TEACHing love: Mother to share story of loss, transformation, acceptance
by Mary Poletti
The Missourian
COLUMBIA — Rejected by her fundamentalist Christian mother, a young lesbian woman ended her pain by hanging herself in a closet 11 years ago.
Now, her faith and worldview transformed by her loss, that mother — Mary Lou Wallner — has made it her mission and ministry to help other Christian gays and lesbians avoid the same painful ending that her daughter’s story had. It’s a message she’ll bring to Columbia this Friday night in cooperation with Missouri United Methodist Church’s prominent ministry to gays in the community.
Wallner took her story and its message on the road under the name TEACH Ministries, an acronym for “To Educate About the Consequences of Homophobia,” after her own faith-based homophobia drove a fatal wedge between herself and her elder daughter, Anna Wakefield.
After Anna’s death, Wallner and her husband, Bob, began to look more closely at the issues that affected Anna toward the end of her life. After three years and a great deal of prayer, reading and study on homosexuality and Christianity, they concluded that the beliefs on which they had been raised, on which they had subsisted for many years, were wrong.
full article
The Missourian
COLUMBIA — Rejected by her fundamentalist Christian mother, a young lesbian woman ended her pain by hanging herself in a closet 11 years ago.
Now, her faith and worldview transformed by her loss, that mother — Mary Lou Wallner — has made it her mission and ministry to help other Christian gays and lesbians avoid the same painful ending that her daughter’s story had. It’s a message she’ll bring to Columbia this Friday night in cooperation with Missouri United Methodist Church’s prominent ministry to gays in the community.
Wallner took her story and its message on the road under the name TEACH Ministries, an acronym for “To Educate About the Consequences of Homophobia,” after her own faith-based homophobia drove a fatal wedge between herself and her elder daughter, Anna Wakefield.
After Anna’s death, Wallner and her husband, Bob, began to look more closely at the issues that affected Anna toward the end of her life. After three years and a great deal of prayer, reading and study on homosexuality and Christianity, they concluded that the beliefs on which they had been raised, on which they had subsisted for many years, were wrong.
full article
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