06/18/04

LC040618

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, it's a unique combination of two All-American
art forms, the improvisation of jazz and the irrepressible
spirit of tap. It's music and motion with the Jazz Tap
Ensemble.

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 love 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.

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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) by the
first day. 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 ceremony.

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 on another time(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.

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Val>> Mention tap dancing to most people and it conjures up
images of Bo Jangles and Shirley Temple, but there's a group in
Los Angeles who has developed a new version of tap. It combines
two art forms, the rhythms of tap and the sounds of jazz. The
Jazz Tap Ensemble is composed of a trio who is as much jazz
musicians as they are dancers, so stop, watch and listen to the
Jazz Tap Ensemble.

[Film Clip]

Lynn Dally>> Jazz Tap Ensemble. We founded it twenty years ago
and, at that time, there were no dance companies that brought
tap onto the concert stage. When we founded our company, the
only performers in tap out in the world were the older guys, but
the work they were presenting was a distillation of what they
had been in vaudeville essentially. So our job was to keep tap
alive and take it further by adding our creativity to it. It
really makes it feel like a boogie-woogie, the up and back of
it, okay? It's like how to make an old, old step fresh.

[Film Clip]

Lynn Dally>> This is a collaboration between dancers and
musicians.

Jerry Kalaf>> As a musician, to perform with dancers,
especially tap dancers, is great. I like it. From the
drummer's point of view, it's like having a lot of percussion up
on the stage. I like the different colors that the sound of the
taps afford.

[Film Clip]

Lynn Dally>> In tap, you become so attuned not to just the
rhythms that you're making, but the tone of your taps. I mean,
your ears get into what kind of pitches you're making and that
kind of thing. So when you're working with live music, you're
hearing your taps, but you're also hearing how those taps go
with this bass line.

[Film Clip]

Lynn Dally>> Or these brushes on the drums.

[Film Clip]

Lynn Dally>> Or this incredible flurry in the piano.

[Film Clip]

Jerry Kalaf>> Tap dancers really are musicians and I think of
the dancers as being soloists, as being players, and we're there
accompanying them, so to speak.

[Film Clip]

Lynn Dally>> But now there are so many different ways to tap
dance and they're all getting full play. Rhythm tap became
popular, especially in the 1930s and 1940s, with the dropping
the heels down which gave new rhythmic possibilities and that's
when all the syncopations and this very close tie-in with jazz
music was able to happen.

[Film Clip]

Lynn Dally>> I had a strong modern dance background, so it has
been in my interest to combine the fuller physical vocabulary
from modern with what I was learning and re-learning in tap and
the new information I was getting from rhythm tap.

[Film Clip]

Lynn Dally>> A lot of what I do, especially personally what I
choreograph, is swing-based and is, you almost have to say,
lyrical.

[Film Clip]

Lynn Dally>> In the younger dancers, the hip phrase is "hittin'
it" and hittin' it has a lot to do with power, force, speed.
The use of the body is very much, I want to say, focused down in
the sense of the physical intention is all right out here in
front of you.

Jerry Kalaf>> I see the live music as being so connected to the
dance and vice versa that I think it would be a completely
different dancing if it was done to tape or not live music, and
I think the music would sound a whole lot different and the
arrangements would be different if we weren't accompanying the
dancers.

Lynn Dally>> Sometimes I come in with a movement idea that has
a certain rhythmic groove to it and then Jerry will look at that
and sometimes write to it. Other times, he brings in a song and
I go, oh, I've got to choreograph that. That's what happened
with another one that will premier here in Los Angeles at the
Ford. The song is called "No Chafe".

[Film Clip]

Lynn Dally>> Steve Zee has made a piece to Charles Mingus'
"Goodbye Pork Pie Hat" and our music director has been able to
make an arrangement that works very well.

Jerry Kalaf>> For the first time, I'm actually starting to
write music with dance image in mind.

[Film Clip]

Jerry Kalaf>> By leaving all kinds of holes in the music for
the taps to come out and I try to construct musical ideas that
win for them turning the choreography or vice versa. The drums
always have to hold back in situations like that because, with
the volume difference between the taps and the drums, we came up
with this idea that when I'm playing, I'll pay full out and
Becky won't dance, and when she's dancing, she'll dance full out
and I won't play. The dominant will be like the link.

Lynn Dally>> Tap and jazz are very much American art forms and,
for me, it has everything to do with how the creativity in
America comes together. We have such amazing mixtures. I'm
liking that very much, too, about just living in Los Angeles in
these times when you think about how many different languages
are spoken here. That's where the richness of an art and that
continuing growth that's coming from different sources effecting
it happens or is brought into the picture and then how they come
out five years later. That's been happening. It's a rich time
for tap dancing and that's good.

Val>> The Jazz Tap Ensemble is celebrating its twenty-fifth
anniversary in 2004 and their performances include a special
tribute to the late great Gregory Hines. 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, a new way to find second-
hand treasures without leaving home and it helps some of
Southern California's neediest people.

>> And they don't know if they live in Louisiana that they're
shopping from a Goodwill in Orange County, California. You
know, they don't know where they're shopping, so that's kind of
a great thing of the internet.

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