05/13/04

LC040513

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

Can faith in Jesus help gays and lesbians overcome
homosexuality? We'll take you to a Christian ministry that says
yes.

Andy Comiskey>> It's a series of miracles that we experience as
we walk with Jesus Christ and with one another. It's not a
wham-bam now I'm only heterosexual.

Val>> And then, what happens when top designers trade spaces in
a colonial mansion? We'll show you the gorgeous results.

All that and more straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times.

Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

Val>> As California grapples with the future of same-sex
marriage, some Christian-based programs are dedicated to
reversing the gay lifestyle. They're sometimes called "change
ministries", but their mission in their own words is "to use the
transforming power of Jesus to minister healing to the sexually
broken." One of the places that specializes in redeeming gay
men is Desert Stream Ministries in Anaheim. It's there where I
met Executive Director, Andy Comiskey who himself was redeemed.

Andy Comiskey used to be homosexual. Now he helps other gays
and lesbians overcome, as he says, their homosexuality. He is
not a minister and he does not run a church. Instead, he is
Executive Director of Desert Stream Ministries and the developer
of a program called Living Waters, a thirty-week course of group
sessions that churches use to lead believers out of
homosexuality.

Andy Comiskey>> Homosexual behavior is not God-ordained.
Certainly, coming out of a homosexual background, I very well
know the power of that desire and also the release of
experiencing homosexual behavior. I don't feel it's God's best
for his human creation.

Val>> Comiskey started Desert Stream Ministries in 1980. Today
they have programs in more than twenty-five countries and eight
people work at their headquarters in Anaheim.

Andy Comiskey>> This is Jonathan Hunter, my oldest colleague,
not in terms of age himself, but as far as the number of years
he's been working at Desert Stream.

Val>> Jonathan has also come out of a homosexual background and
he is HIV positive.

Jonathan Hunter>> I was originally an actor and a model and
then, in 1985, because I'd been pretty promiscuous, I went and
got tested for the AIDS virus and found out that I was positive.

Val>> Jonathan had stopped sexual activity and, after going
through the Living Waters program, he noticed a change in
himself.

Jonathan Hunter>> I began seeing men not erotically and
experiencing that relationship with them not erotically and
women in a refreshing new way, so that was really wonderful. It
sort of awakened the heterosexuality that I feel that God really
intended.

Val>> Today Jonathan is celibate.

Jonathan Hunter>> But prior to that, I dated and the women knew
from the get-go. Realistically, one really has to talk about it
openly, you know, in the dating situation. It's very
interesting material for dating conversation, you know
(laughter). Have you ever thought about this? What do you
think about dating an HIV positive man? But because my health
was so vital, people weren't going, oh, yeah, well. You know,
the women weren't -- this wasn't sort of a mercy dating
situation.

Val>> Jonathan sees his celibacy as a gift, not a deprivation.

Jonathan Hunter>> I didn't say, oh, I'm not going to have sex
for Jesus. I felt like God suddenly almost brought this sense
of being complete.

Andy Comiskey>> I think the majority of people who undertake
this seriously full well knowing that it's not magic, that no
one is going to pray for them and remove every struggle. You
could say it's a series of miracles that we experience as we
walk with Jesus Christ and with one another. It's not a wham-
bam now I'm only heterosexual. This is my good friend and
colleague, Brandon. Brandon is two things. He's a staff person
and an intern.

Val>> Although about forty percent of the people in the program
are dealing with same-sex attraction, Desert Stream has widened
its scope to deal with a range of sexual and relationship
issues.

Andy Comiskey>> Ron would work especially with men who are
dealing with sexual addictions, gathering men who are just tired
of being bound to internet pornography and any number of
habitual destructive sexual sin patterns.

Val>> Andy acknowledges that not everyone who goes through the
program will experience the same effects.

Andy Comiskey>> I think there are certainly people who say I
don't want this and determine to go back to an old lifestyle or
just to say this isn't the season where I really want to deal
with these intense issues.

Val>> Andy's personal journey has led him here to a comfortable
home in Yorba Buena. He is married to Annette. They've been
married for twenty-four years. They met at a bookstore when
Andy was in college.

Annette Comiskey>> When working together in this bookstore
where we met, we just kind of connected on thinking the same
things were funny. But I think Andy is a very honest person, so
he was very honest with me about where he was at, where he would
struggle. He would tell me about it and, you know, we would
talk about it and we would pray about it. So I think, by the
time we got serious in our relationship, it was something that
had already kind of been incorporated in the way that anyone
brings in different emotional baggage in a relationship.

