Pastor
Twanna Gause stepped out of a limousine amid the whir of cameras
outside the New Vision Full Gospel Baptist Church in East Orange, N.J.
Dressed
in an off-white wedding gown and veil that sparkled in the cascading
sunshine, she carried a bouquet of white roses and lilies, hugged
several guests, then parted a sea of well-wishers on the way to her best
friend, Pastor Vanessa Brown, who stood waiting at the altar in a
cream-colored long coat called a sherwani and gold Punjabi jutti shoes.
The
church doors opened, allowing the faint strains of “You Are So
Beautiful” to float on the hot August air. Pastor Gause stepped inside,
where she was greeted by Bishops Levi Richards and Eugene Gathers, both
of the Fellowship of Affirming Ministries.
“She’s our spiritual daughter,” Bishop Richards said.
Both
men walked Ms. Gause down the aisle, a role she had initially hoped
would be accepted by her father, the Rev. Sam Gause Sr., a Pentecostal
minister who lives in Atlanta.
But Mr. Gause, citing “differences in theological beliefs,” refused his daughter’s invitation.
“My
father would not come here because he does not believe in same-sex
marriage,” Ms. Gause said. “He told me the devil tricked me into this,
and that if we had been married in biblical times, we would have been
stoned to death.”
Mr. Gause, who helped raise four other
daughters and a son before divorcing their mother, Cathy Dodson, in
1996, held steadfast in his decision.
“Twanna very well knows I’m
not for that kind of lifestyle,” he said by phone in a calm and stern
tone several days after the wedding.
“I believe that God wanted
us to procreate through a natural process, and by no means am I happy
about this because it is unnatural,” he said. “I look at homosexuality
as a mental disorder. If I start to tell you that I am an elephant, and
start to behave as an elephant, that’s my choice, I choose to become an
elephant. But you would probably choose to call a mental institution.”
Mr.
Gause, long affiliated with the Center of Hope Church of God in Christ
in Riverdale, Ga., said he had no immediate plans to contact his
daughter.
“I will talk to her at some point, I suppose, if she
calls me, but I will not initiate the call,” he said. “I do have some
words for her that she needs to hear. I’m not going to condemn her or
judge her because I don’t have that authority, but judgment has already
been established by God.”
Ms. Brown, 46, and Ms. Gause, 45, both
pastors of Rivers of Living Water United Church of Christ, which has
locations in Newark and New York, heard much softer words on their
wedding day while holding hands before the Rev. Dr. Yvette Flunder, the
presiding bishop of the Fellowship of Affirming Ministries, who read
from the First Epistle to the Corinthians.
“Love is patient, love
is kind. ... Love hopes and endures all things,” Bishop Flunder read,
as amens and hallelujahs rang out from some the 200-plus guests who
flocked to celebrate a love that has endured for nearly three decades.
“Twanna and I go way, way back,” Ms. Brown said.
Once
upon an Amazing Grace, two choir girls met at a church in Jersey City,
and before one of them could clear her throat to sing, she thought she
had already caught a glimpse of heaven.
“I was like,
‘Oh wow, what in the world, who’s that, she’s beautiful,’” recalled Ms.
Gause, who was then a 16-year-old living in Paterson, N.J. “I
immediately felt this kind of strange, warm feeling wash over me, and
though I had not yet spoken a word to her, I could see myself loving
this woman forever. My head was just spinning.”
Ms. Brown, then 18 and living in New York, was not struck by the same thunderbolt.
“I
was oblivious as to how Twanna was feeling,” Ms. Brown said. “I looked
at her as this adorable, skinny little girl who I initially thought was
so much younger than me, and I had no idea that she liked me in any way
other than as a friend.”
Ms. Gause, who said she was hoping for a
connection, was crushed. “Though it broke my heart, I never said a word
about my true feelings for Vanessa because I didn’t want it to hurt our
friendship,” she said. “And I never said a word to my father because he
was so strict, I knew he wouldn’t understand.”
Both grew up in
religious families — “We didn’t hang on street corners, go to clubs or
do drugs, none of that,” Ms. Gause said. But they spent time together at
events sponsored by the Hiya Fellowship of the Saviour Church in Jersey
City and at LaGree Baptist Church in Harlem, which were linked through a
minister who served both congregations.
Their friendship
continued to blossom until the day in 1990 when Ms. Gause called Ms.
Brown to say that her father was moving the family to Atlanta.
“I
was devastated,” Ms. Brown said. “Twanna had become my best friend in
the whole world, I didn’t know what I would do without her.”
They
kept in touch, and Ms. Gause moved back to Paterson in 1994, and became
engaged to a man there, breaking it off in less than a year and
returning to Atlanta, where she toured with a gospel choir and worked as
a cosmetologist.
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