An Anonymous Father (First United Methodist stole: "LET THE SHAME STOP!")

ANONYMOUS

My gay father (in the closet until his death in 1988) and my mother were founding members of their church in Ohio. As a youth I received my call to ministry in that church.

This stole is given in memory of my father, and because even now my heart is heavy at the continuing shaming of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons. We who are children of the closet have suffered yet unstudied painful consequences of the discrimination and silence that our parents endured.

Perhaps you can use it despite its Methodist cross and flame. After our recent General Conference one needs to make witness that we are slipping backward on this issue and losing some of the brightest and best.

LET THE SHAME STOP!

This stole, given to us just after the 1996 General Conference of the United Methodist Church, was the first United Methodist stole given to the collection. It is a simple design, a narrow, deep red, raw silk stole with the United Methodist "Cross and Flame" embroidered in gold at the bottom each panel and edged with gold fringe. It was sent to us by a woman, who is an ordained United Methodist minister, to honor her father. The letter said that her father, who was an active lay leader in his church, couldn't live with the knowledge of the church's condemnation of gays, and after many years of trying to live a "straight" life as a husband and father, he eventually took his own life. The story that she chose to put on the stole itself does not mention these facts directly; I share this bit of the story from her letter when I talk about the stole with groups.

This is one of six stoles that I took with me everywhere I went.

Martha Juillerat
Founder, Shower of Stoles Project
2006