Audio Interview, Jim Mulcahy, March 30, 2012

JIM MULCAHY: In 2004 in Rochester,

we had something called The Rochester Religious

Community for Equal Marriage.

It didn't last long.

At one time we had ninety-four members.

EVELYN BAILEY: Wow

JIM MULCAHY: Out of that, in activism and my own church,

we did the public marriage of Anne Tischer and Bess Watts

in Washington Square Park in 2004.

And ten ministers and rabbis stood behind me

as I did that, with the district attorney threatening

to arrest me if I said the word "married" or "marriage."

The irony of that was that the assistant district

attorney at the time, who was communicating with me,

was lesbian.

Telling me that he said, that if I said "married"

I would be arrested, and I didn't want to be arrested,

but at some point, you have to put your money

where your mouth is.

And I did say it.

And we had all the media present.

And I did not get arrested.

And that coming out event, for Open Arms,

was really the beginning of our growth and expansion.

We had been in existence since 1981,

but in fact, it was all right for people to be in the closet.

And as a church, we were kind of in the closet,

even though we were a gay church.

EVELYN BAILEY: Right.

JIM MULCAHY: With 2004, we were as out as we could get,

and it made a big difference.

EVELYN BAILEY: Was that the first marriage,

or, I would say, first marriage that you performed?

JIM MULCAHY: The first same sex marriage?

EVELYN BAILEY: Yes.

JIM MULCAHY: I had done what we called

a holy union before that.

EVELYN BAILEY: OK.

JIM MULCAHY: But it was the first time

I used the same wedding ceremony that I use for any couple,

and it was the first time I said "married" and "marriage."

EVELYN BAILEY: So, within Open Arms

there were, prior to this event, other members of your community

who requested having the union

JIM MULCAHY: That's correct.

EVELYN BAILEY: and you fulfilled

JIM MULCAHY: That's correct.

EVELYN BAILEY: that request?

JIM MULCAHY: And previous pastors did the same thing.

I mean, it's always been a part of MCC tradition to do that.

EVELYN BAILEY: When did you come to Rochester?

JIM MULCAHY: I've been in Rochester since 1974.

EVELYN BAILEY: Oh, wow.

JIM MULCAHY: I didn't work as pastor,

I worked in alternative religious work, in chaplaincy.

And for twenty-five years I was a health care chaplain.

EVELYN BAILEY: OK.

JIM MULCAHY: I was a member of Open Arms,

when I was diagnosed with cancer in 2000,

I needed a religious community around me.

And my standards said, I can't belong to any local church,

no matter how open and affirming,

if the parent denomination discriminated

against LGBT people or against women.

Well, that narrowed my choices significantly, basically,

at that time, to the Unitarians and to MCC.

And I wasn't ready to give up my belief in Jesus.

So, MCC was what my church was.

Although, all my theology is quite close to Unitarians,

I needed that peace, that was satisfied at MCC.

EVELYN BAILEY: Now, can you share with me, in your work

as hospital chaplaincy

JIM MULCAHY: Yes.

EVELYN BAILEY: right?

Were there any instances in which

gay couples were on your list?

JIM MULCAHY: Absolutely.

EVELYN BAILEY: And do you recall if there was ever

any conflict between the hospital and those couples,

or visitation rights with those couples?

JIM MULCAHY: There most definitely was.

I can think of two instances.

One was in it had to have been somewhere around 1987 or 1988.

And the hospital I was working in at the time

got its first AIDS patient.

It wasn't so much couples, but it was

EVELYN BAILEY: AIDS.

JIM MULCAHY: it was AIDS at that time.

And the way that some of the staff treated

that young man, who, by the way, was

terminal at his first diagnosis, the way

they treated him was shameful.

Refusing to take care of him, wearing triple gloves,

and I called the nurse manager and the infection control

specialist to do an in-service for the staff,

and they allowed me to basically blast the staff

for their inhumanity, and the way

they were taking care of this young man.

EVELYN BAILEY: In what hospital?

