Portland Affirmation members were just getting started with their monthly "Homemaking" meeting when the shouts of three religious zealots wearing placards with anti-everything messages started up outside.

A few quick calls brought additional Affirmation supporters, including our National Public Relations Director, the Director for the Lesbian and Gay Program of the Pacific Northwest office of the American Friends Service Committee and several police cars to the scene. Of course, being the curious types, and perhaps driven by our natural missionary instinct to proselytize, most members left the meeting to converse with the would-be saviors.

Perhaps it was the loud passing traffic that a lot of shouting pursued, at least on the part of the "I'm right, you're wrong" protectors of the faith. Armed with their various versions of the Bible, and carrying their "Christ Jesus Saves Sinners" pamphlets, they ranted for nearly 30 minutes.

"Romans says this... and Ephesians says that..." the usual anti-gay rhetoric began, taking text out of context to support their agenda. Of course, our group was double-cursed because we were also Mormon!

It was as much for our amusement as anything else as various members of the Affirmation crowd tried to reason with them, asking questions that challenged their logic and questioned their interpretations. But it quickly became apparent that this was beyond their abilities. In fact, the more the protesters shared about themselves, the more sorry the Affirmation members began to feel for them. One was a high school drop out, another a former drug user, the third an older man who "had no affilliation with any organized religion, since all of them were doomed."

At one point one of the men stopped to consider what one from our side had said. You could see by the look on his face that he was thinking that something someone said that was critical about his position was correct. But then the other warned "look out, they're trying to use the scriptures against us!" And with that simple declaration, their world made sense again—ignore logic and reason and anything can make sense.

We're still not sure how they found out about the meeting, since it was not publicized outside of our organization. The older man (of the three) said he had just returned from the beach when he got a message from one of the other two that they were going over to "save the Sodomites" and he rushed over to join the other two (obviously, it was a last minute decision).

Some in our camp began to suspect that the "yellers" self-worth was connected to the power they felt when confronting "the enemy." Sad state to be in, but it seemed to fit them perfectly. With this realization, we decided to ignore them and returned to our activities. No need to support this kind of behaviour.

Could it be a compliment that they would consider us so important that they would travel all the way over to "save us" from ourselves? Or was this an attempt to make themselves feel more powerful by participating in this public display of evangelism? We, of course, think that they were jealous that we didn't invite them in the first place and this was their way of joining our activity!

A note to the homophobes out there: don't stand outside ranting from the sidewalk. If you lack mental disorders (unlike our wannabe Saviours) and yearn to save the "sinners," do it like Jesus did: join us. You'll soon discover that being gay, lesbian and bisexual is nothing more than a simple variation of human sexuality. We're just like you in every other respect—except, or course, that we have a lot more fun!