‘A gladiator’: Jerry Stephenson, openly gay minister, dies at 65 – South Florida Sun Sentinel

Jerry Stephenson made it his life’s work to make sure gay people knew that they too were loved.

Stephenson, an openly gay fundamentalist minister, has died. He was 65, according to the funeral home. A close friend said he died in hospice from cancer in July.

“My message to the gay community is that God loves you for who you are, and Christ accepts you just like anybody else,” he told the South Florida Sun Sentinel in 1992.

His early years were difficult. He was sent from home to home in Ohio’s foster care system in the 1960s and ’70s.

Stephenson told the newspaper he received his religious training from Miami Christian College, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in religious education in 1984 and a master’s degree in Biblical Studies in 1988. In October 1988 he was licensed by the Southern Baptist Association. He also received a master’s in theology in 1989 and a doctorate in theology in 1990.

In 1992, he told the newspaper that he once was a fundamentalist preacher who spoke out against sins such as pleasures of the flesh by day, and by night, he was cruising the gay bar scene, looking for male companions. “Every Sunday, I would run to the altar and say, ‘God, what have I done?’“ said Stephenson.

He underwent various conversion therapies before coming out of the closet permanently in 1992. After 3½ years of that process, he found himself depressed, said friend, Jeff Newcomb.

Stephenson is on a YouTube video saying he considered suicide, and bought pills. “I thought if I prayed a lot and read the Bible I would be saved, but I was lying to myself,” he said in 2006.

Said Newcomb: “Rev. Stephenson emerged from depression as a man who finally understood why God had called him to seminary — his education would enable him to fight for the rights of gay women and men everywhere.”

In 1992 he opened the Alternative Counseling Center in Pompano Beach. As part of his counseling practice on addictions and relationships, Stephenson said he wanted to help people realize it is all right to be a gay Christian. But his openness didn’t come without a cost: Stephenson once said he’d been fired from his teaching job at a Miami Bible college because of his homosexuality.

“They said it didn’t look good for the college,” he told the Sun Sentinel.

Stephenson had appeared on Sonia Live, CNN and Phil Donahue, as well as radio.

He debated the late Rev. James Kennedy, the pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, and when Kennedy died in 2007, Stephenson quipped, “I’m sure when he got to heaven, some gay person took his hand and said, ‘Come on in.’ I’m sure he was humbled when he walked in the gates. He spent too much time and energy in all the wrong places; that’s the sad irony. How many people have walked away from God because of his message, that because you’re homosexual, you can’t go to heaven?”

His friend, Jeff Newcomb, said Stephenson took his Southern Baptist education to debate and argue for gay rights. “He used it to support and defend LGBT people from the fundamentalist leaders in South Florida and all over the place,” he said. “I think he was an extremely brave man, a gladiator.”

The Celebration of Life memorial service will be 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday at HeartWay Church, 2950 S. Flamingo Road in Davie.

Lisa J. Huriash can be reached at lhuriash@sunsentinel.com or 954-572-2008. Follow on Twitter @LisaHurash

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