JIM MULCAHY: I can't I can say, but I don't want it

anywhere in print.

It was Parkridge, at the time.

EVELYN BAILEY: OK.

OK.

Did this same instant possibly happen in other hospitals

you were, or had you heard?

JIM MULCAHY: In the early days

EVELYN BAILEY: Yeah.

JIM MULCAHY: even medical professionals

EVELYN BAILEY: Right.

JIM MULCAHY: were consumed with terror.

Spouses of nurses were forbidding

them to take care of.

Nurses were refusing to take care of patients.

Cleaning people were refusing to do the rooms.

Or the people serving meals wouldn't go into the room

with I can only well, from that young man

that I dealt with extensively, I know the pain that was caused

by, I mean, all that's going on in their own body, as well

as the social stuff that was going around.

It's a total night and day now, from that time.

EVELYN BAILEY: When did it change, Jim?

Or when did it shift from fear to being able to work with?

Do you recall?

JIM MULCAHY: When I was at Parkridge,

I was on the board of directors of the hemophilia center.

And it came into public consciousness, at that time,

that there were different ways of contracting AIDS.

And unfortunately, in society, there came an honorable way,

through a blood transfusion, or a dishonorable way,

through gay sex.

And one of the first questions people would ask,

was how did he get it?

We had a really good infection control specialist on the board

with us, as we were dealing with hemophiliacs

who were not gay, who had AIDS.

And I'm thinking Strong Hospital became the first system that

really did a scientific, clinical approach,

and did good in-servicing, and had

really good physicians on staff, who did a lot of education

about humane care.

It's just a disease.

And I'm thinking that had to have been in the early '90s

EVELYN BAILEY: OK.

JIM MULCAHY: that that really, really began

to change in Rochester.

EVELYN BAILEY: You might be interested to know,

we've interviewed Bill Valenti.

JIM MULCAHY: OK.

EVELYN BAILEY: And when he was at Strong,

he indicated to us the very first AIDS case that came

across his desk, was in 1984.

JIM MULCAHY: Yeah, yeah.

EVELYN BAILEY: Very early in the '80s.

And that was one.

Not seen another one for another two, three months, then there

was another.

JIM MULCAHY: Yes.

EVELYN BAILEY: And another

JIM MULCAHY: Yeah.

EVELYN BAILEY: and another.

So

JIM MULCAHY: Yeah.

Yeah.

And when Bill was the medical director of a community health

network, I was working for hospice

at visiting nurse service.

And I ran a group at CHN for relationship survivors

of people who had died of AIDS.

And a couple years after I started that group,

the antiretrovirals came into practice,

and then we didn't have any more people in my group.

My group ended because for a while there,

the deaths went down dramatically.

But those were really challenging years.

Just the concept that there's a dishonorable

and an honorable way to get a disease is horrifying.

EVELYN BAILEY: Right.

When did drug use enter into that mix?

Do you recall?

Because originally, it was the gay plague.

JIM MULCAHY: Yes, yes.

EVELYN BAILEY: And originally, we, as a community,

were blamed for the disease

JIM MULCAHY: Yes.

EVELYN BAILEY: and for proliferating it,

and for spreading it, and for everything else.

JIM MULCAHY: Exactly.

EVELYN BAILEY: Until

JIM MULCAHY: I'm trying to think when

I started hearing about crystal meth

and some of the other drugs.

EVELYN BAILEY: Probably late '90s.

JIM MULCAHY: I'm thinking it had to have been the late '90s.

Because I came into MCC in 2000, and at our general conferences

we started seeing workshops about the effect

of crystal meth, especially on the gay community.

So, I think that's probably a good time frame.

EVELYN BAILEY: Yeah, yeah.

JIM MULCAHY: And I could be off.

That period of time is--

we kind of put it behind us.

We didn't want to, those aren't the memories we wanted to keep,

moving forward.

EVELYN BAILEY: But obviously, your pastoral care

became, in a sense, easier from the perspective of you

were not having to confront the medical profession

about its inhumane

JIM MULCAHY: That's absolutely correct.

