Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, March 4, 1995 TAG: 9503060048
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Newport News Daily Press
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Medium
The gay activist-minister has spent 18 days in the 5-foot-wide lockup. He is on a hunger strike that he said will not end until Robertson agrees to meet with him to discuss the televangelist's ``anti-gay'' views.
As a ghostwriter for Robertson in the mid-1980s, White crafted Christian-oriented prose.
Now, several years after revealing his sexual orientation, the 54-year-old pastor of a gay and lesbian church in Dallas reads a jail-issued Bible, searching for passages that justify his hunger strike.
White was arrested Feb. 15 for trespassing on Christian Broadcasting Network property.
Since then, guards open the narrow slot on his cell's steel door and set down a tray of food three times a day.
But White has refused any food other than a carton of milk in the morning and a Tang-and-water mixture in the evening.
He can leave jail if he posts $1,000 bond and promises to stay off CBN property. But White asserts that Robertson's sprawling campus is ``God's property.'' Walking out of jail would be admitting to ``false charges,'' he said.
So White remains a prisoner of conscience - his own.
``It sounds so Messianic and so crazy when I say this,'' he said in a telephone interview Thursday from the Virginia Beach Jail, ``but I believe it with all my heart that gays and lesbians are worth dying for, that the rhetoric of Pat is killing them.
``How do we make a stand without being willing to die?''
Robertson is steadfast in his refusal to meet with White. Robertson also declines to speak publicly about White, as well as about the daily vigil held outside CBN by a group of White's supporters.
Instead, Robertson stands by his position as stated in a Feb. 7 letter to White.
``I do not wish to debate the merits of homosexuality,'' Robertson wrote. ``You have chosen your lifestyle, and I hope that God will reveal to you one day what His word says about it.''
White's protest is little more than ``a tactic being used to generate publicity,'' CBN spokesman Gene Kapp said.
White's claim that Robertson fuels violence against homosexuals is a ``frivolous charge that has no merit and can't be supported by facts,'' he said.
``Mel White has always held the keys to the jail,'' Kapp said. ``Pat Robertson doesn't hold the keys to the jail.''
White has dropped 11 pounds from his 6-foot frame and now weighs 159 pounds, he said. If he continues his fast - he's ingesting about 300 calories a day - he certainly will die, said Steven Leichter, a professor of internal medicine at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk.
``This may not be a real long protest,'' Leichter said. ``He won't last four to six months doing this.''
White must take in 1,700 to 2,000 calories to maintain his body weight, Leichter said. Even if White ends his fast soon, he still may suffer from long-term health problems because of vitamin deficiency, dehydration and lack of sufficient levels of protein, fat, carbohydrates and other nutrients, Leichter said.
Despite urging from friends and family to eat, White said he has ``never once'' considered ending his fast.
``This is not a game,'' he said. ``If I had a plan to get out of here, I'd get out of here.''
by CNB