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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (June 6, 2003)
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Be Safe Drive Safe L ike F ather , L ike S on Journey toward personal acceptance helps gay pastor and his family by Ja c k T u rteltau b erby Lauderdale, a man of many accomplishments and the pastor of Peace Church of the Brethren, is grateful for the life he has lived. As Portland Pride always coincides with Fathers Day, he reflects on raising four adult children, one of them also gay, and going on his first date with his partner during the fes tival 21 years ago. For Lauderdale, it wasn’t easy being gay even though he knew early on (“at age 11 or 12” ) that he was attracted to men. He admits he was terrified about his own feelings. It was never easy growing up gay in the ’40s and ’50s, even in the movie capital of Los Angeles. There were no gay role models and no gay bars in those days, and the word “gay” meant something entirely different. “It paralyzed my life— to he so drawn to males and yet so unable to do anyth,ng about it in the way of fulfillment," he recalls. Raised hy his father and stepmother (his mother died 10 days after he was bom) in a fairly tolerant home environment and in a tolerant Baptist church, he successfully repressed his feelings until college. When Lauderdale finally fell in love and had an affair with a male roommate at Univer sity of California at Berkeley in the early ’60s, it was before the free speech movement, the Summer of Love was years away, and the Stonewall riots that would bring gays out of the closet in the United States was at the other end of the decade. It was not surprising, then, that the academ ically gifted Lauderdale found he could not Kerby Lauderdale (right, with grandson maintain his gay relationship when his studies Damian) is the first openly gay man took him to Purdue University in Indiana to to serve as pastor of a Church of the study forest economics. He remembers that he and his lover “didn’t see a way toward a rela Brethren congregation tionship. We had no images in the community. Any conversation about it with a counselor was “felt drawn to his wife in a platonic, sisterly way. My real longing was forbidden." met with a disease diagnosis that confirmed our Before proposing marriage, Lauderdale made own self-doubt." a point of telling her about his previous feelings For Lauderdale, the alternatives to marriage for men, but he also told her— and, at the time, were bleak: The prospect of almost complete believed— he could change through his mar isolation and stigmatization as sick and immoral riage, and he dedicated himself to making a held little attraction. “Soon after I returned (from California], I felt my only possibility for future with her. avoiding pain and loneliness was heterosexual ^ T ogether the couple began building a life. marriage." Now, looking back 40 years, Lauderdale has X Their next stop was Salt Lake City, where Kerby entered a doctoral program in economics a perspective that maturity and societal change have created. “All these years...I’ve pondered at University of Utah. something you feel so intensely, that is so com In his spare time, Lauderdale earned money pelling— how could you conceive of that as by working in a nursery. It didn’t take him long changeable?" to realize he didn’t want to be an economist, and Lauderdale says that when he developed sex in the meantime his focus had gradually shifted to divinity school, in keeping with a distinct ual feelings as a teen-ager, it was “a whiplash spiritual bent. change in your life. For me, the frightening part— it was in such opposition to social norms. Lauderdale was interested in the Church of For the other hoys, it was all playful. For me, it the Brethren, an Anabaptist sect that stresses was horrifying." the importance of personal conscience and that is explicitly pacifist. Having served in the Utah Lauderdale attributes some of his reluctance to accept his gay feelings to his personality. National Guard to avoid a tour of duty because he did not support the Vietnam War, he was "Pleasing people and being accepted were a pleased to receive an honorable discharge upon strong fix us,” he notes. “Even in high school and junior high, I worked very hard to date girls his admission to Bethany Theological Seminary in Chicago. and I had no trouble ‘passing.’ ’’ After graduation Lauderdale accepted a pas- At Purdue, Lauderdale met his future wife, torite in North Manchester, Ind., and the cou Linda. He says he met the woman who would ple began to build a family through adoption. become so central in his life on a double date; First came Thomas in 1970, followed hy two she was dating the other guy. other hoys and a daughter. “Linda and 1 hit it off in terms of values, In 1976 Lauderdale stepped down from style, interests and background,” Lauderdale the pastorite to work full time on a nursery recalls. “We became good friends.” He says he K PHOTO BY Mechanics ■ that fixll everything^ llwclMdlnal I yours consM Benefit the Community with your Mortgage m ew s