EVELYN BAILEY: treatment

JIM MULCAHY: Absolutely correct.

EVELYN BAILEY: of AIDS patients.

JIM MULCAHY: Right.

And once the awareness and education

happened in the religious community,

units in hospitals that routinely dealt with HIV/AIDS

became fierce advocates for how patients were cared for,

and compassionate humane care, and not

treating them any differently than you

would treat any other patient.

It became a whole different world.

Yeah.

EVELYN BAILEY: And what about families

of patients who had AIDS?

JIM MULCAHY: The biggest obstacle

I faced in families of people with HIV/AIDS was religious.

Parents who believed that their children who had AIDS

were getting the just punishment for their evil

behaviors and lives.

EVELYN BAILEY: For their parents'

JIM MULCAHY: For their parents'

EVELYN BAILEY: evil behavior and lives.

JIM MULCAHY: And of course, the churches

the parents were coming from were preaching

against homosexuality, and they were doing

the whole gay plague thing.

And over the years there were many people

who, at diagnosis, were in that process,

coming out to their families, through the diagnosis.

So, the families were getting a double whammy.

And as you know, our community hasn't always

been patient giving families time

to get used to our reality.

And most families come around, I think.

Most families have their violent initial reaction, their denial,

all the crap that goes on, and then there's a realization,

oh, wait, this is my son, this is my daughter,

they haven't changed.

It's been an incredible awakening,

and the whole Harvey Milk phenomenon, come out, come out,

wherever you are, we really, over the last generation,

have seen the power of coming out,

in terms of giving a human face, and telling our own stories,

and having people recognize that we're not different.

In 2004, on the same day that I married Anne and Bess,

I can't remember the reporter's name for the DNC,

he did a front page article on them, above the fold.

And when he first went to interview them,

Bess was mowing the lawn and Anne was baking chocolate chip

cookies, and his first question was, well,

how is this different from any family?

And he kind of sat on that article,

and then when we knew we were going to have the marriage

and we sent out press releases and everything,

it became the front page news for that day.

And ironically, all the newspapers and TV stations,

what they picked up was, at the end of the ceremony,

when I said, you may seal your vows with a kiss.

And that's what everybody wanted.

But we expected, because of the publicity,

we expected large anti-gay protesters.

We had one.

And of course, the news people were seeking for that element,

and I'll never forget, as long as I live,

that while he was being interviewed, the reporter said,

and what do you think of today's events?

And he said, "what used to be done in the dark of night

is now being done in the light of day."

And a woman walking by yelled, "Praise Jesus!" (laughs) It

was wonderful.

But it was one person who came off like a crackpot.

And there was overwhelming support.

So, this business of doing things

in the light of day, our community desperately

still needs to continue doing that.

EVELYN BAILEY: You came to MCC

JIM MULCAHY: In 2000.

EVELYN BAILEY: Open Arms in 2000.

By then AIDS had much work had been done.

JIM MULCAHY: Yes.

EVELYN BAILEY: What, at that time,

was the issue confronting your community,

in terms of LGBT issues?

JIM MULCAHY: You know, although we always

had been a church for gay and lesbian people,

our primary ministry is to gain lesbian people,

our issue was, are we going to survive?

Because we we're really small in numbers and had debt.

However, what we had to do was to get together.

I remember seventeen of us spent a weekend together saying,

what are we going to do here?

And the question was asked of us, well, who are you?

And we realized we had no idea who we were.

We had no idea who comes to church and stays.

Even though we were LGBT people, we hadn't claimed our identity.

And we realized that, as we examined

it, the people who came to our church and stayed

were largely people who had had a religious upbringing, because

of being gay or lesbian, either were thrown out or left

their churches, but then later, in their thirties or forties,

realized that they wanted to find a community within which

they could both celebrate their sexuality

and reclaim their spirituality.

Once we had our identity, we recognized

we needed to be out as a church.

Even though we were LGBT, we weren't really out as a church.

And we became that way.

