Why A Pastor Changed His Mind About Protections for Gays in Baton Rouge

As opponents filed through the line at the lectern July 23 to deliver two-minute testimonies to the Baton Rouge Metro Council against an ordinance banning discrimination of gay people, the Rev. Reginald Pitcher closed his eyes.

"I had a revelation," said the former Baton Rouge pastor, who preached from the pulpit against homosexuality for 40 years.

Behind his lids while sitting among the opponents, he was "transported" to the 1960s. He was in Birmingham, Alabama. Police Commissioner Bull Connor was there. So, too, Pitcher remembered, were white separatists, packing an adjacent sidewalk, hurling catcalls of "Die, nigger" and "Niggers, go home" at the black people marching down the street. Some threw rocks.

"I was there when they turned the water on ... with the people who were saying those things," Pitcher said, looking down. "I was frightened out of my wits because I was on the wrong side." He looked up.

Pitcher showed up this July afternoon to tell Metro Council members and an overflow audience at City Hall why the ordinance should be defeated. The day before, he explained his opposition to radio listeners on the Jim Engster Show.

His position never wavered as dozens of speakers, many from the LGBT and business community, passionately spoke in support of giving equal protection to all members of the Baton Rouge community. The "revelation," as he described it, which moved Pitcher to flip over the card containing his original, handwritten speech and quickly scribble a new one came while listening to people on "his side" of the issue speak.

"Some of the statements made in reference to the gay community could have been superimposed to the '60s, against us," Pitcher said.

The Rev. Reginald Pitcher said a vision he had during a public hearing in Baton Rouge of the 1963 Civil Rights protest at the Birmingham City Jail in which police officers turned fire hoses on peaceful protestors inspired him to flip his views on an LGBT anti-discrimination ordinance after he realized gay rights were civil rights. (Emily Lane, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune) 

That LGBT people are disease carriers, pose a danger to women and children, bring down property values and seek positions of authority to promote their lifestyles were familiar arguments. "I felt really angry at what I was hearing, and it changed my perspective."

Only after Connor, in Pitcher's head, ordered the fire hoses and police dogs turned on peaceful protestors at the Birmingham City Jail did the reverend understand for the first time, and all at once, that gay rights were civil rights, he said. It was a concept he specifically pastored against in the past. "The nerve of them connecting that to the Civil Right movement," Pitcher had preached.

Many opponents at the public hearing argued homosexuals don't experience discrimination, or at least not at significant levels, to merit an ordinance. But Pitcher said based on "what I heard from the group that I was sitting with, they (LGBT people) need that protection."

"Morality is something we can't legislate," he said. "But civil rights and human rights -- we can."

When it came his turn, he read from the speech he scribbled last minute in support of the ordinance, which wasn't an easy thing to do.

"First, my mind told me to just go home since I changed my mind, to spare the embarrassment," he said. "But in my heart of hearts, I couldn't."

Somebody else on the council, in the crowd or watching on TV might have also been undergoing a transformation regarding their beliefs on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights, too, and "maybe I could have helped them to 'see the light,' he said smiling, lifting his hands, palms out, and wiggling his fingertips.

Pitcher remains against gay marriage and is still "adamantly opposed" to the homosexual lifestyle. "I study the Bible, and it says homosexuality is an abomination ... most of us take that literally."

He said some black people see homosexuality, especially regarding black men, as offensive to the black community, a conviction he believes has roots in slavery.

"For you to abandon your masculinity and embrace femininity...when we need manhood," he started, "It's an affront to us."

His father used to tell him, he said, that "your manhood is all you really have," noting that a few generations ago black people in South couldn't or didn't own anything. 

But since his epiphany at City Hall, he now separates homosexuality from the homosexual, or the act from the person. 

Pitcher would have never "denounced everything I've been preaching for" had his revelation not been a meaningful experience -- one he said had never happened to him before.

"Without the unction of the Holy Spirit, I would have never done that" he said, then paused. "I was there..." He looked down again and repeated details about the streets of Birmingham that day. 

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Last week on Aug. 13, the Baton Rouge Metro Council failed by a vote of 4-8 to pass the LGBT anti-discrimination ordinance. Supporters of the anti-discrimination ordinance said after its failure they will continue in coming years to push for the measure or one similar to it. Metro Council member John Delgado, moreover, has said he'll start a petition to send a ballot initiative to the voters that would make it policy of the city-parish government, and its contractors, not to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

Editor's note: This is the second of three stories exploring alternative positions regarding Baton Rouge's recently failed LGBT anti-discrimination ordinance. Read the first story about what it's like to be gay in Baton Rouge, here. 

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Emily Lane is a news reporter based in Baton Rouge. Email her atelane@nola.com or call 504-717-7699. Keep up with her local updates on Twitter (@emilymlane) and through Facebook.