SPEAKER FACES HOSTILITY FROM PRO-HOMOSEXUAL MOB, INCLUDING CLERGY

By Mary Rettig
July 31, 2006

(AgapePress) - A Christian activist from California says Christians ministering at the recent "Gay Games" in Chicago received an anything-but-warm welcome from a pro-homosexual crowd that included some unexpected enemies.

James Hartline is a former homosexual who has now dedicated his life to helping free others from that lifestyle and combating the homosexual agenda. The Illinois Family Institute invited him to Chicago to speak recently, during the 2006 Gay Games events, about the physical dangers of homosexual activity.

Hartline says at one point during his visit, he and a group of Christians gathered together in front of a homosexual bathhouse. There, he notes, they met fierce resistance from a raucous crowd of homosexual activists and their supporters.

"When we went inside of the homosexual community," the Christian activist recalls, "it had to be one of the ugliest spiritual experiences that I've ever experienced, because of the hostility that was directed towards us specifically by members of that community. It was like a mob mentality."

Hartline says members of the Chicago Police Department surrounded him and the people with him and created a barrier to protect them from the menacing pro-homosexual throng whose hostile members were raging at them. "There were so many threats coming our way," he asserts, "they basically had to separate us from them."

What was most disappointing about the whole situation, the ex-homosexual speaker observes, was the fact that some clergy members in their religious garb stood alongside the homosexual activists, shouting at the Christians. This scenario presented "one of the more telling signs about how far away from the Word of God some of these churches have gotten," he says.

What was hard to get over, Hartline explains, was "the idea that [although] we're Christians and we're doing what the Bible has asked us to do -- what the Lord has that told us to do, which is go spread the Word of God and its truth -- we would actually be attacked by people wearing collars as ordained ministers, calling us 'bigots' and 'hateful.'"

Hartline describes the experience as one of the most spiritually dark incidents he has ever gone through. This, he suggests, was due not only to the hostility expressed against him and the other Christians by the homosexual activists but also because of the unexpected enemies -- the clergy -- who stood shoulder to shoulder with the angry mob, berating Christians for their biblical viewpoint.