And as a result, we did the 2004 wedding.

As a result, we grew.

As a result, we were able to be large enough

to buy our own church building, which we had never

been able to do before.

So, our initial struggle was with our identity.

Who are we, as Christian LGBT people?

EVELYN BAILEY: When did you begin to celebrate

a service at the gay picnic?

JIM MULCAHY: It was before me.

I think it had gone on for a few years, at least.

So, I'm thinking it had to have been in the late '90s.

EVELYN BAILEY: And who was the pastor prior to your

JIM MULCAHY: Prior to me was Ron Helms.

EVELYN BAILEY: That's right.

JIM MULCAHY: He was there for six or seven years.

EVELYN BAILEY: OK.

And then after you came, you continued to have the service.

JIM MULCAHY: The first year I was interim pastor,

it was short notice.

And I pulled in Spiritus Christi,

and I tried to broaden it, so it wasn't us doing a service,

it was the Christian community doing a service.

It seemed important, if we were doing it on Sunday morning,

not to have an interfaith service,

but to have a non-denominational Christian service.

And then there was a year I couldn't do it,

and it was taken over by Interfaith Advocates.

And then it got harder and harder

to just sustain the service, and we stopped doing that.

And last year, I did one at the First Universalist Church,

during the week rather than on the Sunday morning.

EVELYN BAILEY: Right.

Can you share with me some of your experiences working

with other denominations?

And their reactions, responses, not so much to AIDS,

but to being gay, to homosexuality, to

JIM MULCAHY: It's been, what I'll

say is, a successful struggle in the Rochester community.

We have really an incredible number of Christian churches

and Jewish temples who are really affirming and open.

Over the years, the way we've seen it develop,

is that some churches would call me

to preach at their church about openness,

and what does it mean to be an open and affirming community.

Because when a congregation declared

itself open and affirming, it didn't mean much

at the beginning.

It meant that if you are LGBT you can come.

It didn't mean any other particular accommodation.

Spiritus Christi, of course, was a different situation.

So we've seen a growing, I mean, I'm

really happy with where the religious community is,

here in Rochester right now.

Because not only have mainline denominations become

largely open and affirming, we've

seen the movement within the national churches

to affirm gay and lesbian pastors, transgender pastors.

We've seen the gradual openness of some

of the mainline denominations to partnered LGBT clergy.

We've seen mainline local congregations

begin to host and champion equal justice,

and raise the consciousness of their own people,

and of course, parallel in our community.

We've had the realization of the importance of allies,

and that has happened along the mainline churches.

I don't know what year it was, but it was at least six

or seven years ago, MCC's General Conference, our World

Conference, was in Calgary, Alberta, Canada,

and Bishop Gene Robinson came to address our big conference.

And what he said was, yes, he was Episcopalian, yes, he

had been elected by Episcopalians,

but if it hadn't been for MCC, he

would never have been able to be bishop.

So we kind of paved that way.

And we've seen I wouldn't give Open Arms in Rochester

credit for the growing consciousness

among other denominations, other churches,

but it's been gratifying to see that kind of understanding,

that to be open and affirming is more than letting people come.

It's including them, and leadership, and the rest of it.

EVELYN BAILEY: Have you had any interactions

with the black churches?

Hispanic churches that are Christian but are not as open?

JIM MULCAHY: Other than donating our pews

to a Hispanic congregation, we have not

had any close relationships, mainly

on the issue of biblical literalism.

We have partnered, since their inception,

with the Unity Fellowship Church in Rochester,

that first was (unintelligible) now is Unity Fellowship Church.

And when I was in Eastern Europe for a few months last year,

Reverend Alicia from Unity Fellowship

preached at my church several times.

So, we have a really close relationship

with that black church.

Closed churches, not so much.

Not so much.

Because my particular ministerial stance is,

I'm not going to argue scripture with another pastor.

It's not useful.

It's like that old thing of teaching a pig to sing,

it doesn't work.

