Church founder to speak in Costa Mesa

Young Chang

COSTA MESA -- For a brief moment more than 30 years ago, Rev. Troy

Perry doubted whether God loved him.

His church in Santa Ana had excommunicated him after he announced he

was gay.

He had struggled privately in the ‘50s and ‘60s after reading books

that discriminated against homosexuality and equated the orientation with

pedophiles and men who wear their mother’s clothing.

And his church had made it clear: God doesn’t love gays. Or so some

thought.

Still, Perry asked God, in 1968, to help him find a place to worship.

“I said, ‘You called me to preach, you knew who I was in my mother’s

womb. God if you want to see a church started in the gay and lesbian

community with the door open to everybody, you just let me know when,”

Perry said. “And I always tell people God spoke to me in that still,

small voice in the mind’s ear and said, now.”

Twelve people gathered in Perry’s Los Angeles home that year for the

first service. Today, the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community

Churches has grown to more than 300 congregations in 16 countries and a

membership of more than 44,000.

The ministry affirms gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered

people and is headquartered in West Hollywood.

Perry will speak Sunday at the Costa Mesa branch, called the

Resurrection Beach Metropolitan Community Church, on the subject of

always going “First Class” to celebrate Gay Pride as well as in honor of

the branch’s fifth anniversary.

“I tell them that God wanted us to go first class in our lives and all

that we do,” he said. “We believe in a tripod gospel -- the gospel of

Christian salvation, Christian community and Christian social action.”

The Rev. Barbara Haynes of Resurrection Beach, which meets weekly at

the Unitarian Universalist Church on Victoria Street, said most of her 21

members are people who were forced out of their churches.

“Not because of our spirituality, but our sexuality,” she said. “The

harsh theologies that they give us is that God doesn’t love us and that

we can never be one of God’s children because of our sexuality.”

Haynes, a lesbian who was drawn to the church about 30 years ago, said

she fell in love with the doctrine because God was presented as “such a

broad God.”

“I want [people] to know that God sent his son to love all people,”

she said.

Perry added that he believes Jesus came to take away his sins, not his

sexuality.

“I tell people that if they don’t hear anything else I say, to always

remember this -- God didn’t create you so God could have something to set

around and hate,” he said. “I believe that my homosexuality is a gift

from God.”

FYI

WHAT: Perry speaks at Resurrection Beach Metropolitan Community Church

WHEN: 7 p.m. Sunday

WHERE: Unitarian Universalist Church, 1259 Victoria St., Costa Mesa

COST: Free