Bay Windows - Local News, April 21, 1999
Scott A. Giordano, Bay Windows staff

Those words may sound like they are part of a religious sermon. Not quite, but they are the words of former Boston resident and gay activist Stephen Anthony Huber -- ordained on April 10 as an Episcopal priest at St. Thomas's Parish in New Haven, Conn. and who is also the development director for the Episcopal Seminary that is part of nearby Yale Divinity School.

I can't separate my identity as a gay man from my identity as a priest. I feel it is so tied together. I see a big part of my calling as a priest to be a source of welcome and a source of healing within the gay and lesbian community and within all communities of marginalized people who have been excluded by the church, sinfully so. It's so ironic that Jesus hung his hat, so to speak, with the marginalized," said Huber, who has worked for a range of community-based organizations including Boston's AIDS Action Community and Fenway Community Health Center, and the Human Rights Campaign and AIDS Action Foundation in Washington, D.C.

My work in the gay and lesbian community and the AIDS community gave me the privilege to really walk hand in hand to experience real pain and suffering and brokenness and also to experience some real redemption. So that experience certainly will help my ministry," he said.

A 1998 graduate of the Yale Divinity School, Huber was ordained as a deacon in the Episcopal Church in June of last year at the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. because he is part of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington. He was ordained as a priest in the Sacred Order of Priests in Christ's One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church on the Saturday after this Easter by the right Rev. Jane Holmes Dixon, Bishop Suffragan of Washington.

Prior to attending Divinity School, Huber lived in Boston for 11 years and worked as the special events coordinator at AIDS Action from 1987 to 1989 and then as development director at the Fenway Community Health Center until 1991. He left Boston that year to work as the development director for what was then known as the Human Rights Campaign Fund in Washington, D.C. He remained in the nation's capital until 1994 before he began attending the Yale Divinity School.

Huber wasn't always Episcopalian. He was born and raised a Roman Catholic. But it was during his years in Boston that he attended two local Episcopal churches and found them to be more welcoming and openly embracing of gay and lesbian people. In addition, it was through his work at Boston's AIDS Action Committee that he found the Episcopal churches to be the most responsive in the early days of the AIDS epidemic.

My first experience [at an Episcopal church] was in Boston, where that welcome was very clear at the Church of the Advent on Beacon Hill ... Richard Holloway was rector at the time, and he has since gone on to become the presiding Bishop of Scotland and one of the great prophets of the Anglican Episcopal Church, particularly around issues of gay and lesbian inclusion," he said. In the early days of AIDS/HIV, at least in Boston, it was also the Episcopal Church that predominantly, from the religious community, first responded to the crisis. I can remember even before I went on staff at AIDS Action, working as a volunteer, it was the Episcopal Church that was opening its doors and having the funerals and memorial services for people with AIDS. It was not exclusive to the Episcopal Church, but the Episcopal Church was always right there and taking the lead."

Growing up Roman Catholic, Huber said he was never taught anything about homosexuality. There was a simple silence on the subject.

I grew up in the late '50s and early '60s and so it was an issue that wasn't particularly talked about, although I don't recall growing up with necessarily negative images," he said.

Growing up, Huber said he always knew there was something unique and different" about himself but he didn't come to terms with his own sexuality until he was in high school. He came out to his family later in life, while he was an undergraduate student. His family responded positively because he also has an older brother and a nephew who are gay.

Although he had friends from the Roman Catholic Church who knew he was gay and he also taught religion in Roman Catholic high schools for a number of years, Huber first joined the Episcopal Church in 1981 because he knew he wanted to be a priest and didn't feel he would be able to come out comfortably in a Roman Catholic church.

I have felt called to the ordained ministry most of my life, but I could not do this with any integrity if it required me to lie or be dishonest or play games or involve myself in some sort of 'don't ask, don't tell' relationship with the church. I continue to believe I could not have done that in a Roman Catholic church, so I joined the Episcopal Church in 1981 because it was a welcoming, affirming place where I could be fully and completely who I am as a person," he said.

As an ordained person in any denomination, you are committing your life to not just the gospel and the church but to that particular institution -- not that any of us agree with any and all aspects of an institution in which we are involved. But you have to have integrity and feel like you can stand behind and uphold the institutional expression -- in this case, the Christian faith -- that you represent," he added. As a gay person who feels called to the priesthood, I needed to do that in a place where I could feel integrity with what I was standing behind."

Huber said he hopes his ministry will help inspire gay and lesbian people to be more accepting of themselves and also encourage non-gay people to be more accepting and understanding of those who are gay or lesbian.

Although he has a great deal of respect for gay-affirming churches such as those affiliated with the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Churches, Huber said he chose to work in a mainstream" denomination because he wants to bring the issues of the gay community and other marginalized communities to the mainstream.

I think that I hopefully will have some effect as an out gay priest working with gay people and also with the straight community in our church," he said. Christianity is a religion about every person being valued and being loved and seeing the face of God in each other. That is what the church needs to manifest in the world, and that is what I hope I can do."
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