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The pits
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Fado and his co-ministers are not the only ones who have challenged the ruling. Last March, the church suspended Chicago minister Greg Dell for a similar act of defiance. And in 1997, a bishop pulled a Nebraska minister from his position in the pulpit for officiating at a lesbian couple's ceremony.

Fado hopes for safety in numbers, and that plain old justice will prevail. In his view, "I wasn't being disobedient. The church was being disobedient, losing sight of what it's meant to be."

The gospel preaches that everyone is loved, he explains. Fado expects the church to rise above earthly prejudice, just as he learned to do from a friend who mentored him on his own path to the church. Fado grew up in the small California town of Redding, where his father worked as the circulation manager for the Redding Searchlight and his mother raised their children to attend the Methodist church down the street from their home.

Unlike many kids, Fado loved church, where he soaked up the inspirational sermons, the camping trips and the various youth activities led by the kindly director of youth and campus ministry work, Bob Cary. Cary remembers how as a boy Fado would have his mom copy jokes from daytime radio shows so he could work them into routines as master of ceremonies at youth events. Fado soon blossomed as a leader and a powerful speaker, Cary says. "He has a photographic memory, which is just marvelous for memorizing sermons and speeches."

Fado decided in high school that he would study his way into the ministry. After graduating cum laude in philosophy from the University of the Pacific, Fado left California for the Boston University School of Theology. It was the same year that Martin Luther King Jr. was finishing his Ph.D. work there. In Boston, he studied as an Oxnam-Liebman scholar (named for an influential rabbi and a controversial Methodist bishop persecuted as a Communist by the House Un-American Activities Committee).

In his first job at a church in Fresno, Calif., in 1958, he preached against McCarthyism from the pulpit. He went on to champion migrant farm laborers' rights in the Central Valley and supported the United Farm Workers' boycotts -- even though most of his congregation consisted of farmers. As a result, many were convinced that Fado himself was a Communist sympathizer.

He moved to the Bay Area in the 1960s and worked with his local mayor for better integration in their mostly white town. He preached against the Vietnam War and for sex education. He also helped operate an underground railroad for Salvadoran refugees escaping to Canada through California.

Throughout his career, Fado continued drawing strength and guidance from his mentor, Cary, with the two often working side by side. During lunch together one day, Fado told Cary that he supported homosexual rights, but drew the line at hiring them to work with children.

That's when Cary told Fado he was gay.

Next page | "I think we're on the right side of history"