Tag: Carol White

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GALA Festival X – Music Can Heal, by Carol White

On the third day out from
having been immersed in the music of GALA Choruses Festival X for six days and
nights, with songs and melodies and harmonies and words swirling around in my
brain and my heart, I feel compelled to write down just a few stories from my
own personal experiences at the Festival to illustrate the Power of Music to
heal our souls and perhaps even to transform the world.
On Saturday, July 2,
2016, 6,600 gay and lesbian people from around the world showed up in Denver,
Colorado at our esteemed Performing Arts Complex with one goal in mind:  To Sing. 
There were over 200 choruses and ensembles who had been scheduled to
perform for each other at Boettcher Concert Hall, Temple Buell Theater, Ellie
Caulkins Opera House, the smaller Stage Theater, and the gigantic 5,000-seat
Bellco Theater.
The buzz in the air was
palpable at registration, lifting us to another plane before the music even
began.  And then it started — with over
400 voices from all of the Colorado GLBT choruses lined up on four levels of
the parking garage, overlooking the Galleria outside the theaters. 
The trumpets began and
the voices rang out with a special power as they proclaimed “In praise of song”
that echoed throughout the space in the garage and the covered Galleria, so
that the sound appeared to emanate straight from heaven itself.
This was followed by a
big and stirring arrangement of “America the Beautiful,” during which song
several large banners on the different levels were unfurled that said, “We
Stand With Orlando.”  Coming so soon
after the worst mass shooting in American history at a gay nightclub in
Orlando, Florida, the mass chorus added a verse for those we had lost, and
ended the song after the last verse with a rousing “America, America, America,”
each higher and louder and with more harmony than the one before.  Chill bumps and tears came easily and
naturally.  And a measure of pride that
said, “Those are MY PEOPLE singing that!”
Then came the third piece
commissioned for the occasion and conducted by the composer, “Mountains and
Rivers,” a song about Colorado to give a rousing welcome to everyone at the
Festival.
All this and we had not
even started yet.  On to Boettcher for
the Opening Ceremony, so to speak, featuring several choruses, including the
New York City Gay Men’s Chorus, One Voice mixed chorus from Minneapolis, the
Atlanta mixed chorus, the San Diego Women’s Chorus, and Take Note from Denver,
all singing in the round throughout the hall. 
And this concert had to be repeated to accommodate all of the attendees.
Keep in mind that, in
order to give everyone a chance to perform for at least a half-hour set,
concerts were happening in these three halls simultaneously mornings and
afternoons every day of the week, making it impossible to hear everyone and
forcing us to choose what to attend, and where and when.  So I can only comment on a few that Judith
and I attended, with no intention to leave anyone out.  We heard about 50 choruses out of 200, so
there were many that we unfortunately missed.
Probably the most moving
and memorable moment of the Festival came on the second day in Ellie Calkins
Opera House.  It was during the 3 to 5
p.m. “block concert,” each of which featured four different choruses.  The last choir to perform in this block was
the Orlando Gay Chorus.  Every seat in
Ellie was taken and people were standing behind every section in the
audience.  As approximately 65 men and women
took the stage and got onto the risers, there was a several-minutes-long
standing ovation before they sounded a note.
The conductor took the
podium and they sang three or four songs. 
Then he grabbed the microphone and began talking about the Pulse
Nightclub shooting and how it had shocked their whole community, and that their
chorus had come together and answered the call to help to heal the LGBTs and
everyone else in their city by singing at over 20 different events, vigils, and
memorial services within the last two weeks. 
Then he said, “If you know this next song, sing along with us.”  The song was “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” 
Well, 2,000 singers in
the audience joined with the Orlando chorus and we all raised our voices in a
gorgeous mutual message of assurance that gave that song more meaning than it
had ever had before.  The second time
through everyone was standing and holding hands as tears flowed freely down our
collective cheeks.  No one who was there
will ever forget it.
On the way out of the
theater, as the Orlando Chorus filed through the lobby and into the Galleria
outside, they were surrounded by 2,000 cheering and clapping and hugging
fans.  They said they had never
experienced such love.
Just to mention a few
other highlights:
1.   A chorus of 1,000 gay men with orchestra in
the Bellco Theater singing “I Am Harvey Milk” cantata with the composer from
Broadway singing the part of Harvey Milk.
2.  The Seattle Men’s Chorus performing with the
Seattle Women’s Chorus on stage at the Buell Theater for a mixed chorus of
approximately 300 people singing a stunning arrangement of “I Love You” and
“What A Wonderful World.”
3.  The Las Vegas Men’s Chorus singing a deeply
moving song called “Tell My Father” from the Civil War musical.
4.  One Voice mixed chorus from Charlotte singing
about “Glenda and Lauree: Certain Kinds of Love Never Die.”
5.  Our Song: The Atlanta Gay and Lesbian Chorus
singing and staging Eric Whitacre’s “Fly To Paradise.”
6.  The 200-voice Turtle Creek Chorale from
Dallas singing “Angels Calling.”
7.  Combined choirs at the Opening Concert singing
“Glory” from the movie Selma.
8.  The Classical Masterworks Singalong in
Boettcher where hundreds of us got to sing with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra
on some famous choruses by Bach, Handel, Mozart, Brahms, Verdi, etc.
9.  International groups such as Mano a Mano,
five fabulous flamboyant men from Cuba; Homonics, three men in suits from
Dublin, Ireland; the European Queer Choir; Schola
Cantorosa, 25 excellent singers from Hamburg, Germany; the Beijing Queer
Choir, 12 darling women and men from China who were able to remove their masks
for the first time; and a combined International Chorus at the Closing Concert
singing “Imagine.”
10.  The Boston Gay Men’s Chorus recounting their
tour to the Middle East.
11.  Charis – St. Louis Women’s Chorus doing
“Sometimes we have to sing in unison, Sometimes we have to sing in harmony.”
12.  Denver Women’s Chorus singing “An
Exhortation,” words by Barack Obama, and “You Are My Music.”
13.  Des Moines Gay Men’s Chorus, when the woman
conductor walked out onto the stage, had everyone in Boettcher stand, and on
July 4 conducted all of us in the best “Star Spangled Banner” I have ever
heard.
14.  Jubilate! The Women’s Chorus of Corvallis,
Oregon, singing “Endangered Species” by Denver’s own Diane Reeves.
15.  The largest and arguably the best – San
Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus – at least 300 men in tuxes and top hats overflowing
the risers at Boettcher and singing Broadway and more.
16.  The Turtle Creek Chorale Chamber Chorus doing
“Come Ye Disconsolate,” including the text, “Earth has no sorrow that heaven
cannot heal.” 
As you can tell, I could
go on and on.  Maybe from this small
sampling you get the idea.  The GALA
Festival that happens every four years is a coming together of GLBT voices that
is at the same time joyful and healing and powerful and unifying.  It is life-affirming and life-changing. 
When I was conducting
GALA choruses years ago, I had a motto: 
“Make ‘em laugh, make ‘em cry, and inspire ‘em.”  This Festival did all of that and more.  As they said at the end of the week, “We have
started a song and it cannot stop.” 
GALA Festival X has 6,600
stories.  This has been one of them.
© 19 Jul 2016 
About
the Author 
 I was born in Louisiana in
1939, went to Southern Methodist University in Dallas from 1957 through 1963,
with majors in sacred music and choral conducting, was a minister of music for
a large Methodist church in Houston for four years, and was fired for being gay
in 1967.  After five years of searching,
I settled in Denver and spent 30 years here as a freelance court reporter.  From 1980 forward I have been involved with
PFLAG Denver, and started and conducted four GLBT choruses:  the PFLAG Festival Chorus, the Denver Women’s
Chorus, the Celebration ’90 Festival Chorus for the Gay Games in Vancouver, and
Harmony.  I am enjoying my 11-year
retirement with my life partner of 32 years, Judith Nelson, riding our bikes, going
to concerts, and writing stories for the great SAGE group.
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How Being Gay Has Directed My Spiritual Journey, by Carol White

