From The Bay Area Reporter:
In September 1981 James DeLange, a straight married man, assumed his duties as pastor of St. Francis Lutheran Church in San Francisco's Castro District.
At the time a small, struggling congregation, DeLange expected his main focus would be filling the pews of the Danish-built brick church that had survived the 1906 earthquake. The 1970s had ushered in sweeping changes to the neighborhoods surrounding the Church Street house of worship.
As gay men moved into the old Victorian homes in Duboce Triangle and Eureka Valley (the gayborhood's former name) further south on Market Street, many of St. Francis's longtime straight parishioners had moved to other parts of the city and Bay Area. And not many of the new residents attended the Lutheran services.
"There were some gay men in the congregation when I became pastor. It was a small congregation," recalled DeLange.
But DeLange soon found himself providing pastoral care to many gay men raised Lutheran who had succumbed to a mysterious disease that had only been discovered that summer.
"Mostly what happened is there were people in the congregation who said their friends were sick and asked if I would go visit them," he said. "The hospitals would also call to say there was a gay man here who is Lutheran and very sick. That got me involved."
As more and more of the city's gay male population succumbed to what became known as HIV and AIDS, St. Francis would be forever transformed by the epidemic raging outside its front door. The church reached out to the gay community, running ads in the Bay Area Reporter to promote its welcoming LGBT parishioners.
