This was a time before the treatments we have today, of course. and for some, the one thing that helped ease their pain – was marijuana.
But pot either medical or recreational, wasn’t legal back then, and state politicians were beginning to crack down on it’s use.
Jim Mitulski: At the expense of people with HIV
Olivia Allen-Price: I’m Olivia Allen-Price. This week on Bay Curious: how a San Francisco pastor changed the experience of communion, and committed felonies to comfort his flock…
Jim Mitulski: I took a risk. I used my body. I acted on a belief that was motivated by my desire to provide healing and comfort for my friends. And I didn’t know what else to do, that I could do. But this was something I could do. And I did it.
Olivia Allen-Price: This story was first produced by KQED’s Christopher Beale for his podcast Stereotypes: Straight Talk from Queer Voices … and later aired on The California Report Magazine.
We’re sharing it this week ahead of our theatrical walking tours of the AIDS Memorial Grove in San Francisco .. taking place Nov. 4 and 5. I was just at rehearsals last week and trust me, you don’t want to miss these tours. They feature live music from cellist, El Beh. Very moving dance performances and a ritual with the Sisters of Perpetual indulgence. I’ll be kicking off each tour and I hope to see you. We’ll put a link in the show notes, or you can find your way to KQED.org/live for details.
After this quick break, we return with the Marijuana Minister. I’m Olivia Allen-Price.
Olivia Allen-Price: Before we get started: just a heads up this story includes frank discussions of death, sex, religion and drugs. KQED’s Christopher Beale takes it from here…
STORY
Christopher Beale: Cities all across America have gay neighborhoods, I like to call them “gayborhoods.” In San Francisco, ours is called the Castro.
I’m a few blocks away from the rainbow crosswalk, and the gay bars of The Castro, here on Eureka Street.
I’m surrounded by row houses and fourplexes. This block is mostly residential and quiet. The uniformity broken only by this boarded up church building with a lavender sign. It says “a house of prayer for all people.”
This was the home of the Castro’s gay church. Where LGBTQIA people came to celebrate their faith, and pray for hope.
It was this amazing energy place.
The man at the pulpit in the 80s and 90s…was a gay pastor named Jim Mitulski.
Jim Mitulski: I did always love going to church. And, that was the place that it was quiet. It was pretty, people were nice to each other,
Christopher Beale: Jim grew up in a little town northwest of Detroit called Royal Oak, Michigan.
Jim Mitulski: My family life was rather unhappy, and it was a respite, frankly. And I looked forward to it every week.
Christopher Beale: Can you recall the first time you actually felt the presence of God?
Jim Mitulski: Uh, it definitely happened for me during music in church. my earliest survival skill in church was don’t listen, if they’re talking, just pay attention when they’re singing.
I don’t think I’ve ever met a piece of music. I didn’t like and especially in a religious setting. It wasn’t until later that I came to understand that you could actually use the pulpit part for something positive or useful. That didn’t come till college.
Christopher Beale: Jim went to Columbia.
Jim Mitulski: It was a men’s college at that time in New York City. So who do you think goes to a men’s college in New York? In the seventies? Gay guys.
Christopher Beale: Did that ring out to be true?
Jim Mitulski: It turned out to be totally true.
[Music} Christopher Beale: Jim had come out in high school, and even dated a little. In 1970s New York he discovered a love of queer activism. Jim Mitulski: I was a political gay and I was very involved in gay politics and by politics, I mean in the streets politics. And my grades reflected it by the way, I was a terrible student. I found myself in those activities. I found my voice. I found my vocation. I found my sense of self, my identity. I found my friends. I found my sexuality, You know, the people you’ve protested with in addition to being friends, we were all lovers. And that was a word we used by the way, an army of lovers can not be defeated, which is a classical phrase but we meant it. I probably had sexual adventures every day. From the time I was 18 until I was 25, with different people. And I wasn’t particularly more promiscuous than anyone in my peer group. It was several thousand people. And I know these numbers are horrifying to the post AIDS person. Christopher Beale: By 1979 – Jim had dropped out of college. Jim Mitulski: This was not unusual in my class, as it turns out Christopher Beale: And it was around this time Jim discovered a gay church in Greenwich Village. The MCC, or Metropolitan Community Church had been founded just a year earlier on the west coast by a Gay Reverend named Troy Perry. The “denomination” was hardly even that at this stage, but it was designed by Gay Christians, for Gay Christians. Jim Mitulski: It was church, not like church. We were anti-church. We were deconstructing Christianity church. We were out in the streets protesting church. We were wear t-shirts not wear vestments church. We wore ragged jeans and pink triangles on our shirts church and it was magical. Christopher Beale: One day Jim had this kind of epiphany. Jim Mitulski: I didn’t occur to me that you could be gay and be a priest. Now, this was hilarious to the gay priests that I met eventually. Christopher Beale: Jim went back to school to become a pastor, and