Setting the Record "Straight"

By Louise Brooks

Integrity USA

Director of Communications

On Thursday Integrity USA published our press release announcing the selection of Max Niedzwiecki as our new Executive Director. In that press release I wrote that The Rev. Susan McCann, Rector of Grace Episcopal Church in Liberty, Mo. is the first straight ally on the Integrity Board.

Friday morning my INBOX had an email which read: Error on the blog. It was from former Integrity Board Member Donn Mitchell and he graciously gave me his permission to post it on WWI:

Hi, Louise:I just read the press release on the new executive director and saw a rather glaring error. It described the Rev. Susan McCann as the first straight ally to serve on the national board. This is incorrect. Juli Beatty (now Juli Reddy) was a prominent member of Episcopal Church Women in the Diocese of Pittsburgh. She joined the national board in 1980 and served out at least one term. She was responsible for getting Bishop Hathaway, the diocesan at the time, to call us to do a workshop for clergy on pro-gay pastoral counseling at Calvary, Pittsburgh, in 1981 under the auspices of the Integrity Institute for Pastoral Development. Juli relocated to the Diocese of Pennsylvania in 1985 and has been an active member of St. Mark's, Locust Street, Philadelphia, ever since. She continues to actively and publicly support the LGBT cause, and she is now part of the mission team to re-build the Church of St. James-the-Less, where schismatics attempted to take the parish out of the church but lost in court. I hope you will be able to find some way to give Juli the recognition she deserves. FYI, I was secretary of the national board from 1977 through 1979 and served as the executive director of the Integrity Institute from 1980 through 1982.

Donn Mitchell

Editor & Publisher, The Anglican Examiner

www.AnglicanExaminer.com

I did not know that! And who knew there was an Integrity Institute?

I asked Donn for Juli's contact information and he responded with this note:

I'm sure Juli would be delighted to hear from you. She's quite a colorful character. When I first met her at General Convention in 1979, she was doing a brisk business in ball gown alterations for drag queens from her little trailer in Indiana, Pennsylvania. She's very bubbly, very knowledgeable about the Episcopal Church, and very plugged into everything that's going on.

So, I called Juli Reddy immediately and apologized for the gross error. She was charming and entertaining and forgiving. We chatted for nearly an hour and she regaled me with stories from her early days with Integrity.

In brief, in 1979 Juli was a housewife and active in the Episcopal Church Women, serving as their Director of Communications. At the ECW Triennial Meeting she came across a book featuring the stories of closeted gays and it led her to conclude that any discrimination against our community was wrong. She made a bee-line to Exhibit Hall and found the Integrity booth where she met Donn Mitchell and asked how she could help. The rest is literally history.

Against the warning of a fellow ECWer, who told her that she wouldn't do her future as a leader in ECW any good if she hung out with "them", Juli went home and immediately started an Integrity Chapter in western Pennsylvania where she lived at the time.

In 1982, she joined the National Integrity Board as the first straight ally. She was an original "Believe Out Loud"-er. She worked hard for the ordination of gay clergy and still advocates for the LGBT community in Philadelphia today.

This wonderful conversation lead me to wonder if any of us (besides Louie Crew) knows our history. Who were the early pioneers who helped pave the way to where we stand today? We need to hear their stories and celebrate their work.

Donn added this about some other women who were trail blazers in Integrity:

We had a number of women involved from the very beginning. Ellen Barrett was Integrity's first vice president. Lelia Baldwin, a social worker from Utah, was on the board for the same period I was and a little bit thereafter. Connie Cohrt was elected vice president in 1979 and served until about 1983 or '84. Connie's partner, Amy Reichman, is now a deacon in the Diocese of Connecticut, and Connie maintains an active church involvement as well as a career as a financial planner.

If you know stories of leaders past, help us tell them. Please send me emails at tvprod@earthlink and help me learn about and share these great stories of our past.

And many thanks to Donn Mitchell for all his great leadership and for helping me set the record "straight".