Val>> Andy and Annette have four children, three sons and a
daughter, ages twenty to fifteen.

Annette Comiskey>> They don't have a real conception of their
dad ever being that way and so, for them, I think it was more
like, well, that's really who he used to be and that's not who
he is now.

Val>> Andy believes that his homosexuality was rooted in his
childhood. He grew up in Long Beach and was by nature a
sensitive and emotional child. His brothers, on the other hand,
were tougher and more resilient. His father wasn't around in
his early years and, at school, he was made to feel different.
In mid-childhood, he began to feel attracted to the same sex.

Andy Comiskey>> And in my high school years, I found other
people who felt similarly and we began to go into Hollywood and
sort of identify and just sort of act that out, which in the
mid-1970's was not that difficult to do. That was actually an
age in which people -- the whole disco thing and that sort of
gender-bending club thing.

Val>> A lot of stuff had already happened in the 1960's.

Andy Comiskey>> Yeah, so that was really happening for me.

Val>> By this time, his brothers had become very strong
Christians and began talking to Andy about their faith.

Andy Comiskey>> I was skeptical about it at first and yet there
was also in me I think a hunger for something beyond what I was
seeing, what I was experiencing, so that kind of led to a
spiritual quest. I ended up becoming a Christian.

Val>> That's when Andy began a long process over five or six
years, a process he describes as healing his masculinity.

Andy Comiskey>> And then this began to release certain
heterosexual responses and feelings in me that I simply didn't
have before, so I began to desire to have heterosexual
relationships and to want to engage with women not just as
friends, but also as counterparts, if you will, in more of that
sort of romantic or more sexually tense manner. That was kind
of the springboard as a student at UCLA where I began dating and
so on and where ultimately I met my wife.

Val>> When it comes to same-sex marriage, Andy is clear. He
calls it a slam to God's design. "Gay marriage is not a justice
issue at all", he writes, "but a bad idea empowered by strategic
deluded activists." As for his own marriage --

Andy Comiskey>> It's a great marriage. We are very close as
far as sharing the whole of our lives. Not just our bedroom,
but obviously parenting our kids together, working in the
ministry together. I also don't want to be triumphalistic about
it as if I never have to walk humbly. There can still be
residual things, memories from the past, that I have to continue
to release through the Lord and some of those memories can still
have an appeal honestly.

So we're not just talking about, oh, my condition is now
improved or something. We're talking about being faithful to
another human being, right? She's not my experiment (laughter).
She's a woman who's worthy of my life and my faithfulness. For
me, even beyond in some ways switching genders as far as an
object of desire, it's been about learning how to truly love a
person consistently and faithfully. I think that's the greater
challenge.

Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and
Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, transcripts
and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most
interesting features. Just go to kcet.org and click on "Life
and Times".

Val>> Gay marriage isn't just a political issue. It's a very
personal matter for the scores of gay and lesbian couples who
have already taken their vows. We're about to meet two Los
Angeles women who have warm memories and some great home videos
of that day in San Francisco, but they wonder if the marriage
itself will survive. Brian Edelman is an independent filmmaker.
He brings us their story.

Brian Edelman>> For B.J. and Alma Hawk, Friday, February 20,
marked a moment in time they will never forget.

[Film Clip]

B.J. Hawk>> I was high. I was so high on personal empowerment.
We were glowing. We were completely exhausted (laughter). I
mean, really, we worked all week without sleep. You know, we
stopped for dinner at like 8:30 and we had no idea that would be
the last time we'd eat for the next seventeen hours. We had no
idea what we were about to embark on.

Brian Edelman>> A journey that began seven and a half years ago
when the two met in college was now taking another turn. The
Reseda couple was headed to San Francisco. B.J. and Alma were
getting married.

Alma Hawk>> It was so fun and exciting and what we did was we
had actually taken our wedding outfits into the area where we
were going to get our certificates and rushing to the restroom
and getting dressed in our wedding outfits and just glowing with
excitement.

B.J. Hawk>> We were pretty much flying out of our bodies
(laughter) by the time we came to our officiate. She said, you
know, slow down, this is your time, and she really helped us
ground. We got to pick where we wanted to get married in the
rotunda and we chose to go as high as we could on the third
floor in front of these big beautiful windows. We had two
different witnesses, one taking pictures and one videoing the
whole experience, and it put something in my heart that's really
hard to describe, but it's there for keeps now. It was really
an amazing, amazing family.

Brian Edelman>> B.J. and Alma were one of more than four
thousand couples that were married between February 12 and March
11 in San Francisco.