after serving at the MCC in New York for a few years he got his first senior pastor job offer in San Francisco. Jim Mitulski: I got off the plane just to interview, even. It was like, are you kidding me? It’s beautiful here. It’s so much lighter here. It’s so much brighter. The quality of the sun was something I noticed and people are happier here. And, they’re friendlier, you know, New Yorkers will cut, you dead if you say hello or smile or something, you know, the Castro was hi. Hi. Christopher Beale: So Jim, now in his twenties, packed up and moved to San Francisco. Jim Mitulski: Gay heaven. It was was so gay (gay gay gay) we had a gay bank (gay gay gay), we had a gay church (gay gay gay) or gay drug store. We had a gay supermarket, you know, everything was gay, gay, gay. We loved it. And it was a protest every Friday night, which turned into a dance party. you know, we got our news from the BAR Christopher Beale: The Bay Area Reporter, still active in San Francisco today. Jim Mitulski: And we did read the Chronicle and the examiner, but mostly, to get the latest installment of the Armistead Maupin column. Christopher Beale: You might know that column, it spawned several books and a few TV series, it’s called “Tales of the City.” Jim Mitulski: And that was the mood, that was the feel, that was the San Francisco I came to. And it was a great community in the midst of a terrible tragedy unfolding. And that was evident, but still it was a cool place to be. It was still happy. (gay gay gay) Christopher Beale: Jim began hosting Sunday services at the little Metropolitan Community Church on Eureka St in 1986. And immediately the congregation began to grow. The community was in need, and eventually the church added a second, and then a third service to accommodate all of the people. [beeping sound]
Christopher Beale: A lot of those parishioners were visibly dying of AIDS and they were on delicately timed medications…
Jim Mitulski: They had to take it every four hours and people had timers. like if you were in church, you’d hear, ‘ding ding’ all the time or anywhere, if you’re at a restaurant anywhere, you kept, always heard the ding ding go off. It became a sound like crickets all the time chirping, which is a weird soundtrack in the background.
Christopher Beale: Over the next few years the MCC in the Castro became the de facto LGBTQIA community center, the doors were pretty much always open. Church services, community meetings…weddings…and an ever-increasing number of funerals took place there.
Jim Mitulski: I just was not equipped for the sheer numbers of it. Now the part of me that is good in crises, just dug right in and did it. I found that I’ll listen to anybody and nothing freaks me out. In fact I found that I was good at going with someone to a difficult topic. I could be with dying people.
Christopher Beale: After a while, hospital visits just became a normal part of the week.
Jim Mitulski: The people that I saw were emaciated. They were dying and in great pain. And in some instances, barely able to talk.
Each and every person I talked to was convinced they had brought this on themselves. They were worried about going to hell. Many of them were experiencing rejection from friends, family, and loved ones, including gay friends.
Christopher Beale: The LA Times wrote, in 1988, that about 4% of San Francisco’s population, including an astonishing half of the cities estimated 60+ thousand gay men had AIDS. Without an effective cure, most of those men would die within the next 10 years.
Jim Mitulski: Here’s what I remember of this guy who said, “Will you hold my hand and pray with me?” Which of course I did. And he said that the only person who would hold his hand and pray with him was that one of the nurses on the night shift who always prayed that he would be delivered of his sin of homosexuality before he died.
I do honestly believe she meant what she was praying. She wanted him to be saved. He was so alone there. That’s what really shook me to my core. This is why we have a gay church. This is why we do this because people should not have to be in this circumstance. And the only person who will pray with them as someone who also wants them to be cured of homosexuality. That made me angry, that’s how I became an activist, the anger part, it wasn’t the sad part that became the activist. It was the angry part.
Christopher Beale: Jim’s work was taking a physical and emotional toll on him. He gained 80 pounds, then started working out furiously to lose it. He got a therapist.
Jim Mitulski: There was a group of us who connected that summer.
Christopher Beale: He made some new friends. Started going out more.
Jim Mitulski: We used to call ourselves class of 95.
[Music]
Jim Mitulski: We might’ve known each other from around. I mean The Castro’s a small town. We found ourselves dancing on Sunday nights at the pleasure dome. And most of us had been pretty good boys until then. And after a while, a lot of people had slept with a lot of people. And I don’t mean that in a disdainful way. I mean, that respectfully it was part of how we connected. It was part of how we were with each other.
By the time anyone realized AIDS was sexually transmitted the damage was widespread. The disease could strike a fit, healthy, young guy, and he’d be dead in months.
Our moods became darker, our hope dissipated. And I became kind of nihilistic. My capacity to sustain an interior sense of self-preservation waned. And I became less protective of my own sexual behavior. I didn’t care. I didn’t care.
