Howard Bess, an American Baptist minister, wrote one of the books that Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin wanted to ban from the library in Wasilla, Alaska. Bess authored the book entitled "Pastor, I am Gay" about his experiences counselling homosexuals.
Here's a brief excerpt from an article about "The pastor who clashed with Palin" by David Talbot in Salon Magazine:
"She scares me," said Bess. "She's Jerry Falwell with a pretty face.
"At this point, people in this country don't grasp what this person is all about. The key to understanding Sarah Palin is understanding her radical theology."
Bess -- a fit-looking, 80-year-old man in a gray University of Illinois sweatshirt and blue jeans – spoke with me over coffee at the Vagabond Blues, a cafe in Palmer with a stunning view of the nearby snow-capped Chugach Mountains. The retired minister moved to the Mat-Su Valley with his wife, Darlene, in 1987, after his outspoken defense of gay rights at Baptist churches in the Santa Barbara, Calif., area and Anchorage landed him in trouble with church officials. In the Mat-Su Valley, Bess plunged into community activism, helping launch an assortment of projects, from an arts council to a shelter for the mentally disabled.
Inevitably, his work brought him into conflict with Palin and other highly politicized Christian fundamentalists in the valley. "Things got very intense around here in the '90s -- the culture war was very hot here," Bess said. "The evangelicals were trying to take over the valley. They took over the school board, the community hospital board, even the local electric utility. And Sarah Palin was in the direct center of all these culture battles, along with the churches she belonged to."