For me, being gay has had everything to do with my spiritual journey. As you already know from prior stories, I was born a Methodist Christian and I was also born gay, and 27 years later those two things would come into great conflict with each other.

Growing up in the church I truly believed in Christianity, mainly because of the music associated with it. I sang in all the church choirs and felt as though I actually experienced the presence of God through the music. The last verse to one of the hymns we sang expresses the extent of my commitment:

“Were the whole realm of nature mine, That were an offering far too small.
Love so amazing, so divine, Demands my life, my soul, my all.”

So it was off to SMU to major in sacred music and become a minister of music in 1963 at a large Methodist church in Houston. Since SMU and Perkins School of Theology was a liberal college, I became a liberal Christian.

However, in my second year of graduate school I had come out to myself and had my first sexual experience with another woman. I had been in love with a couple of other girls in junior high and high school, but had not acted on it in any way, even though I wanted to more than anything in the world. Still, I waited ten years after my first crush to actually kiss another woman, and all of the fireworks went off. It was finally everything I had imagined and hoped for. I knew that I was a homosexual and I did not want to be one, because it was not accepted at the time and it seemed to be anathema to my chosen profession.

Simultaneously with starting to work at the church, I also started psychotherapy to try to be “cured” of my homosexuality, but the therapist that I had was very informed and instead helped me to accept myself as I am.

