As one of “Gideon’s Boys,” I went off to Columbia College in New York City, graduating with a BA in English in 1969. I then came to Berkeley, CA, where I completed a Masters of Divinity degree at the American Baptist Seminary of the West in 1973. That is also the year I came out publicly. I subsequently completed an MS in clinical psychology at California State University – Hayward (1985) and a PhD in religion and psychology from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley (1994.)

I spent 23 years fighting with the American Baptist Churches in the USA to be ordained and was finally ordained in 1996, the first openly gay Baptist to be ordained as far as I know. I was partnered for 23 years and have been single for 15. I worked for a number of years as a California state licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. I have also worked as adjunct faculty in marriage and family therapy and pastoral care and counseling in a number of institutions, including Holy Names University in Oakland, CA; Saybrook Graduate in San Francisco: the American Baptist Seminary and Pacific School of Religion.

For the past thirteen years I have served as a pastor, first in interim work in San Francisco and then Granville, OH. Now I pastor the First Baptist Church in Palo Alto, CA, where I have been for 9 years. I have continued to be a “singer in the choir” for all these years, currently singing with the Choral Project from San Jose, CA. Though I have lived in the San Francisco Bay Area most of the past 43 years, I still come to Boise twice a year to visit family.