B.J. Hawk>> You know, Alma did some really wonderful
videography of other couples that had flown from Pittsburgh and
Florida, Atlanta, and had been married for sixteen years and
were seeking this legal recognition and it was just incredible.

Brian Edelman>> What are the key points that you kind of want
people to understand about your relationship and how it's just
as real as any other relationship that anyone else can have?

B.J. Hawk>> Perhaps it's difficult to really express with
words, but the feeling of having our ceremony that beautiful day
on February 20 in the rotunda of City Hall was life-changing.
It really was life-changing. It was one of the high points of
our lives. You know, it was a beautiful thing to gather there
with hundreds and hundreds of couples. There wasn't any place
to eat or go to the restroom or, let alone, sleep. These are
people that really just want to be recognized and appreciated
and validated like anyone else.

Anybody who's ever been suppressed, any woman, any person of
color, anybody who's been denied a certain level of validation
in their lives, can try to grasp the understanding of what this
is about. You know, it was an amazing thing to see so many
people really go through a lot to just try to have this one
moment of that certificate. It's gold to us. It really is. It
means a lot, and it feels like now I have something inside of me
that wasn't there before. Regardless of what happens legally in
the future, no one will ever be able to take that away from us.

Brian Edelman>> What's next? They want to start a family.

B.J. Hawk>> Yeah, yeah, we're in the process of making that
happen. Children have been important to us for many, many
years. You know, just like everything, you just kind of have to
make it a really intense priority. It took a long process,
really, to get to where we are now because it is challenging to
not really be able to make a child biologically with the one you
love and not be your shared child biologically. I think that's
where we got stuck for a long time emotionally. Well, we
finally broke through that obstacle and decided, you know, how
we were going to go about it. We've made a lot of progress in
it and, you know, we'll let you know (laughter). You can do a
second piece on us (laughter).

Brian Edelman>> The Hawks realize that the battle for equal
rights is just beginning. Data from many national polls show
that more than half the country still opposes gay marriage, an
opinion that B.J. and Alma are out to change.

B.J. Hawk>> What I have to say to all the fear-based
communities that really are so frightened by loving, committed
couples is that we're here to strengthen marriage. We're here
to remind the heterosexual community of the respect, of the
sacredness, of a committed relationship.

Brian Edelman>> But, despite it all, B.J. and Alma still have a
sense of humor about it.

B.J. Hawk>> We're very family-oriented people. We're lesbians
with traditional family values (laughter).

Val>> The matter now rests with the California State Supreme
Court. The Justices have put all future same-sex marriages on
hold as they prepare to hand down a definitive ruling possibly
in the next few weeks.

To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us
by mail at this address:

Life and Times
4401 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, California 90027

You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or
contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org.

Val>> Long before there was the "Fab Five" or "Trading Spaces",
there was the Pasadena Showcase House of Design. For the past
forty years, they've been taking a magnificent home and making
it even more spectacular, redoing it from cellar to attic. This
year, fifty thousand people will come through this home to see
the work of Southern California's top designers and it's all to
benefit the arts.

It was built when Woodrow Wilson was president. Cost? $16,000.
Today this ten thousand square foot mansion is worth well over
ten million. It's perched on a shady hill in Flintridge. At
age eighty-six, this Georgian colonial classic has never looked
better. Like the thirty-nine homes before it, it has been
completely redecorated. The home is a project of the Pasadena
Showcase House for the Arts. Charlotte Varner is Benefit
Chairman.

Charlotte Varner>> We usually look for a house that's around
nine thousand square feet or more. This one is about ten
thousand square feet. It has to have at least two staircases
going up and down and it has to have a good flow because we have
to accommodate all the visitors to the house. We've had
approximately fifty thousand people come to Showcase for the
last few years.

Val>> Remodeling delays are notorious and can turn a project
into a nightmare. But if your home is a Showcase home, all the
work is finished in less than three months. Vicki McCluggage is
President of the seventy-member Showcase organization.

Vicki McCluggage>> We also have many homeowners who've not
moved into a home yet and they contact us and say that they
would like to participate with Showcase and then they can move
into a really beautiful renovated home. Sometimes the most
exciting thing for them is that we're able to accomplish so much
in such a short time.

Val>> This 1918 home was designed by the renowned architect,
Myron Hunt. He also designed the Rose Bowl, Caltech, the
Hollywood Bowl, Occidental College and the Ambassador Hotel,
along with many other Southern California landmarks. Every
detail of every room is meticulously planned.