The fourth year of my job at Chapelwood in Houston was an extremely chaotic one emotionally. One of the women in my choir who was also single and who was my same age, 27, approached me and we began to have a very brief affair. As it turned out, she was the preacher’s mistress, and she told him about me and me about him. One of us had to go, and of course, it was me, since I was the woman and I was the gay one, and he was the man and straight, even though he was married and having an affair with a woman in his church which had been going on for years.

Leaving that church was the most difficult time of my life, since I was out on the street with two worthless masters degrees, no job, no profession, no friends, no money, and nowhere to turn. Spiritually speaking, I knew that I was okay with God, but I was not okay with the church.

I went to a gay bar, met another woman that I stayed with for eleven years, spent five years trying to settle in another profession, and had thirteen years of no spirituality at all.

In 1980 I became involved with PFLAG Denver, where I met Bishop Wheatley and his wife. Mel Wheatley said, “PFLAG is what church ought to be.” I will never forget that. It was a place where we observed and practiced unconditional love.

About that same time I started going to Mile Hi Church of Religious Science, where I learned the difference between spirituality and religion. They seemed to accept gay people as we were, and I felt once again that I had a community to belong to where I learned meditation and positive thinking and felt that I had re-established a relationship with God.

After about ten years of that, I realized that Science of Mind was just not true for me anymore, and stopped going to that church.

I had read a lot of spiritual books, but then I began reading Ken Wilber, a brilliant philosopher who lived in Denver, and I was truly struck by his philosophy, particularly Spiral Dynamics, and the spirituality that they talked about and espoused, Integral Spirituality, which was more similar to Buddhism but incorporated things from all the religions with meditation and mysticism. Being gay was not an issue at all.

I attended an Integral workshop and joined a Ken Wilber meetup group, where I found a spiritual home for about five years.

Since then, I have drifted away from that group and now — well, now I have no spiritual life or meditation practice or community. Now I am just going along with life and trying to be open to whatever might come next.

We shall see what happens.

© 2015

About the Author

I was born in Louisiana in 1939, went to Southern Methodist University in Dallas from 1957 through 1963, with majors in sacred music and choral conducting, was a minister of music for a large Methodist church in Houston for four years, and was fired for being gay in 1967. After five years of searching, I settled in Denver and spent 30 years here as a freelance court reporter. From 1980 forward I have been involved with PFLAG Denver, and started and conducted four GLBT choruses: the PFLAG Festival Chorus, the Denver Women’s Chorus, the Celebration ’90 Festival Chorus for the Gay Games in Vancouver, and Harmony. I am enjoying my 11-year retirement with my life partner of 32 years, Judith Nelson, riding our bikes, going to concerts, and writing stories for the great SAGE group.

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Acceptance, by Carol White

Here is the profound question for me: “How do we get to Acceptance?” And by that I mean acceptance of everything, just as it is.

Having read many spiritual books and pursued spiritual quests through various churches and practices and groups, I can say that Acceptance is touted as a goal in most of those endeavors, whether it be Buddhist, New Age, Christian, Integral, or Unitarian studies.

How in the world, in the face of all the news headlines and analysis, in the face of war and terrorism and mass murders, and in the face of everyday problems relating to health or relationships or finances or big weather events, can I ever accept all of that within myself? How, in the face of poverty and loneliness and depression and global climate change and mental illness and diseases and rape and murder and death and man’s inhumanity to man, can I ever get to Acceptance?

What is our goal here? Peace of mind and inner peace.

One of the first things that comes to mind in pondering this big question is a song that I ran across about 33 years ago on a cassette tape put out by Ken Keyes that went like this: “That’s the way it is, by golly, that’s the way it is.”

Perhaps this is the first step to Acceptance, realizing that things are the way they are, and it won’t help anything or anyone for me to be upset or angry or depressed or physically ill over thinking about all of the bad things in the world. It only hurts me.

Does that mean that I don’t care or that I shouldn’t care? Absolutely not. In a huge way it’s a paradox. It requires that I allow my heart to be broken by all of the injustices in the world, and at the same time I accept the fact that injustices are happening. It means that while I strive to find inner peace by acceptance, I still, at the same time, want to make the world a better place.

I believe that this is a good time to consider the serenity prayer that Randy mentioned last time:

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

What a profound prayer that is.

I’m not trying to be a Pollyanna here. I am definitely not saying that if you think only good and positive thoughts that you will have good health and riches and wonderful relationships, and that all of the world’s problems will go away. Although positive thinking has its benefits, that is not the answer in our quest for serenity.

We must deal with the light and the shadow, with the good and the bad, with all of the wonderful people and things in the world and the evil that does exist. And the first step in dealing with it is acceptance of things the way they are.

When I was dealing with a particularly difficult health issue, I remember playing a song by Paul McCartney over and over again in my head: “Let it be, let it be, let it be, let it be. Whisper words of wisdom, let it be.”

