of figured well you know somebody you know comes right out and says are you a lesbian I'm gonna say yes and that'll be the end of the process but we still you know pursued it that far and I never got in I never got asked a direct question like that and I have really wrestled with it as a moral decision and as an ethical decision there may be people in this congregation who sort of you know who are are still you know kind of struggling with homosexuality and Christianity and can they really be integrated and you know and I and I admired her greatly she was a she stood up for her rights she said there's an injustice here and I'm gonna call you on it and I'm going to do it publicly it was clear that associate pastor best route had a natural ability to click with young people about five minutes we're gonna all Circle up yeah well we might have a prayer or something religious like one weekend Beth Stroud took the teenagers on a retreat to discuss their faith with your group right down come up with and write down four questions that you would like to ask the adults about their faith have you ever questioned your faith if so when why and for how long kind of during and after my first year of seminary it sort of wasn't what I expected and I ended up dropping out for a year and during the year I dropped out I was involved in New York City in a in an AIDS activist group and during that year I was I was I got to be friends with some people who died you know I got to be friends with some people who had lost you know nearly all of their friends that they'd been young adults with together and during that time I just I I just didn't understand how if there was a God how could how could so much suffering happen or how could something so bad happen when the young woman asks her the question have you ever questioned your faith I think that this was the question of daily issue at her at this time for her it was in her daily prayers because she was thinking about making the announcement that you know she was a lesbian in terms of religious discussions it's always to be more interesting to deal with someone who questions their faith into someone who blindly accepts everything Beth Stroud had come out to her family years before but she called an informal meeting with them to learn how they felt about her decision to come out to the church hey Chris Paige Beth's partner also attended the meeting it's a big family event we seem to come together for those I mean it'll be wonderful for you guys to be able to be to be out just a couple of church and to be able to be yeah for you to for you to be out at work and it's a great thing and it's been hard to picture precisely how it all happens a really positive way where everything gets to work out and once you meet the family at all its it all makes sense as to why Beth is who she is she has these two parents they're completely open and completely relaxed and of course concern about her well-being but completely supportive of her and then you find out she has two sisters and one of the sisters is gay so this is a very interesting family you know when you were just going into the ordination process I remember we had a conversation way back then of me thinking you know why don't you jet why can't you just keep it quiet stay in the closet and can't you do a lot that way and you were saying at that point no you had to be opening out just because of what it would do to trust level if people discovered that you hadn't been open the mother wanted her to wait a little longer you know way to you're a little older or wait to the church laws change you know she's just being protective mother but she was behind her daughter completely I think the piece that probably scares me more or at least me a little more anxious is you know what will happen down the road and will you be able to continue to do what you really love to do and that's the night before she was to reveal her secret Beth struggled to set the appropriate tone for her sermon the hard part is kind of you know paring it down to a manageable sermon trying to trying to write a sermon that's not I mean a sermon isn't supposed to be about me it's supposed to be about God [Music] the entire church was full with standing-room-only almost every single member of that church was there I want to take my experience of the risen Christ out of the locked room out of the closet and into the world where everyone can see it I want to walk in the light so that Christ might be revealed in my life I know that by telling the truth about myself I risk losing my credentials as an ordained United Methodist minister and that would be a huge loss for me but I have realized that not telling the whole truth about myself has been holding me back in my faith I've come to a place where my discipleship my walk with Christ requires telling the whole truth and paying whatever price truthfulness requires I don't feel afraid as we enter into this time of risk and uncertainty together there are a few things that I want to tell you first of all I want to tell you about a very important person that most of you haven't had a chance to know and that person is my partner Chris Paige Chris and I have lived together in a covenant relationship for two-and-a-half years more than anyone else in my life Chris embodies grace and love and discipleship for me she prays for me and I pray for her Chris is understandably nervous about becoming known as a minister's wife [Applause] [Music] but I have promised her that she doesn't have to wear a big hat unless she wants to despite all of the rules and locked doors and prohibitions here I am for this Sunday at least and perhaps for many months to come you're openly lesbian fully credentialed United Methodist pastor [Music] I'm excited to be able to give you the gift of my whole self in a fullest expression of my ministry for however much time we may have God is alive look here he is in our midst even though the door was locked peace be with you the real surprise is that she gets a standing ovation the preconception would be she preaches a sermon like this and the audience doesn't really know how to react and she gave a beautiful moving sermon from her heart which absolutely you know moved everyone it was a great joyous day she wasn't just saying this is my journey she was saying this is our journey and the congregation was incredibly supportive of her one year after the sermon best route situation dramatically changed Bishop Weaver of the United Methodist Church filed a formal complaint against Beth for being a self-avowed practicing homosexual bishop Weaver scheduled a private meeting with Beth before her trial began on the one hit it's it's okay this is what I bargained for this is what I knew what happened when I was ordained this is what I knew what happened when I preached my sermon it's okay you know I'm at peace with it at some level and but on the other hand it also come so much out of this place of not being at peace with it you know it's it's it's not okay it's not I think that Bishop Weaver liked her and and Beth is a very charming person and intense and and honest so I think you have to respond to that honesty and I think he did but he as the head of the church could not in any way accept her decision we do not condone the practice of homosexuality and that grieves me deeply when I think about the pain that struggle has brought you the path of the hearing and the trial the path of the judicial process has has looked to me like the best way to be faithful it can be a way for people to really you know look each other in the eye across the table and say you know if this is if this is what we believe as a church what does what does this mean and that ultimately may be the best we can hope for [Music] almost a year after meeting with Bishop Weaver Beth Stroud went to court and faced a jury of 13 Methodist ministers who would determine her fate filmmakers Alan and Susan Raymond attended the trial but cameras were not allowed in the courtroom the moment of when the rubber hits the road was the trial the trial was emotional and cold in business like everyone was against Beth everyone was just like it really felt like a witch-hunt I think this cases has demonstrated how divided we are and and what a challenging position that we're in as a church and so I'm just feeling quiet kind of somber and in prayer for the jury and for the whole church and she had to get on the witness stand and stand and be asked very personal questions about her sex life I didn't really understand what the purpose of that was until later someone explained to me that the nail in the coffin for Beth was that she was a practicing homosexual you've requested the privilege of standing at the time of the reading of the penalty phase the report of the trial court is that the credentials of the respondent were to be withdrawn and the vote was 7 to 6 meaning the required vote for the penalty if you choose to a feel we'll be glad to help if you so desire on December 3rd 2004 the jury of Methodist ministers found associate pastor Beth Stroud guilty of violating the church's ban on self-avowed practicing homosexuals in the clergy her credentials as a minister were officially revoked [Music] Anthony Rapp for all of us at in the life thanks for tuning in and we'll see you next month you in the life is funded in part by the H van hammering and Foundation additional support provided by the Ford Foundation and by the arcus foundation and by the gil foundation and by the annual support of in the Life Members like you [Music] you you