AIDS Revives the Christian Crusade to ‘Save’ Gays : Critics Decry ‘Death-Bed’ Conversions

What’s Worse than Dying From AIDS? Dying Without Jesus

--Flyer distributed by a Los Angeles change ministry.

To a gay man hospitalized with AIDS, Jonathan Hunter must appear like an angelic emissary--he has a face right out of GQ magazine. The impression can only be strengthened as Hunter begins to speak: “If you have any questions about God, feel free to ask me. . . .”

Hunter may look like a gift from heaven, but some people say he may be inadvertently contributing to the hell experienced by people with acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

The 37-year-old model and former actor works for Desert Stream, a Santa Monica-based change ministry. Change ministries, also called ex-gay ministries, aim to deliver people of what they consider to be the sin of homosexuality--either by “converting” them to heterosexuality or by persuading them to repent. The ministries have long provoked criticism from the gay community, which argues that conversion is impossible because homosexuality is not a matter of choice. The ministries have recently refueled the controversy by targeting AIDS patients for their messages.

Visits to Hospitals

Hunter, who heads Desert Stream’s AIDS Resource Ministry, said he and his 15 volunteers have visited AIDS patients in “quite a few” Los Angeles area hospitals. Patients at San Francisco General Hospital have been visited by representatives of Love in Action, a San Rafael change ministry, according to that group’s director. And in Santa Ana, the director of the change ministry New Creations said his group intends to begin outreach to AIDS patients in Orange County.

And, though they claim not to be pursuing people with AIDS, a change ministry of the Fundamentalist Baptist Tabernacle in Los Angeles says it has distributed 75,000 flyers in West Hollywood showing a photograph of Kaposi’s sarcoma (the skin cancer that often accompanies AIDS) lesions on a man’s face. The text includes this biblical quotation: “Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.”

In yet another link between people with AIDS and ex-gays, Jim Johnson, director of the Long Beach AIDS hospice Beyond Rejection, is a veteran of several change organizations and maintains close ties to them, although he said he does not minister to his clients on spiritual matters. Michael Weinstein, coordinator of the L.A. AIDS Hospice Committee, is not convinced, however, that Johnson’s religious views don’t enter into his work with AIDS patients.

“The taint of his prior association is very serious,” Weinstein said. “It’s very, very troublesome to me.”

Critics in general are alarmed by the extent of the ministries’ activities focusing on AIDS patients, decrying what one called the groups’ “death-bed conversion” tactics.

“The last thing any of these people need to hear is that homosexuality is evil,” said Father Patrick Traynor, coordinator of chaplaincy services at UCLA Medical Center. “The danger is putting people into a real guilt trip when they’re facing death.”

‘Lethal, Inappropriate’

The Rev. Connie Hartquist, head of the Episcopal chaplaincy at San Francisco General Hospital, said she considers the ministries to be “just lethal, inappropriate.” She said her staff asks representatives of change ministries to leave the hospital unless the patient has invited them to his bedside.

An article in the September issue of The Advocate, a national gay magazine, alleged that Hunter and his crew have been visiting patients at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center without invitation. Ed Gilman, formerly a volunteer at the hospital, said he has talked with AIDS patients who were upset by unsolicited visits from Hunter and other Desert Stream volunteers. Gilman, a 59-year-old retired accountant, said he also has observed people from AIDS Resource Ministry going from the bedside of one AIDS patient to the next at County Hospital.

Hunter says he has visited patients at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Kaiser Permanente, Encino and County-General hospitals among others. But Andy Comiskey, director of Desert Stream, which is an outreach of the Vineyard Christian Fellowship, an evangelical Christian church, said that they only approach AIDS patients when invited by the patient or a patient’s relative.

“We’re getting pigeonholed as this cantankerous band of homophobes roving the hospitals,” he said, objecting to The Advocate’s accusations.

Noelle Miller, a psychosocial services worker who counsels AIDS patients at Midway Medical Center in Los Angeles, said that visitation at the request of a family member, without permission of the patient, is unethical, an opinion shared by other hospital workers. Miller said that in an attempt to head off proselytizing by change ministries, her hospital is enforcing its policy of requiring volunteer workers to wear photo name badges.

County Hospital administrative chaplain Philip Manly said that while the hospital has a policy against random visitation, it is not possible to monitor every visitor since theirs is one of the largest medical facilities in the world. Manly also said Hunter is a personal acquaintance of his (“He’s aboveboard, a wonderful man”), but that doesn’t mean he has given Hunter license to wander the halls in search of AIDS patients.

As for the change ministry Desert Stream, Manly said, “I think they’ve helped a lot of people, both male and female, over the years.”

On Andy Comiskey’s desk is a framed photograph of his two young sons, both wearing green jerseys. One of them grasps a football in his small hand.

Since the photo was taken, Comiskey’s wife, Annette, has given birth to a third child, a girl. Although Comiskey, 29, said he cannot cite studies indicating that change of sexual orientation is possible, “it happened in my own life,” he said. “It happens. It just happens.”

Comiskey, who also serves as president of Exodus International, a network of 40 change ministries nationwide, said Desert Stream’s AIDS ministry got its start 2 1/2 years ago when Hunter began helping a friend sick with AIDS. At the same time, Comiskey said, the Desert Stream offices were getting calls from newly diagnosed people with AIDS seeking “Christian fellowship.”

While Desert Stream is devoted to helping people “reroute” their desire for same-sex activity, conversion to active heterosexuality is not the goal for the patients they counsel, Comiskey said. “They’re going to die. They’re not looking for heterosexual resolve.”

He said the issue of “reckoning with sinful sexual behavior” may or may not be addressed, depending on the patient’s physical and spiritual condition.

