admin @ Sun, 2006-09-17 11:00
"My wife grew up in a home where, as soon as the sun sets, you pull up the drawbridge, fill the moat with alligators ... and unleash the attack dogs," Rick Warren jokes.
"Even if it were just a gay disease, it wouldn't change the fact that God cares about everyone, and he asks us to demonstrate that by loving them," Kay says.
Rick and Kay Warren remain opposed to homosexuality, an attitude that Orange County AIDS Services Foundation director Alan Witchey says may compromise their ability to reach out.
Yet Kay's presence in Washington is a sign that AIDS activists and conservative evangelicals may yet find common ground, especially with less controversial people with AIDS such as women and children, says Pauline Muchina, the U.N. advocacy officer who organized the Senate event.
"Having Rick and Kay stand up in the pulpit and say, 'Let's talk about (AIDS),' is powerful and important," Muchina says. "They have the platform, power and resources."
They also have the motivation. In 2003, Kay was diagnosed with breast, then skin, cancer. For a Christian in search of a sign of God's will, it might have been a signal to slow down. Instead, Kay saw a blessing.
"For me to go from somebody who was uncomfortable talking about sex to somebody who is talking about sex all day long ... I find it so ironic," Kay says. "I find it so 'God' to redeem what was broken in my life at a very early age ... and use it for other people's good." Now Rick and Kay would show others how to do the same.
This is cache, read story here