Extracted from an account by Canon Albert Ogle in “Moving forward together : Homosexuality and The Church of Ireland”, co-edited by Canon Ginnie Kennerley and Dr Richard O’Leary, which will be published in late January 2012 by Changing Attitude Ireland.
Moving to Los Angeles to work with homeless gay youth
I had heard about how progressive the American Episcopal Church was becoming, and on a vacation in Los Angeles in 1982, I met Marsha Langford at my first Gay Pride parade. As president of Integrity, the Episcopal Church’s LGBT advocacy organisation, she was looking for an openly gay priest to begin a ministry with the hundreds of runaway gay youth that flocked to Los Angeles every year, as refugees from homophobic Middle America. I moved to L.A. later that year and began the ministry at the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center.
These exiled kids were the product of the same forces that had kicked me out from my home and church. I was lucky as a university graduate with friends and connections to a better life. They ended up selling their bodies on the streets of Santa Monica Boulevard. Within five years, many of them were sick or dead from AIDS. I watched a whole generation of exiles either die of AIDS or became care-givers and activists to fight the discrimination caused by it.
As a priest, I had a unique role to play and my mediation skills that had been honed in Ireland as a reconciler on the streets of Belfast, were now used to get insurance companies and health care providers to help the marginalized. The Episcopal Church became, in the words of Ed Browning our amazing presiding bishop, “The Church of no outcasts.” I had found a home where my gifts and calling could be validated.
A profound healing experience
Later that year, I was invited to celebrate the Eucharist at St. John’s church, now the Pro-Cathedral. It was the first time I had celebrated in over three years, and I was terrified. There was something very painful about standing as a priest before the altar and saying those words again. The damning words of the Archbishop of Dublin haunted me and I felt so unworthy; yet surrounded by members of the Los Angeles chapter of Integrity, the blessing of sharing in the feast of love and reconciliation was one of the most profound healing experiences I have ever known.
When clergy stand at the altar, they are called to represent Christ, to sometimes stand with the suffering ones; but for me priesthood is more than ever to hold the sacred space open for everyone, so they can experience the power of God’s redeeming love. The altar became for me “a place of wounded memory,” just as sitting in church for most LGBT people is a painful returning to the place where we first heard “our love was not good.”
It is my belief that the authentic spiritual journey begins in exile (the Garden of Eden story affirms it) and being fully healed as an LGBT person, we are gently encouraged to return to the place of the wound. The sacrifice that is being made by LGBT people on a global scale, on altars of certainty and righteousness is a daily occurrence. “Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us” takes on a new meaning when one’s own spiritual journey follows a pattern of crucifixion, death and resurrection.
Canon Malcolm Boyd, one of the great openly gay mentors for the church who I came to love and respect in Los Angeles, once told me “Albert, for every one of us who have survived, 10 have not.” I think of the many gay and closeted clergy I know from the Church of Ireland who either committed suicide, drank themselves to death in a bid to numb their alienation, or were shipped off to London as I was. The toll is devastating and the waste of God-given gifts is a great blight on the church’s stewardship of creation in all its diversity.
What thousands of blessings have been withheld from the church as a result of the rejection faced by clergy like me? Yet many lives, mine among them, have experienced healing and reconciling love thanks to dioceses, parishes and nonprofit organizations conscious of the needs of LGBT people.
We now have the opportunity to tell our stories, and there are thousands more to tell. Integrity and the Diocese of Los Angeles welcomed me and took me in, broken and afraid and humiliated, and surrounded me with the friends of God. They believed in me when I could not believe in myself. As I come up to my 35th year of ministry, I realize that my move to the United States allowed me opportunities that most gay clergy are not given. … To be continued
Originally from St. Patrick’s Parish, Ballymacarrett, Belfast, Diocese of Down, the Rev. Canon Albert Ogle was ordained for the Diocese of Connor as curate of Derriaghy Parish 1977-1979 and served as curate of St. Bartholomew’s, Diocese of Dublin, 1979-1981. He has served in several parishes in the U.S., including rector of St. George’s Laguna Hills for 10 years and is currently president of the St. Paul’s Foundation for International Reconciliation based in St. Paul’s Cathedral in San Diego.