“Unless there’s a receptivity, we would not persevere to save their souls,” he said.

A ‘Wounding’

While he denied in an interview that his organization forces its beliefs on AIDS patients, Comiskey has elsewhere advocated evangelism for the unrepentant. In the September issue of the Desert Stream newsletter, Comiskey writes, “In the case of a Christian who refuses to submit his homosexuality as a sin that requires confession and repentance, as well as spiritual/psychological wounding that requires healing, admonishment is in order. I’m amazed at how hesitant we are to call our loved ones to repent.”

Hunter and Comiskey said they do not believe that AIDS is a punishment for homosexual behavior. Yet, in the newsletter, Hunter writes: “For the person who is very sick (with AIDS), repentance is obvious. They have already felt the physical consequences of sin and death is near.”

Asked if a person with AIDS who did not accept Christ would go to hell, Hunter and Comiskey looked at each other for a moment.

“They might,” Comiskey said.

“I would imagine,” said Hunter.

The Rev. Tom Reinhart-Marean, director of religious resources for AIDS Project L.A., said that in working with those with AIDS, “there is no room for proselytizing. We have to be willing to work according to their agenda, not ours.”

The proper relationship between the spiritual counselor and the counselee, he said, is “as mutual pilgrims sharing their journeys--not as one person with questions and the other with answers, one person in need and the other with all the resources.”

One man who was counseled by Hunter described an approach that was hardly according to Reinhart-Marean’s model. The man, who asked to be identified as Luke, said that on the day his lover died of AIDS, he was approached by a doctor at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center who observed that he was distraught, and asked him about his spiritual life.

Luke said the doctor “invited me to have Christian prayer with him there in the examining room, and then he said, ‘I know a wonderful minister named Jonathan Hunter.’ ”

Luke agreed to a call from Hunter. He said the conversation went like this:

Hunter: “I was a practicing homosexual for 11 years. I felt it was wrong.”

“What are you now?”

“I’m a heterosexual.”

“Does that mean you have sex with women?”

“No, I’ve been celibate for five years.”

“Then how do you know?”

“I feel it in my heart.”

(Hunter later recalled this conversation: “It was very amicable. He (Luke) asked me a lot of questions about our ministry and what we’re about.”)

Later, Luke said he found his talk with Hunter “disturbing. I have always been a religious person. I have been a gay activist also. I realized that this form of Christianity was saying gay people are sinful, and it fits into the whole homophobia that’s taking place because of AIDS.”

Luke said that he understood the goal of the Hunter’s ministry to be to force people with AIDS to “recognize their sin or their error before they die.”

One such person who has accepted the help of Desert Stream volunteers had a more positive story to tell.

Mark (he asked that his real name not be used because his employer doesn’t know he has AIDS) said that although he was raised a Christian, he does not agree with the Desert Stream view of homosexuality as sinful. “I have difficulty believing my sexuality can be wrong.”

Mark said when he found out he was ill he called Hunter, who is a friend of his, making it clear that he would appreciate Hunter’s help, but that he didn’t want to hear any preaching. Since that time, Desert Stream volunteers have cooked meals for him and helped keep his apartment in order, he said.

“And not once did they question my religious beliefs,” Mark said. “None of them tried to convert me, or talked to me about my sexual preference.

“They’re very gentle people. Because of their religious beliefs, I’m sure they would love for everyone to find Jesus. But the most that Jonathan has ever said to me is: ‘Would you mind if I say a prayer before I go?’ ”

Jack Pantaleo got an inside look at the zeal of change ministries when he attended meetings of the San Rafael group Love in Action for three months under the guise of wanting to change. At one meeting, he said, a couple of men tried for more than an hour to get him to say: Homosexuality is a sin.

Pantaleo, spiritual director of the AIDS Interfaith Network in San Francisco, has been wary of change ministries since then.

“AIDS is good for the ex-gay groups,” Pantaleo said. “Fear of the disease has helped drive people to them.”

As an example of fear-recruitment tactics, Pantaleo said an AIDS patient named Paul Diamond embraced the ex-gay philosophy shortly before he died about two years ago. In an interview from his hospital bed shown on “The 700 Club,” an international Christian television program, he praised the change process.

“It was one of the worst things I’d ever seen,” Pantaleo said.

But more was to come. At a memorial service for Diamond, the Love in Action ministry distributed a written message that the deceased had composed. Frank Worthen of Love in Action said part of the message went like this: “If you have AIDS or pre-AIDS and are a struggling Christian, God wants you back in his fold.”

Said Worthen: “He (Diamond) wanted others to know there was a way out.”

Some of the dead man’s friends began screaming in protest during the service and left the room, Pantaleo said.

Former Westlake Village resident Bob Winter, 34, is an AIDS patient who is living with Worthen, the formerly gay director of Love in Action, and his wife, Anita, in their San Rafael home.

When he was 18, Winter said, he burst into the gay life “full force.” But he said that it made him unhappy. He expected to find love, and found only variety instead.

“All the promiscuity made it harder for me to really love,” Winter said.

Turning his back on the homosexual life style, Winter went through the Desert Stream change program in Santa Monica two years ago. Winter, 34, said he has known some people who have gone straight, so he believes it’s possible, but he has also known people who have failed.

“For most people it’s a long, hard haul. I wouldn’t say that I’m there yet.”

After he found he had AIDS, Winter said he had to face the fact that he is not going to have the chance to go the full distance with the change process. He is not going to marry, as he had hoped. There will be no children.

But there are consolations.

“I don’t hate myself like I used to,” he said. “Even though I’ll be dying soon, I know God loves me. I have an awful lot of peace.”