I think that for me, maybe it can begin with just a moment. For only one minute I’m going to allow everything to be exactly as it is and everyone to be just exactly as they are. I’m going to relax and release my judgment of everything and everyone and let it be. For just a few seconds I will try to relax my body and my mind so that the knot in my stomach can melt and I no longer feel the weight of the world on my shoulders or the anger and fear and concern take over my stomach and turn it into knots.

If I can do it for a moment, perhaps I can do it for two minutes, and maybe even more. Can you even imagine allowing all of your friends to be exactly who they are without wanting to change anything about them? It would be an internal relief, I think, not to want anyone to change anything.

I am remembering three words, each starting with an “A”, that I picked up from my spiritual studies: Acceptance, Allowing, and Awareness. Maybe even Awakening, if we should be so lucky as to reach that point someday.

But first, Acceptance and Allowing, which for a brief time can take me to a sense of peace and calm. And from this place of quiet mind is the place where I can start to reach out and think, “What can I do in my own little corner of the world to make things better?”

© 21 December 2015

About the Author

I was born in Louisiana in 1939, went to Southern Methodist University in Dallas from 1957 through 1963, with majors in sacred music and choral conducting, was a minister of music for a large Methodist church in Houston for four years, and was fired for being gay in 1967. After five years of searching, I settled in Denver and spent 30 years here as a freelance court reporter. From 1980 forward I have been involved with PFLAG Denver, and started and conducted four GLBT choruses: the PFLAG Festival Chorus, the Denver Women’s Chorus, the Celebration ’90 Festival Chorus for the Gay Games in Vancouver, and Harmony. I am enjoying my 11-year retirement with my life partner of 32 years, Judith Nelson, riding our bikes, going to concerts, and writing stories for the great SAGE group.

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My First Gay Experience, by Carol White

When I was in the 7th grade I fell in love with Winifred
Watkins.  Her parents were the choir
director and organist at our First Methodist Church.  I’m not sure what it was about her, but my
love lasted for three years.  I did not
really understand it, and I never did anything about it, like hold her hand or
kiss her or tell her how I felt.  But I
thought about her all the time and was with her every time I got the chance and
sang in all the choirs at church just to be close to her and maybe touch her accidentally
on purpose.
Starting in the 10th grade I fell in love with Roberta
Bromley, better known as “Bert.”  Bert
became my best friend.  She was
beautiful, and she could play the piano and sing like an angel.  Once again, I never told her how I felt.  I simply followed her around like a puppy and
did anything I could to be in the same room with her or sit by her at an
assembly.  She loved boys and we double
dated several times.  I remember pining
away at night at home wanting to touch her and kiss her and hold her.  Alas, it was not to happen.  But I had the distinct knowledge that if one
girl could marry another girl, I would marry Bert in a minute.  I never DREAMED of a future Supreme Court
decision.  In fact, Bert and I went off
to separate colleges.  She married her
boyfriend within a couple of years, had a couple of children, and died of
cancer all within a relatively short period of time.  I did not even go to her funeral.
At SMU I had several crushes on a few women, and yet again, I
did not dare let anyone know.  I felt as
though I could not share my feelings with anyone, especially since I was
majoring in Sacred Music and wanted to work in a church as a Minister of
Music.  By this time I had heard the
words homosexual and queer, but I was still in denial about my own orientation
and continued dating boys without much fun or interest. 
Finally, during my second year of graduate school, I was
living in an apartment with three other students, and one of my sorority
sisters spent the night with me at our apartment when my roommate was out of
town.  Her name was JoNell Bryant, and we
called her “Jo.”  That night, when
everyone was in bed getting ready to go to sleep, Jo came over to my single bed
and got in it with me.  Ten years after
my first desire, when I was 22, Jo kissed me and I kissed her back. 
Fireworks went off.  It
was absolutely everything I had hoped and dreamed of for ten years.  We were together all night in that little
bed, and we had to hide it from everyone the next morning and pretend that it
didn’t happen.  We parted that day and
went to our separate classes and I was scared to death of these feelings,
thinking that I should be horrified of my actions, but I walked on air all day
and all I wanted was more.  It was
unbelievable to me. 
As it turned out, Jo wanted more too.  She lived with her parents in a little town
outside of Dallas, and for that whole school year, I would often go out to her
house and spend the night with her as often as possible, maybe once a
week.  We would sleep in the same bed in
her room and we kept all of our feelings of love and attraction from her
parents and everyone else.
As soon as I finished graduate school I went on a trip to
Mexico with three other friends.  In the
middle of the trip, I received word from Jo that she was leaving in two days to
go to Hawaii and marry a man that she had been engaged to who was stationed
there in the Navy.  So I left my other
friends behind in Mexico City and flew back to Dallas and had one more night
with Jo before she left for Hawaii. 
That summer I was totally heartbroken.  I remember sitting at home with my parents in
Louisiana and playing a record over and over again and crying a lot.  Jo and I exchanged love letters, and her
mother found my letters and decreed that she could never write to me or see me
again. 
My father actually took me to Houston to apply for a church
job, and after I got the job I started seeing a therapist to try to be cured of
my homosexuality.  He was wonderful and
helped me to accept myself for who I am. 
I went through a terrible time when I lost that job after four years
because of my homosexuality, but I got through it, and as they say, “The rest
is history.” 
© 20 July 2015 
About
the Author 

