BY SHARON GITTLEMAN
BERKLEY – When the four people stepped away from the podium at Our Lady of La Salette Parish's meeting room in Berkley last week, many in the audience were daubing tears from their eyes.
"Thank you, thank you for sharing," cried out one listener.
"I just wanted to say, you're always welcome here," said church pastor Father Patrick Connell.
Parishioner Dawn Henretty said the stories told by PFLAG-Detroit's guests were heartrending.
"We're all just people," said Henretty. "We all have the same hearts and deserve to be loved. How can we condemn each other?"
Ken, a man in his 60's, was one of the speakers that drew audience members' compassionate responses.
When he told his wife he was gay two years into their marriage, Ken said both treated the conversation as if it had never happened.
Thirty years later, his wife left him, leaving a note behind in their home.
"I couldn't finish the letter. I found myself mindlessly wandering through the house," he said. "Then I read a few more lines."
He felt he'd lost all reason to live.
"I prayed to God he would give me the strength to kill myself," he said.
Ken struggled to find hope for his future and his faith.
"In 1943, God said to me, 'Ken, I've always loved you, breathe the gift of life,'" he said. "In every fiber of my body, I know I will hear him say one day, 'Ken, I have always loved you, breathe the gift of eternity.'"
Janice, the mother of a lesbian teenager, told how fellow students' relentlessly snide remarks drove her daughter to cut the word "freak" on her arms and led to an unsuccessful suicide attempt.
Her daughter even came to reject God, she said.
"My faith is important to me and it bothers me my daughter lost hers," she said, her voice catching in her throat.
Our Lady of La Salette Deacon Brian Carroll listened to the stories told by the speakers, including Catholic lesbian Denise Smith.
The speakers were invited to the church to help educate parishioners, he said.
"It's calling them to the basic teaching of the church that every human is made in the image of God," said Carroll.
Speaker Ray Kell said he learned his son Dave's secret in April 1988, in the family kitchen.
"He screamed, 'I'm gay, I'm gay and I hate it,'" said Kell. "He picked up the frying pan and threw it at the wall. Then he went out running."
The Kells turned to PFLAG-Detroit, searching through the group's library for information to help their son and themselves.
Things soon changed for the better for everyone.
Their son found a lifetime companion after he moved to California.
Dave left a memento back home, said Kell, with a little gleam in his eye.
"When Viv and I get lonesome for our son, we just take a look at the dent in the kitchen wall and we feel better," he said.