The one time when we were still on Norris Drive,

we had a very sour faced pastor come, not a black church

pastor, and observe our service and take notes,

and then came into my office putting me on notice

that his group I was a wolf leading God's sheep astray,

and that they were going to come and picket our church.

And I said, come on, we'll serve you coffee,

but you will not disrupt the service.

And that was a time when we had the liaison police officer,

and for weeks we had a police car outside our church.

They never came back.

I think when we weren't afraid of him, they never came back.

But I had let the religious community know,

and the Unitarians down the street said,

they'd send 300 people to form a barrier between us and them.

I thought, well, 300 people would

make our self-esteem suffer, because we were so small.

There's been great support like that

on the part of the religious community,

but in terms of a collegial relationship

with churches that are not open, no.

No.

EVELYN BAILEY: It seems to be particularly difficult,

even on a human level, to break through those barriers.

Even when the subject is not focused

on religious differences.

And I'm sure your church must have members in it who have

come from other denominations

JIM MULCAHY: Absolutely.

Really

EVELYN BAILEY: seeking the support and the affirmation,

not only that you offer, but that God offers.

JIM MULCAHY: Absolutely.

EVELYN BAILEY: I'm wondering, what

was the response of your community

to members of other churches coming in with a very

different perspective?

And how did you negotiate, how did they

negotiate the differences?

JIM MULCAHY: It's really a great question.

Because we run the gamut from radical fairies to Mormons.

EVELYN BAILEY: Yeah.

JIM MULCAHY: And the question becomes,

how do people from such disparate theologies

co-exist in a church?

In the early years it was shocking to people,

but if they would come to me, and if someone

would come and say, "what do I have to believe

to come to this church?"

And my answer, which seemed logical to me

but shocking to people sometimes,

has always been, "you don't have to believe anything.

You have to commit yourself to being on a spiritual journey.

I'm not going to tell you what the end point of that journey

is, or even what your steps are along the way."

And I preach a Christian gospel.

I look for gay positive statements

in whatever the scriptures of the day

are, and frequently have no trouble finding them.

And I said, "if you understand that I'm

preaching a Christian gospel that

will be different from what you heard, but you are committed

to a spiritual journey, with no one forcing you to believe

or be someone you're not, then we

can all walk together, because we're all

committed to being on a spiritual journey."

And that has worked for us, that has worked very well.

When I first came to Open Arms, it was largely women.

Over the years, first, we got a balance of men and women.

Occasionally, we would have a transgender person come,

but we've never had a large population of transgender

people, and I don't know why.

And then people of color started coming,

and then heterosexual people started coming.

So that we have a nicely balanced community right now.

About 10 percent, which I find ironic,

about 10 percent of whom are heterosexual.

And really at the heart of the church.

And the other irony is when that started happening,

some of my people's attitude was, this is our church.

We don't want them coming in to take over.

And I said, so, you want to do the same thing to them that

has been done to us in the churches we came from.

Well, that paints a whole different picture.

And the idea of reverse discrimination

was shocking to people, but we don't even

know how to think like that anymore.

We're just happy to see whoever comes.

EVELYN BAILEY: In your own personal journey,

have you ever felt negated as a person, as a, clergyman,

as a, in other words, I'm asking,

have you experienced discrimination?

And how did you respond to that?

JIM MULCAHY: I have to say that in terms

of that kind of discrimination, I

think I'm the equivalent of a dumb blonde.

(laughter)

I'm sure I must have, but it went over my head.

In terms of being clergy, I haven't experienced it.

In fact, I was a member of the Jesuit order when I was young,

and my written letter of asking for dispensation from my vows

was because I was homosexual.

And I said that, and I only received kindness.

And when I was becoming credentialed in MCC in 2004,

I needed a letter from the Jesuits,

and the provincial superior in Boston

provided that letter for me, and sent me a personal letter,

even though it had been thirty years since I

had been a Jesuit, he sent me a letter

saying how delighted he was that I was still

in apostolic ministry.

So, I've received nothing but kindness.

And I've evolved a theory along the way.

