Free Republic

Richard Davis grew up in the black Pentecostal church in the 1960s and '70s that preached homosexuals were doomed not only to eternal damnation but a hotter place in hell than where other sinners might go. Old Testament scripture quoted from the pulpit fostered within Davis a homophobia. By the time Davis was ordained as a Baptist minister in 1982, the overt condemnation of gays in the black church had been tempered into an unspoken acknowledgement that some members of the congregation, and the clergy, might be homosexual. But as long as they did not acknowledge their sexual orientation, they...