I was born in Louisiana in
1939, went to Southern Methodist University in Dallas from 1957 through 1963,
with majors in sacred music and choral conducting, was a minister of music for
a large Methodist church in Houston for four years, and was fired for being gay
in 1967.  After five years of searching,
I settled in Denver and spent 30 years here as a freelance court reporter.  From 1980 forward I have been involved with
PFLAG Denver, and started and conducted four GLBT choruses:  the PFLAG Festival Chorus, the Denver Women’s
Chorus, the Celebration ’90 Festival Chorus for the Gay Games in Vancouver, and
Harmony.  I am enjoying my 11-year
retirement with my life partner of 32 years, Judith Nelson, riding our bikes, going
to concerts, and writing stories for the great SAGE group.
Posted on

Moving, by Carol White

While thinking about the word “Moving” I find myself drawn to
emotionally moving experiences more than physically moving from city to
city.  One of the most moving experiences
of my life came about in 1986.  Here are
some of the events leading up to it:
In 1980 I was living in Denver, Colorado.  February of that year was the initial meeting
of PFLAG Denver that I attended and the first meeting of several parents who
were soon thereafter to become dear friends. 
I have already written a story for this group about the beginnings of
PFLAG and the events in 1984 that led to the formation of the 140-voice PFLAG
Festival Chorus that sang for the national convention in Denver, which was the
first time that I had conducted in 16 years since being fired from the church.
Today’s story is about the women singing in that chorus who
wanted to continue to sing together, and became the Denver Women’s Chorus.  Immediately following the PFLAG Festival
Chorus, the 70 women decided to continue rehearsing at St. Paul’s UMC in
Capitol Hill.  Naturally, the very first
performance of this new DWC was at a PFLAG meeting in December with Christmas
songs.
Then came the big night — our very first concert as a women’s
chorus, which we held at North High School auditorium.  This was exciting stuff!
We got Jane Vennard to be our MC.  Jane is the sister of Dottie Lamm, who was
married to the Governor of Colorado, Dick Lamm. 
Jane had been married to a gay man at one time, so she was a member of
PFLAG, and we had an “in” at the governor’s mansion, which was very neat.
Leading up to this concert, one of the things that we talked
about in rehearsals was that when you sing, you are not to pronounce the letter
“R” in a song.  For instance, the word
“mother” would be “mothuh” and “father” would be “fathuh”, etc, etc.
Well, Judith and I went to Laguna Beach, California, to visit
Bishop Mel Wheatley and his wife Lucile for a few days.  We stayed at a hotel right on the ocean and
watched the seagulls flying by.  When we
got back to rehearsal, I told the chorus that one of the seagulls flying by was
singing, “I enjoy being a gull.”  Would
you believe that we actually sang that song at that North High concert, and one
of the chorus members dressed up all frilly and danced while we were singing
it.  It was actually tongue in cheek.

