Michelangelo Signorile examines the case of Andrew
Marin, a lay minister who exploited his lesbian
friends to promote himself as a “bridge”
between gays and evangelicals. After HRC and others bought
into his pitch, his true antigay colors began to shine
through.
How is it that
officials at the Human Rights Campaign, the Gay and
Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, the Empire State Pride
Agenda, and other prominent gay groups got suckered by
a 25-year-old heterosexual evangelical Christian, a
man who promised to be their gay-friendly savior but
who was simultaneously giving training sessions to antigay
groups and calling homosexuality a “sin”
on Christian radio? The simple answer is: They wanted
to believe.
This is a story
about yet another slick preacher. But it’s also a
story about gay people so hungry for
acceptance—and gay groups so eager to tap into
the zeitgeist—that they allowed themselves to be had.
It
shouldn’t come as a surprise that faith is the issue
du jour at the gay groups—as it is everywhere
else in George Bush’s America—as they try
to bring in religious LGBT people, aggressively reach out to
gay-affirming clergy, and genuinely try to change the minds
of traditional Christians regarding homosexuality.
HRC, for example,
recently launched Out in Scripture, a “devotional
resource” for which you can sign up to receive
ostensibly gay-affirming Bible verses in your e-mail
box weekly. A team of religious scholars consults on
the effort, which is coordinated by Harry Knox, head of
HRC’s year-old Religion and Faith program.
A former pastor
and former head of Georgia Equality, that state’s
LGBT lobbying group, Knox describes himself as
“inclusive to a fault.” And that
certainly seems to be the case regarding Knox’s
opening his arms to the evangelical charmer in
question, Andrew Marin.
It was in 2005
when Marin, a recent graduate of the University of
Illinois at Chicago (where he majored in psychology) and a
devout Christian, first made contact with gay and
lesbian groups through his Chicago-based Marin
Foundation, an organization for which he had attained
nonprofit status that same year. The Web site for the
foundation touted seminars for LGBT people as well as
straight evangelicals in order to create an
understanding between them—a “bridge”
between the two communities.
Whatever the
loftier goals, some former friends and acquaintances of
Marin’s say he had other hopes for the foundation he
named after himself. “He always said he would
make a lot of money and his foundation would make him
rich,” says Melissa Garvey, a former college
classmate, talking about the months preceding the
foundation’s inception. “He even told my
mom that.”
“I just
never understood what the foundation really was for,”
comments Emily Webster, who met Marin through Garvey,
a friend of hers. She recalls a discussion in which
Marin was cheering on George W. Bush. She pointed out
to him that Bush was certainly not a good force for gays.
“All I can tell you is, Bush is going to help me get
my foundation going,” she remembers him saying,
apparently referring to Bush’s backing of
faith-based initiatives.
Christina
Wiesmore, former senior convention service manager at the
Drake Hotel in Chicago, was Marin’s supervisor
when he worked at the hotel in sales in 2004. She says
that several concerned gay and lesbian coworkers came
to her about statements he’d made. “He would
just say it’s wrong to live ‘that
lifestyle,’ ” she recalls. “He
didn’t agree morally, even though he offered
his support.”
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Signorile is the author of the book Hitting Hard
(Carroll & Graf) and hosts a daily show on
Sirius OutQ satellite radio.