Posted on 07/09/2005 1:16:08 PM PDT by Crackingham
Mary Lou Wallner acknowledges that some people consider her strong. After all, she broke with her own fundamentalist upbringing and her church's doctrine in the months following her lesbian daughter's suicide. But Wallner knows the limits of her fortitude. She reached it while standing outside the recent "Love Won Out" conference in Bothell, sponsored by the group Focus on the Family. While she was happy to offer attendees alternative ideas about the nature of homosexuality -- that Christian-based therapy won't "cure" it -- she said she simply couldn't walk inside and listen to a message that she once held as gospel truth.
"I don't think I could sit there for eight hours and listen to that anymore," she said. "I'm a Christian and I don't believe that my daughter was living in sin."
Wallner's story is one of the focus points of today's "Love Welcomes All" counterrally at the Newport Presbyterian Church in Bellevue. Organizers said the conference is a direct response to the "Won Out" session two weeks ago. Organized and taught by James Dobson, the Won Out conferences teach that homosexuality, in the end, comes down to childhood nurture and behavior choice that can be remapped through therapy.
"Welcomes All" instead teaches that Christians can accept gay people for who they are as they are. "His message is you can and should change away from homosexuality," said Jon Wartes, chairman of the Bellevue event and president of the Eastside Parents Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, or PFLAG. "To me there's just a whole other story out there.
"Our approach to the whole issue is one of acceptance."
Wallner, 60, said she learned acceptance the hard way. As a fundamental Christian for most of her life, she "read everything Dobson ever wrote and listened to all of his radio broadcasts" in her Illinois home. Then in 1988, her daughter Anna told her mother she was a lesbian. "At the time we believed it was wrong and a sin. We weren't mean to her but we didn't treat her very well.
"In 1997 she took her life. After that I had to get some answers."
But she got the wrong ones, said Mike Haley, director of gender issues for Focus on the Family. A former homosexual, Haley said the teaching does work on the "highly motivated" and that Wallner is perpetuating the myth that a person is "born into homosexuality."
"They want to say that reparative therapy is harmful and that's simply not true."
Wallner, who will be speaking today, said she's come to believe otherwise. She said she's certain she'll see her daughter in heaven, and that homosexuality isn't a sin. She's also learned one more key thing:
"I am coming to understand that God's love is unconditional for everybody -- even James Dobson."
"Mary Lou Wallner acknowledges that some people consider her strong."
Well there's some hard hitting journalism... /Sarcasm
"I'm a Christian and I don't believe that my daughter was living in sin."
Neither did the Sodomites nor Gomorrahites. Look where both cities and their inhabitants are today. Can't be found after being utterly destroyed. And this woman says she's a Christian and she doesn't believe her daughter was sinful??????
What a sad story.
It isn't your call to make, Mary.
This poor woman has issues. Her daughter told her she was a Lesbian and she treated her daughter unkindly, Her daughter committed suicide and she feels guilty . If her daughter had told her she had cancer how would she have treated her. If a kid comes to you and says he or she is queer its like any other sickness you dont stop loving them or treat them as lepers, You should treat the disease, and if you cant cure it you live with it. If the daughter brings her friends around just insist they dont make you puke by displaying their sickness in front of you .Other than that treat her friend with courtesy. Homosexuality is a sickness of the mind. IMO
Sounds like the lady has some guilt.
There's so much sloppy reasoning on this. "Gay" is not a state of existence. "Same-sex attraction" is a feeling, just as "opposite-sex attraction" is a feeling. Actions based on those feelings are either moral or immoral. Immoral actions can be forgiven if they are sincerely repented. What's so confusing?
On a related point, if one of my children, especially a son, said that he had sexual desire for the same sex, the first thing I would do is look for the adult who sexually abused him.
later pingout,
God shave the queen
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