Anyway, after the concert we were so high and so excited that
we had a big cast party over at the home of one of the singers whose name was
Susan.  Jane Vennard was dancing on the
piano bench.  We were all dancing so much
that the old North Denver house was actually shaking, and I remember forming a
long line and dancing out into the yard singing “I Heard It Through the
Grapevine.”
Later came the Paramount Theater concert with Barbra Higbie
as the special guest.  One of Judith’s
friends brought a straight male friend with him, and of course, this was the
first gay concert he had ever been to, and he asked John, “Why do they sing?”
We tried to answer that question first by saying that it’s
the title of a Holly Near song, “We are singing for our lives.”  Then Judith reminded me of this saying:  “A bird does not sing because it has an
answer.  It sings because it has a
song.”  And I said that gay and lesbian
people have always had a song, but the tragedy of it is we have never been able
to sing it before, and the beauty of it is that now we can!
At the end of that Paramount concert Judith and I got to ride
to the cast party at the Hilton Hotel downtown in one of those horse-drawn
carriages with Barbara Higbie and her partner. 
That was a blast.
Then came our first GALA Choruses Festival in
Minneapolis!  The Gay and Lesbian
Association of Choruses had formed a few years earlier from its beginnings in
San Francisco to several gay men’s choruses around the country, and they had
had their first choral festival in New York City.  This was their second time to get together to
sing.  We were the only women’s chorus
there, along with 16 gay men’s choruses. 
We boarded the plane in Denver, and as we attained cruising
altitude at about 30,000 feet, Judith and I went up and down the aisle passing
out a quote for each member to keep.  It
read like this:  “Years from now, when
you are old and grey, you will be able to look back and say that ONCE in your
life you gave EVERYTHING you had for justice.”
Soon we were on the stage at Orchestra Hall in downtown
Minneapolis performing to a sold-out crowd, when Suzanne Pierson was singing a
solo on a song that she had written, “No Child of Mine,” and she forgot the
words.  The chorus came in with her and
saved her.  So while our performance as a
chorus may not have been perfect, still, afterwards when we walked into a
restaurant on the downtown mall in Minneapolis, we would get a standing ovation
from the men singers who were sitting at tables in that restaurant, and they
would say, “Oh, the Brahms, Oh, the Brahms.” 
They evidently loved the Brahms numbers that we sang.  And they really appreciated our being there.
But the final night in Minneapolis was the piece de
resistance.  We were on stage with all of
the men’s choruses, about 1,000 singers as I remember, and there was an
orchestra on the floor in front of the stage and they had hired Philip Brunelle
to conduct and we were singing a commissioned work by John David Earnest called
“Jubilation.”  Woah!  Unbelievable highlight!
After the concert, some of the members were so excited that
they actually JUMPED off the risers rather than stepping down.  And then we ALL went out into the plaza
outside the hall and, as one member later said, we “sang to the heavens what
the hall would not contain.”  Close to
1,000 of us standing there singing and singing and singing, every song we could
think of. 
That was moving!  That was the highlight
of my life to that time.  And most of us
returned to work in Denver and could not even tell people where we had been
because we were still not out, for fear of losing our jobs and the support of
our families and friends. 
Times have changed in the last 30 years.  Judith and I are retired and out to everyone
now.  The Denver Women’s Chorus is still
singing.  The Gay and Lesbian Association
of Choruses has produced a Festival every three or four years since then, from
Seattle to Denver to Tampa to San Jose to Montreal and others, and finally back
to Denver in 2012.  In fact, they were so
impressed with the facilities here at the DCPA 
that they are coming back in 2016 so that they can use Boetcher, Temple
Buell, and Ellie Caulkins Opera House all at the same time for simultaneous concerts
all day and all evening for four days in a row over the July 4 holiday in our
great city. 
The number of choruses participating actually doubled at each
festival from 16 to 32 to 67 to 120, and has finally leveled out at over 190
choruses around the world with over 10,000 singers. 
I am registered as a single delegate for the July 2016
festival, and if you like choral music, you can go to their website and
register too.  IT WILL BE A MOVING
EXPERIENCE! 
©
2 Nov 2015 
About the Author 
I was born in Louisiana in
1939, went to Southern Methodist University in Dallas from 1957 through 1963,
with majors in sacred music and choral conducting, was a minister of music for
a large Methodist church in Houston for four years, and was fired for being gay
in 1967.  After five years of searching,
I settled in Denver and spent 30 years here as a freelance court reporter.  From 1980 forward I have been involved with
PFLAG Denver, and started and conducted four GLBT choruses:  the PFLAG Festival Chorus, the Denver Women’s
Chorus, the Celebration ’90 Festival Chorus for the Gay Games in Vancouver, and
Harmony.  I am enjoying my 11-year
retirement with my life partner of 32 years, Judith Nelson, riding our bikes, going
to concerts, and writing stories for the great SAGE group.
Posted on