Charlotte Varner>> And the Garden Room. That was an incredible
makeover in there. They had their artists come and do a cloud
ceiling. But the most phenomenal thing in that room, I think,
is the border. Instead of crown molding, they put foil up on
the wall and then used plaster stencils.

[Film Clip]

Val>> And the kitchen? How did that turn out?

Charlotte Varner>> Oh, it's a beautiful kitchen. It's unusual
in the fact that it is a two-tone kitchen. You have a cream and
blue kitchen, which most kitchens are generally one color. They
actually were the only ones that had major construction. They
took out a wall to the adjoining small bedroom so they could
create a family room.

[Film Clip]

Val>> Don't know what to do with that little guest bath under
the stairs? Try this.

[Film Clip]

Val>> Then there is the downstairs. This is called the Pub.
Before and after. But if you explore a little further, you'll
find yourself in the cellar with a vault. It used to look like
this. Now it's called Bacchus's Retreat.

Charlotte Varner>> That's the wine room. That's a sun room
too. There was an existing safe down there, a walk-in vault
with the big doors and everything. Padua/D.K. Designs had it
refrigerated.

Val>> Upstairs is the master suite. Then and now.

[Film Clip]

Val>> Key to the project are the designers who volunteer their
talents.

Vicki McCluggage>> Well, the designers, I think, are
participating because, one, they love to show a multitude of
people their work and the opportunity for their work to be seen
by fifty thousand people obviously is a great opportunity. They
invest a great deal of their own money to present in the
Showcase. We're really very grateful every year because they do
make the show.

[Film Clip]

Val>> One of the most memorable rooms is the Ingénue Room, as
they call it. If Gidget were an heiress, this is what her room
would look like. And careful, those luscious chocolates are
actually doggie truffles.

[Film Clip]

Val>> Thinking about expanding the guest bathroom? Why not add
a rooftop garden?

[Film Clip]

Val>> It's on to the third floor. Only three months ago, these
attic rooms were bare as bones. Today, take a look.

[Film Clip]

Charlotte Varner>> There's an artist loft, or an arts and
crafts loft, at the top. It's a wonderful place to either send
your children up to the top of the house, or go and create.

Val>> The inside of the house is only half the job. Landscape
designers also transformed the grounds of this three and a half
acre estate.

Charlotte Varner>> They've created some fountains. There are a
lot of fountains in the areas, and I think people are really
interested in water features in gardens these days, so we have a
lot of those. We have a faux rock structure that they were
calling Stonehenge originally (laughter).

Val>> Only this one is operated by remote control.

[Film Clip]

Val>> Back in 1964, about seven thousand people came to the
Showcase home. This year, fifty thousand admirers will walk
through, helping to raise about a million dollars.

Vicki McCluggage>> Part of that is going to the Philharmonic
and part of it is going to sixty other schools, charitable
organizations, musical bands, some children's symphonies to
purchase instruments.

Val>> They also sponsor an annual competition for young
performers.

Vicki McCluggage>> Which is open to musicians from the ages of
sixteen to twenty-three and the judges are members of the Los
Angeles Philharmonic. When the winner is selected, it's really
a fierce competition to have been selected the winner.

Val>> When the public viewing is over, the owners who usually
remain anonymous will move back into their new old home. All
the permanent changes like wall treatments, floors and fixtures
will stay. The furnishing and appliances, the owners can choose
to buy if they like.

[Film Clip]

Charlotte Varner>> These are the ideas that people can go home
and say they can't maybe do it all in this style, but there are
ideas that anyone can take from Showcase and apply to their own
homes.

Val>> And even before this year's Showcase home closes its
doors, the selection is underway for next year's home.

Vicki McCluggage>> The process starts early and sometimes you
see a lot of homes before you can see one that would be
appropriate for next year. We try not to be in the same
neighborhood two years in a row. That would just be a courtesy
to the neighbors. But also we try to get the variety of styles
of homes. This is a beautiful Georgian colonial. We haven't
had one like this for a while, but we can do another style of
home next year.

Val>> One thing we weren't able to show you was a part of the
garden that's devoted to a fully operating model train track and
village. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone
at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next
time.

Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

Val>> Next time on Life and Times, the truth about Los
Angeles's immigrant workers. The President's new plan may allow
millions to come out of the shadows. We'll meet a factory owner
who says it's about time.

>> I venture to say with the utmost confidence that the
President of the United States probably had some falsely-
documented or undocumented workers working on some of his
ranches during the last twenty-five years.

Val>> That's next time on Life and Times.