And this is probably wrong, but if you

are confident in who you are and competent at what you do,

you're much less likely to experience harsh discrimination

in the workplace.

When I went to work for a visiting nurse in 1993,

I was open about my sexuality, and I

was hired as chaplain and grief counselor.

I never ran into problems at the hospitals.

I never ran into trouble in the last twenty-five, thirty years.

I haven't personally experienced.

I've had people express their opinion about my being gay

and thinking it was unworthy, so what?

But I haven't been prevented from doing what job I wanted,

I haven't been thrown out of any clergy gathering

I ever went to.

So, personally, I have to say no.

And the only conclusion I can draw,

is it must have been there and I just

didn't know how to see it, because it

wasn't relevant to me.

EVELYN BAILEY: Well, and it may not have been there.

JIM MULCAHY: And it may not, it may not.

EVELYN BAILEY: Let me go back a little to AIDS, and

JIM MULCAHY: Yeah.

EVELYN BAILEY: that era.

Would it be honest to say that in many ways

the fear that arose was because of the disease,

and not necessarily because of someone being homosexual?

Or were they so intimately linked that the separation

couldn't be made?

JIM MULCAHY: I think at the very beginning,

they weren't just I mean, in the gay plague era,

I don't think you could take the two apart.

Because consciousness in society wanted

to make gay people responsible for it

all, so the two had to be linked.

In the course of history, it didn't take a lot of years

before people who weren't gay were getting the disease,

and women were getting the disease,

and all kinds of people were getting the disease.

And then we did that transition period

that we already spoke of, of an innocent way and a guilty way

of getting AIDS.

And then as the medical community really got on board,

that went away.

So, I think at this time, evangelical preachers

might still make that link, but I

don't think the general public makes that link.

And especially when you look at, what for many years

was the fastest growing population affected by AIDS,

was women and children.

So, I don't think that happens anymore.

Yeah.

I think we went through that development, where

first it was linked and then it was unlinked.

And now working in Ukraine, it's easier to get access

to AIDS care in Uganda than it is in Ukraine.

30 percent of people living with AIDS

have access to medication in Ukraine.

30 percent.

EVELYN BAILEY: And that's where you're hoping to go.

JIM MULCAHY: I'm going May 1st.

EVELYN BAILEY: To the Ukraine?

JIM MULCAHY: And other I'm responsible with MCC

for church development throughout Eastern Europe

and Scandinavia.

Scandinavia, only because I have contacts.

And the homophobia is unreal.

Unreal there.

And what's so exciting for me, is

that a lot of these countries didn't

become independent countries until the fall of the Soviet

Union.

So, they are where we were thirty years ago in developing

LGBT organizations, in dealing with AIDS,

in dealing with a pastoral response to AIDS.

And I want to be there.

I want to be right in the middle of all that.

Helping people to benefit from what we already learned.

And because of how recently they've gotten independence,

there are no old activists, there are no generation before

to mentor new leaders.

So, you've got all these leaders in their thirties

and younger, who don't have role models from the generation

before.

And combine that with they don't have ageism.

And it's really easy to share what

I've learned without the prejudice of,

oh, he's an old fart, what does he know?

And that's also very nice.

EVELYN BAILEY: Now, MCC has congregations

in those countries, or communities?

JIM MULCAHY: We don't yet, but we have people who look to us.

Because there is no voice of positive Christianity.

Even congregation even denominations

who hate each other, evangelical Christians, Greek Catholics,

orthodox, they're united, they have a united voice

against homosexuality.

And they're still in that infuriating,

this is God's punishment on the gays,

and all the rest of that crap that we've lived through.

So, I'm the only voice in the country

of positive Christianity.

Even though it's illegal for me to do religious work there.

May is pride month in Ukraine, and I

get invited to the various cities

to do same sex marriages, because there's

no one else who does it.

We have to put safeguards in place, because it's risky,

it's against the law for me to do that.

But they deserve the same hope that our people have.

And it's marvelous to be just part of that whole process.

