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So they created a voice for the LGBTQ community in Alameda, and they called it Out on the Island. And they met at Buena Vista and had their meetings there, and there was another pastor, Reverend Larry Schultz, who was very supportive. He was probably, he and I were the only two pastors that would speak up on this issue, and we accompanied them to school board meetings and we would speak up on behalf of the faith community to say that that other church doesn't represent all Christians, and that there's another view in mind here. And so it took them a good year to organize, and then they brought the proclamation back. I think they maybe did some changes in wordings, or what have you, but they got the proclamation back into the city with blessings on it.

But that also kind of was a period where there were other things going on as well, as they began to target this teacher, Vicky Forrester, who had not been out. But she was a lesbian, and they were targeting her, I'm trying to remember, I think she was teaching at Amelia Earhart, but she was also a basketball coach. So some of our kids played basketball for her in middle school. And so because they were targeting her, what was very interesting about that, Chaconas was the superintendent at the time. He was very proactive to support her. There was no question that she had the support of the school district, and when issues came to the school board and things were, I think they were trying to penalize her for bringing some teaching around... I know what it was. She was talking about the Ellen DeGeneres program in class one day, and I think one of the kids went home and told their parent, and the parent complained to the school. And the church got wind of it and they started to target her, and they wanted to out her and they wanted to get her fired, I think, but the school district had her back.

The contrast in this is that when they first came to shut down the gay pride proclamation, they outnumbered us. Like they had over a hundred people at the school board meeting. Our city council meeting, we had maybe twenty people at most. By the time this thing came with Vicky Forrester, the school district mobilized people out to support Vicky, and they had well over a hundred people, maybe two hundred people supporting her. And by that time, the other opposing forces had dwindled down to, I'd say, less than fifty. So there was a shift, I think, in public sentiment about this issue, and people were becoming aware that the rights for this segment of the population was just as important as anybody else, and I think there became kind of that movement forward. And I think Alameda then began to have, to develop a reputation in the area of being gay friendly, so to speak, and more people started to move there, more anecdotal, and as far as I know, I don't have any data on that, but I just get that sense talking to people. And we had some key folks that were very great partners in working with them, Morton Wellhaven and Christine Allen who were part of Out on the Island, and also kind of kind of there on the ground with the local community to help us understand how best to organize together.

PW: At this point, I can just visualize in my mind, so we're now in the '90s, and your congregation's getting very, a lot of experience with dealing with controversy. How did that feel for you just on a weekly basis coming in or daily basis, I'm assuming, working with everybody. Because I can just feel this evolution happening.

MY: You know, one of the good things about the Community Development Network and the community organizing training that we were part of in the Methodist church is that they had told us that when you're organizing any issues, you don't necessarily want a hundred percent unanimity on things, because that's not real. Change is happening because there's tension and there's conflict that's going on, but we hope we're on the right side of issues, and you want to education people, you want to mobilize and move people toward community change, but there always is going to be tension if you're really doing your work well. And so that was always something I took note of. And they said, "You know, maybe seventy, eighty percent support is what you're shooting for. When you split down the middle, that's the worst thing," because then, you know, which side do you go on on the particular kind of issue and so forth? So I think just being aware of that, that that's some of the dynamics of change, and also that as you're moving through different issues of concern for people, for me it was always important for us as a church that what we're doing is God's work. It's a faith issue. We're discerning, what is God calling us to do? And for me personally, I'm in ministry because I'm a believer in God, and I can attest and witness to God's transformative power in my own life, in the life of people around me, I've seen it, I've witnessed it. And as a pastor now retired, I can attest to it. When we were going through it, I was always a believer that if the spirit is moving us in the right direction, then we cannot fail. I mean, no matter what the result is. It doesn't mean we have to win something, but if we're following God's spirit, the Holy Spirit we speak of, then transformation can take place.

And those are kind of the unseen things that you can't calculate, but that the movement and the transformation of people from the inside out happens, it happens. And I can testify to that now that I'm retired, because I look back on all the things where we entered into something, it was quite unknown where the result was going to be. But, to me, discernment of the Holy Spirit is the most important thing. And so even if you're in the midst of conflict or differences of opinion, those differences can emerge in a new way in terms of kind of a creative collaboration of interests, and people's perspectives. And I experienced that over and over, from one thing to another. So just always being mindful that we need to follow God's will for us, and that includes me, because sometimes I'll be the stumbling block to something.

PW: I can just imagine this particular time in your evolution with this church and the nation, and LGBTQ rights being something that, if there is a religious aspect, there's a core value part of this that I could see being a little more work than mainly saying the racial stuff, right?

MY: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. And we did, within the congregation, we had resistance to it for different reasons. I think for some people it was theological, for some it's cultural, and so we had to have some.. and there was actually one point in time where George Chin, my administrative council chair, told me, "You know, people are getting uncomfortable with this LGBTQ issue," and he asked me, "How do you want to deal with them?" And I said, "Let me take a moratorium on preaching on this from the pulpit. But I would like to make sure we support this group Out on the Island for their right to meet." Because I think maybe this is too much going on for people, and as a pastor, you don't know also what's going on for people's lives behind closed doors as well. Because maybe it's uncomfortable because maybe there are folks that are dealing with a gay son or a lesbian daughter, or maybe persons themselves are feeling, like, on the spot with certain things, or who knows what's going on? And so there's always the pastoral side of supporting your members, which you don't know what people may be going through. And then the prophetic side of trying to cast a vision for what is right in terms of social justice, and you have to put that in balance in the congregation. I think that's the unique thing about being in a congregation, because you have the full spectrum of life, which you're dealing with. So I did take a moratorium for a period of time on preaching about things. But I told George, after they went after Victoria Forrester, "I got to break the moratorium, we got to speak out on this." And there were young people who understood it and why, because she was their basketball coach.

And then also we went through the process of us becoming a reconciling congregation. It took us a while, but being reconciling means, within the Methodist church, reconciling means you are fully inclusive of LGBTQ persons and their families. It was an important designation to make because in the national Methodist church, our Book of Discipline does have discriminatory clauses that are still there today, that are causing a lot of conflict in the greater United Methodist church. But reconciling ministries were the ways in which people can become fully affirming. And also important in Christian churches to apologize to people for the harm that has been done in the past through biblical scripture interpretation and theological interpretation as well. Because it needed to be healing for people because in many spaces, churches have been toxic for that particular (concern). And we didn't become reconciling until 2006 under the leadership of Daniel Park, who was our chair of our Church & Society committee at that time, and we went through a whole process. We went through like a six-week, we called it a Lent series, building up to Easter, process of education to talk about the issue, and more deal with it within the congregation. So there's this symbiotic relationship with what we do within the congregation and then what goes on in the community as well, because they're always connected together.

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