Gifts from Afar, a Harmony Story, by Carol White

In 1992, 23
years ago now, the State of Colorado voted to pass something called Amendment 2
to the Constitution of our State, which said that gay and lesbian people could
have no rights whatsoever, and whatever rights they already had in cities such
as Denver and Aspen and Boulder would be canceled or repealed.
The Amendment
2 campaign and battle was vitriolic and pretty nasty.  We worked hard and
thought we were going to defeat it, but when it passed, we were all stunned and
devastated.  It is very difficult to explain the hurt that hung like a
black cloud over our whole community in the wake of that election.
Amendment 2
passed on a Tuesday in November.  That Friday Harmony, a GLBT chorus that
I was conducting at the time, went to the YMCA of the Rockies in Estes Park for
our usual retreat before an upcoming concert, where we normally rehearse and
polish our music for the performance.  But on this occasion we were also
crying and telling election stories and trying to support each other after
having been knocked off our feet, so to speak, by the people of Colorado.
That same
weekend there happened to be another retreat going on at the same YMCA for
Methodist youth leaders from our jurisdiction, which covered four states.
 One of the ministers who was leading that retreat happened to be the
brother of one of the women in Harmony.  The brother and sister got
together, and the brother minister through his sister invited Harmony to sing
for the convocation of Methodist youth at their Sunday morning meeting.
She brought
the idea back to the choir, and we accepted.
As Sunday
morning came, we lined up outside the Chapel, which is still there but has
later been remodeled.  At that time there were no pews.  And since
there were over 100 Methodist youth, they sat on the floor in the middle of the
chapel, and since there were over 100 Harmony members, there was no place for
us to get except to surround them standing up.
So I went to a
little stage at one end of the Chapel, and said that I had been a Methodist
youth just like them, had received a Master’s in Sacred Music from SMU in
Dallas, and had served a large church as minister of music for four years
before being fired because I was gay.  Then I said that Harmony was a GLBT
chorus, and we would just like to sing a couple of songs for them.
I said,
“This first song is dedicated to all of you who might be gay, or all of
you who are struggling with self esteem for any reason.”  I knew that
most high school kids struggle with self esteem for a variety of reasons.  The song was:
“How
could anyone ever tell you you are anything less than beautiful,
How could
anyone ever tell you you are less than whole,
How could
anyone fail to notice that your loving is a miracle,
How deeply
you’re connected to my soul.”
Then we sang a
Holly Near song and taught it to them and they sang along.  It was:
“We are a
gentle loving people, and we are singing, singing for our lives.
We are a gentle
loving people, and we are singing, singing for our lives.”
Other verses
said, “We are gay and straight together,” “We are a land of many colors,” as
well as a few others. 
We were about
to leave, and some of them said, “No, sing another song.”
There was an
old organ at the other end of the chapel, and our accompanist cranked it up and
started playing the introduction to our theme song, and the choir started
singing,
“In this
very room there’s quite enough love for one like me,
And in this
very room there’s quite enough joy for one like me.
And there’s
quite enough hope and quite enough power
To chase away
any gloom,
For Spirit,
our Spirit, is in this very room.”
At the end of
the first verse, one of the girls sitting on the floor got up and stood with
Harmony in the circle.  They continued singing,
“In this
very room there’s quite enough love for all of us,
And in this
very room there’s quite enough joy for all of us.
And there’s
quite enough hope and quite enough power
To chase away
any gloom,
For Spirit,
our Spirit, is in this very room.”
During the
second verse, several youth, in groups of two’s and three’s, stood up and
joined Harmony in the circle.  They kept singing through their tears,
“In this
very room there’s quite enough love for all the world,
And in this
very room there’s quite enough joy for all the world,
And there’s
quite enough hope and quite enough power
To chase away
any gloom,
For Spirit,
our Spirit, is in this very room.”
By the end of
the song, there was no-one left sitting on the floor.  They were all
standing arm-around-shoulder around arm-around-shoulder.
There was
nothing left to say.  We had gone there to sing for them, and they had
turned it around and helped us when we needed it most.  Harmony filed out
of the Chapel knowing that we had been blessed. 
They had given us a Gift from Afar.
A few years
later Amendment 2 was repealed by the Supreme Court of the United States.
© 29 May 2015 
About the Author 
I was born in Louisiana in
1939, went to Southern Methodist University in Dallas from 1957 through 1963,
with majors in sacred music and choral conducting, was a minister of music for
a large Methodist church in Houston for four years, and was fired for being gay
in 1967.  After five years of searching,
I settled in Denver and spent 30 years here as a freelance court reporter.  From 1980 forward I have been involved with
PFLAG Denver, and started and conducted four GLBT choruses:  the PFLAG Festival Chorus, the Denver Women’s
Chorus, the Celebration ’90 Festival Chorus for the Gay Games in Vancouver, and
Harmony.  I am enjoying my 11-year
retirement with my life partner of 32 years, Judith Nelson, riding our bikes, going
to concerts, and writing stories for the great SAGE group.
Posted on