EVELYN BAILEY: Jim, what is it that

drives you forward to do, not only this work,

but to be seemingly unaffected by the outrage,

by the overwhelming negative response to homosexuality?

JIM MULCAHY: I don't want to get all Bible on you,

but the two sections that drive me,

quite honestly, is chapter twelve

in first Corinthians, where Paul talks about, we're

all members of the same body.

And says, very clearly, the hand can't say to the foot,

"I don't need you."

So, I really believe that just because people hate us

for no reason, we can't hate back.

That drives me.

The other thing that drives me is the passage in first John

that talks about God being love, and that says,

a person can't say he loves God, whom he can't see,

and say, he loves his brother.

Oh, excuse me, the reverse.

He can't say he loves his brother who he hates Jesus.

EVELYN BAILEY: I understand what you're saying.

JIM MULCAHY: Right.

EVELYN BAILEY: You can't say you love God

JIM MULCAHY: You can't say you love God

if you hate your brother.

EVELYN BAILEY: whom you don't see.

JIM MULCAHY: Right.

EVELYN BAILEY: When you say, you hate

your brother whom you can see.

JIM MULCAHY: Right.

The first time I ever set foot in Ukraine,

and I had no desire to go to Ukraine,

was because a friend asked me to teach

and preach for a week at a conference in Kiev

for gay and lesbian Christians from several former Soviet

countries.

I went as a favor to him.

When I saw the effect on people's lives,

that really was a spiritual experience for them.

People who came from religious traditions, who told them

that they can't pray with people from different religious

traditions, have this community forming experience.

I knew I was at home.

I knew I wanted to be there doing this.

When somebody last year asked me what I do in Eastern Europe,

my answer was, I bumble around loving people.

I swear to God, that's what I do.

I can teach, I'm not a great theologian,

I can take the theology of others

and distill it so people can understand it.

I can preach positive Christianity,

because I believe it.

And language and food and culture

doesn't make us different.

a I'm old enough, so that I recognize

human nature for what it is, and just

because people look different or talk different

doesn't make them different.

They're driven by the same fears, ambitions,

loves, the whole rest of it.

And so, you can fit in anywhere.

And why there?

Two reasons.

The first is, for me, spiritual, I

feel called to share in the development of the Christian

LGBT community there.

And the practical reason is, I have two more

paychecks from Open Arms, and then I

will have my social security.

And quite honestly I can't afford

to live here without working.

And there, I can live more comfortably

on my social security than I can.

Here

EVELYN BAILEY: I want to take you back

JIM MULCAHY: OK.

EVELYN BAILEY: to when you were a young man

JIM MULCAHY: Yes.

EVELYN BAILEY: and not necessarily elementary school,

but junior high, high school, were

you aware of your sexuality at that point?

JIM MULCAHY: I could give you several Harvey Firestein

irreverent quotes about that.

I was aware of my attraction to men and my own sexuality,

from the time I was probably sixth grade.

I was from a, I'll call it, strict Catholic family.

Went to Catholic school taught by nuns.

Remember, we're talking late '40s, or early '50s.

Nobody talked about it.

It wasn't something we had language

to talk about, because we didn't have community

to speak of then.

But I was definitely aware of it.

What few sexual experiences I had were with men,

and they weren't much.

EVELYN BAILEY: Where are we?

JIM MULCAHY: Boston.

EVELYN BAILEY: Boston.

JIM MULCAHY: I grew up in Boston.

I entered the Jesuits when I was seventeen years old, quite

honestly thinking that my attraction to men

was irrelevant, because I was going to be living

under a vow of chastity anyway.

So, what difference does it make what I am, because I'm not

doing it with anyone?

Then I found myself in a house of studies

with 200 young men between eighteen

and twenty-two years old.

You can imagine the hormones.

So, there was no question, both that I would always

hold chastity as my ideal, but it

wasn't always as easy as I had made it to sound in my head.

So, I've never been aware of being anything but gay.

EVELYN BAILEY: OK.

JIM MULCAHY: Yeah.

