Her allegations brought down megachurch pastor Bruxy Cavey. Then the anonymous trolls came for her on Facebook and Twitter. They found her Facebook page, her Instagram page and her email address, and they sent their emails to her: a lot.
All these online bullies tried to tell her that there was nothing left to say, to let it go, that she had been wronged. And for a time, they were right.
But in the end, they were wrong again. Her words resonated. They inspired a generation. A year after a Florida church-state court struck down the law against firing gay people from religious ministries as a violation of the First Amendment, the case of a gay person in a religious ministry has become a rallying point.
But this is not the story we usually hear about LGBT Christians.
Instead, for most of the country, it’s the story of a woman, one of the most vocal members of a movement that has been trying to bring public acceptance of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people into America’s churches.
What began as a tiny, loosely knit group of gay Christians in Mississippi has blossomed into a global movement of more than 1.5 million members. The group has been featured in headlines around the world. CNN has repeatedly described the movement as “a rising tide of change for gay people in the U.S.”
But the story of Pastor Jamey Warner isn’t about change, says Michael Farris, the pastor at the church where his organization, GLAAD, was founded. “There’s a lot of talk about LGBT rights, but there’s next to no attention paid to the story of Jamey Warner,” he says.
Farris, who co-founded GLAAD in 1991, says he doesn’t need to get into the details of GL