A Picture to Remember, by Carol White

In the early 1980s my
partner Judith and I had attended the Gay Games in San Francisco, the second
one to be held in that city.  It’s
actually the Gay Olympics, but the “real” Olympics would not allow us to use
that word, so the founders decided to call it the Gay Games.  And they decided that the third one should be
held outside the United States, but not too far away, so that it would have
more of an “international” flavor to it. 
They decided on Vancouver, British Columbia for August 1990, and they
would call it Celebration ’90: Gay Games and Cultural Festival, since they were
adding many of the arts as well as the sporting events.
Around the beginning of 1988
I got a harebrained idea that it would be fun to organize and conduct a world
chorus to sing at that event, and that it would be called the Celebration ’90
Festival Chorus.  So I made a couple of
trips to Vancouver to meet with the organizers of the games and managed to convince
them to let me do it! 
We formed a small organizing
committee in Denver that met in our living room, and we began two years of
effort to make that dream come true.  At
that time we had no computers and no email and no Facebook or websites to aid
us in our recruitment efforts.  So we
began to put ads in gay and lesbian publications across the country, as well as
advertising through the Gay Games themselves, and trying to use GALA Choruses
too, although most of the choruses were not interested because they were so
busy with their own rehearsals and concerts. 
I rented a P.O. Box at a nearby post office, and I would go by there
every day and check to see if we had a new soprano or alto or tenor or bass. 
I decided what music we
would sing and we raised money to order all the music, as well as black folders
and T-shirts that one of our members had designed.  Somehow I got rehearsal tapes made, which
were really the old cassette tapes, and as the time approached, we had mailing
parties to send out all the music and tapes and fold and pack all the
shirts. 
Meanwhile we were working
full time at our jobs and we were not out at work.
After many trials and
tribulations, we flew to Vancouver on a Friday in August of 1990 with great
anticipation but not knowing exactly what to expect.  The next morning we went to the church where
we were supposed to rehearse, and 400 singers showed up with music in hand and
ready to go.  We had members from 20
states, seven Canadian provinces, the Yukon Territory, Australia, England,
Germany, France, and South Africa.  We
arranged them in sections where the congregation would normally sit, and I was
up front.  You can just imaging that the
first sounds that came out of that choir were absolutely thrilling! 
We had three hours to
rehearse that morning, then a lunch break, and that afternoon we rehearsed at
B.C. Place, which was Vancouver’s domed stadium, to perform there that very
night with three songs for Opening Ceremonies. 
They had built risers for us and they were set up on the field. 
By the time we got to the
stadium that night for Opening Ceremonies, the energy was through the
roof.  There were approximately 10,000
athletes from all over the world, and approximately 10,000 spectators from
around the world in the stands who had come to observe.  The chorus went out onto the risers and sang,
“Come celebrate, come celebrate, come celebrate our spirit.  The sound of hearts that beat with pride, now
let the whole world hear it.” 
Then we sat together in the
stands while we had the parade of athletes just like the Olympics, where they
marched in in teams from all the different countries and they congregated in
the middle of the field.  After some
speeches and other performances, the chorus went back out and sang “Do You Hear
the People Sing” from Les Mis.  This song
happened while they were running the torch into the stadium, and just as they
ran up the stairs and lit the Olympic flame, we finished the song with “Tomorrow
comes.”  It was midnight. 
The next morning I could
hardly get out of bed.  My body ached all
over.  But we had to rehearse all morning
every morning for a concert that we were going to give on Friday night at the
Plaza of Nations, an outdoor venue which had been built for the World’s Fair
when it was held there. 
So Sunday through Friday we
worked on the concert program as follows: 
Diversity, Music of the Night from Phantom of the Opera, March of the
Hebrew Captives from Verdi’s Nabucco, Song of Peace from Finlandia, Living with
AIDS, The Great Peace March, Brothers and Sisters, and Singing for Our
Lives.  And early Friday evening we
performed all of those selections to a packed crowd at the Plaza of
Nations.  Here is the “picture to
remember” from that concert.
Then we rehearsed
again on Saturday for the Closing Ceremonies that were to be held that night
back at B.C. Place, where we sang “We’re gonna keep on moving forward, Keep on
moving forward, Keep on moving forward, Never Turning Back, Never Turning Back.” 
After the chorus sang
that night, Judith and our friend Bob and I went up into the stands to watch
the rest of the show.  They used the
chorus on the field to form two long lines holding up flags for the big parade
to pass through.  I remember looking down
at that scene as the happiest time in my whole life.  We had actually pulled it off!  I think it was an extremely happy time for a
lot of other people there too.
After everyone went
back home, several of the individuals who had sung in that chorus organized gay
and lesbian choruses in their home towns, including Winnipeg, Manitoba;
Toronto, Ontario; Victoria, B.C., and Sydney, Australia. 
I have not attended
any Gay Games since then, but it is my understanding that each one has included
a Festival Chorus.
© April 2015
About
the Author 
I was born in Louisiana in
1939, went to Southern Methodist University in Dallas from 1957 through 1963,
with majors in sacred music and choral conducting, was a minister of music for
a large Methodist church in Houston for four years, and was fired for being gay
in 1967.  After five years of searching,
I settled in Denver and spent 30 years here as a freelance court reporter.  From 1980 forward I have been involved with
PFLAG Denver, and started and conducted four GLBT choruses:  the PFLAG Festival Chorus, the Denver Women’s
Chorus, the Celebration ’90 Festival Chorus for the Gay Games in Vancouver, and
Harmony.  I am enjoying my 11-year
retirement with my life partner of 32 years, Judith Nelson, riding our bikes,
going to concerts, and writing stories for the great SAGE group.