EVELYN BAILEY: Have you ever been

how can I ask this, and get you to respond without my putting

words in you mouth?

Talk to me about your sense of pride in who you are

and who you've become.

And more importantly, where did it come from?

How do you have that?

JIM MULCAHY: I would have to say that the roots of it

come from my Jesuit training.

It was rigorous spiritual discipline.

And we were taught ironically, I don't

think they intended this, well, I don't know.

We were taught to disassemble our entire belief structure,

and sit with it having been disassembled,

until we needed to put back some pieces that were missing.

In my case, there wasn't a whole hell

of a lot I had to put back.

But along with that process was also taught,

you can do anything.

There was never any attack on self-esteem.

There was always, you want to do this?

You do it, and you have our full support.

And it went from strange things from, we had an apple orchard,

we lived way out in the country near Tanglewood

in Western Massachusetts.

It went from the simplest thing of me saying to the superior,

you know, we have an apple orchard

and we don't have any bees.

And two days later, him calling me in and saying,

I ordered some bees, brother.

You have two weeks to learn about taking care of them.

And I said, I'm from inner city Boston.

What do I know from bees?

He said, brother, you had a really good idea,

and we do need bees.

So somebody is going to have to take care of them.

So, he taught me that I could do that.

When I had finished my first couple of years

and was in college studies, I was in an honors Latin seminar,

and the only version of Ovid's Metamorphoses

available unabridged was from Holland.

So, we got these texts with Dutch footnotes.

So, the master called me in and said, brother,

I need you to translate these footnotes into English.

I said, but father, I don't know Dutch.

He said, you had four years of German in high school,

how hard can it be?

So I did that.

University of Chicago mentioned publishing a book

that they published, I asked if anyone reviewed it.

I was a sophomore in college, and was

invited by the University of Chicago

to review this book in German.

And my superior said, of course you can do it (Bailey laughs).

So, that attitude came in, and as I've gone through my life,

I realize that the important stuff

is going to come from within.

I didn't have to look at negative people's opinions

of me or who I was, because I had been taught by the best

that I can do anything I need to do.

And we had this wonderful catch all old Catholic theology,

that was called the Grace of Office.

The Grace of Office said that if a lawful superior gives you

an assignment, god will give you whatever

grace you need to do it.

How can you fail?

And I experience success in my work.

I was in Baghdad before Saddam Hussein.

I experienced success in my work,

they threw us out of there, I went to Egypt.

And everywhere I went, the important thing for me

was I was able to connect with whoever I met.

And so, I had an early experience

of success and confidence, and when I've really

been proud of being who I was.

I was out to my family, I was out to my work,

there wasn't anyone I wasn't out to.

And then I was asked to pastor an LGBT church.

And it's like, this is great.

So, I didn't have a lot of baggage that was dragging me

down, and I had reached an age where

I was intolerant of anybody's bullshit

telling me I'm less than I am.

So, it got me here.

EVELYN BAILEY: You mentioned your parents,

that you were out to them.

Was that a difficult process?

Was it

JIM MULCAHY: For my parents being the kind of Catholics

they were, my leaving the order was

of higher significance than my leaving because I was gay.

My sister is thirteen years older,

she was already having children, so they had grandchildren.

My dad wasn't hung up on carrying on the name.

And they considered me a miracle baby,

because he had rheumatic fever when he was fifty,

and the next year I was born.

And he just thought that I was a gift to him.

So, my dad loved me, period.

The only thing he ever said to me was about the Church,

not about being gay.

He said, it's too bad that the good ones leave.

And that was the time when there was this major exodus.

EVELYN BAILEY: Yeah.

JIM MULCAHY: But let me tell you how naive

I was about being gay.

I had a nun friend, and it was just at the time

when nuns could go out one by one

instead of having a companion, even though they were still

wearing the rig, and I was wearing the full suit.

I picked her up at the bus station in downtown Boston,

and because we were sophisticates at twenty-one,

twenty-two, we were going to have a drink.

So, I look around the bus station

and I see this little bar.