And he contrasted care and cure and said, I always wondered if he had his own sexuality in mind when he said, we always long for cure, but often what we really need is care to be known to be loved, to be supported, to be a part of a church family, where somebody knows when your airplane is landing, when somebody realizes when you're not there and checks in on you, those basic longings that we all have as human beings to know and be known. Those are things that every Christian needs, and particularly somebody who's celibate on account of their sexual orientation. But yeah, you know, when I look at CS Lewis, John Stott, Billy Graham, when I look at Francis Schafer, I mean, these are the four big names of 20th century transatlantic evangelical Christianity, and really in the world at the time, and they all espouse the view toward gay people that was not about curing, but was about caring. You know, CS Lewis's own best friend Arthur was gay. And when Arthur came out to Lewis as gay around, it was around 1900, Lewis didn't make an issue of it. And then when Lewis became a Christian, a couple of years later, Arthur was the first person to be turned to and to tell about it, you know, they vacation together, they were best friends, the letters that CS Lewis wrote to Arthur Greaves have been collected in a volume and it's over 500 ages, and that's just Lewis's half of the conversation, they were constantly in contact, and Lewis supported decriminalization of homosexual practice in the UK. He insisted that it was not the worst sin that greed and pride are much worse, which were, of course, much bigger and more pervasive sins in the UK in the middle of the 20th century. But yeah, Francis Schafer, he founded the Brie Fellowship and it became a magnet for gay people who are trying to wrestle with what they believed and whether Christianity was actually true and what that was going to mean for them, and he was very kind to them, he defended you know, there's a point in which we have a record of Francis Schafer, I think it's the first time he met with Jerry Falwell, senior, the religious right and moral majority, and after they talked about philosophy and history and culture and ethics and all this other stuff, Jerry Falwell went over and said, and what do you think of homosexuals, and Schafer in his classic Francis Schafer way stepped back and said, well, you know, it's a very complicated issue, and Falwell shot back the rejoinder with no humor at all saying, if I had a dog that did what those people do, I'd shoot it and on the way out, Schafer turned to his son and said, that man is disgusting, you know, he was so horrified, joking about violence against gay people, it was so out of the question, it was so far from being Christian that he had real doubts about Falwell you know, our earliest mention of homosexuality by Billy Graham was actually during a big gay sex scandal in 1964, just weeks before the 1964 election when one of the top advisors of Lyndon Johnson was caught in a sting, having sex with another man in a YMCA and then the press got hold of it and they had first suppressed the knowledge but then they found out a few days later that he had been arrested in the same restroom doing the same thing 10 years earlier, and this is the right hand man of the President of the United States and then the first before a reelection, and it blew up like a nuclear cloud over Washington Republican candidate Barry Goldwater had bumper stickers made that said all the way with LBJ but don't go near the YMCA, of course the advisor immediately resigned and a couple days later Billy Graham called the White House and he asked to speak with the President, got on with the President, they jatted for a couple minutes and he said, the reason I'm calling is I want you to have compassion on Walter and then Billy Graham then went and lectured Lyndon Johnson on how we're all sinners were no different, he said I know what's in a man's heart, I'm no different, he had solidarity with this poor man who had just blown up his career and his standing as a person and he realized forgiveness and compassion, that's how Jesus felt toward sinners and we're all sinners and it was really astounding because here this pastor to the President's is using what leverage he had to intervene for a gay man who had just been busted and having gay sex, taking it to the highest authority to intervene, that's loving someone, you know, if Christians consistently love gay people like that then certainly we wouldn't be hearing this constant refrain about how Christians hate gay people because the world would know otherwise but you know we've got all these examples of figures beforehand, yeah I appreciate it in the book that you kind of lay out

this