We felt like our world was dying and this is impossible to communicate to people who weren’t there. But you asked and I’m going to tell you, we just didn’t care. We did care about our friends. We did care about those who are dying. We didn’t remember what it meant to care anymore, necessarily about not becoming part of this.
And that was the summer. We discovered separately, individually that we were not that we were no longer HIV negative.
And we started, doing the things that good boys never did…dancing all night, doing recreational drugs that were related to that activity. Using our bodies we felt like we belonged. We were in something together. And we had regrets, but we also weren’t, we weren’t gonna just give up on our lives either.
That’s the truth. I’m telling you the truth, because I think my story is different from others, but my story is not unusual.
MUSIC FADES
Christopher Beale: Today there are medications that make it possible to live with HIV, but in 1995 everything that seemed to work was experimental…Jim says he tried a drug called Crixivan.
Jim Mitulski: 36 pills a day. Uh, 36? Yeah. Big pills.
Christopher Beale: Can I ask you to compare that to your pill regimen for HIV today?
Jim Mitulski: My, uh, for just, just treating HIV? One.
Christopher Beale: In the 90s those early medications managed to prolong lives, but they could make AIDS patients desperately ill. Those patients quickly discovered that cannabis, or marijuana actually helped with the symptoms.
Jim Mitulski: It did two things. One, it suppressed nausea, so people would eat and they wouldn’t eat otherwise because they just felt sick all the time. And the other thing is it took the pain away or enough away.
Christopher Beale: In the 80s and 90s San Francisco was pretty progressive on marijuana when compared to the rest of the country, even the rest of the state. That had a lot to do with the city’s dying gay population.
Medical Marijuana clubs, kind of the 90s equivalent of a dispensary, were where patients got their pot, the government looked the other way and everything was fine. That is until politicians got involved.
Jim Mitulski: Dan Lungren who was running for attorney general. No he was attorney general, he wanted to run for governor, saw this as an issue that he thought could be a popular enforcement issue as a law and order guy. And without consulting with city officials, exercised his authority as a state official, probably with the support of the federal government to one day overnight, crack down on and close without warning, all of the marijuana outlets and distributors in San Francisco. At the expense of people with HIV.
Christopher Beale: One day a friend named Allen White approached Jim…
Jim Mitulski: And he was a character no other word for it, but he was the journalist of the gay community in the seventies, eighties, nineties.
Christopher Beale: White had been talking with a few politicians and had an idea of how to help those AIDS patients get their much-needed medication.
Jim Mitulski: They wondered who could they get to distribute marijuana that the government would think twice about arresting. The risk was high because at that time, the government could seize your asset. They came to me though and said, ‘We want you to do a public distribution of marijuana from the church building to people with HIV.’ So it was a little loosey goosey, but, you know, In a general way. I understood what was at stake.
Christopher Beale: Jim thought about if for a bit, then reached out to his friend Phyllis Nelson.
Jim Mitulski: She shared my heart for social justice and also she kind of ran the church administratively.
Christopher Beale: She came to the church for a variety of reasons. She and her husband, they wanted a place where he could come out. We didn’t know he was gay at first. Also they had a gay son who, uh, had AIDS, so they needed a community of support.
Their son’s name was Glenn. Jim officiated his wedding to a man named Rob.
Jim Mitulski: Then sadly, Glenn dies, then Rob dies. And until scenario through all this together, we were standing outside together, I still remember Saturday afternoon after Rob’s funeral sometimes you don’t need words, but we were definitely bonded.
Christopher Beale: After being approached by Allen White about distributing medical marijuana at church, Jim called Phyllis and said…
Jim Mitulski: It’s not without risks. And I don’t know if I should or not. And, um, she said to me, of course he will. And I’ll stand right next to you if you do it because, how can you not?
And I knew what she was referring to that moment when we had stood outside. It’s the sunset, uh, just sort of being in that, uh, kind of painful silence, um, after her son and son-in-law had died.
This was after my own diagnosis. This was a change in me facing my own mortality made me realize we’re only here as long as we’re here. What are you, what are you being so cautious about? My ministry changed right after that.
Christopher Beale: Do you have a lighter? Cuz I don’t know if I have one. [sound of someone lighting a joint] In your experience, when someone experiencing, HIV or AIDS would smoke a joint, what do you think was happening for those AIDS patients that was so medically necessary?
Jim Mitulski: AIDS is in itself a disease, right? It’s a— it’s a susceptibility to any number of physical symptoms, including those which are painful to the stomach or to your skin or other kinds of nerve damage. I saw this happen. They would actually feel pain relief and your whole body would just, you know, then it also, and this is something that is something I have experienced the stress around worrying about mortality or about, uh, your circumstances and whether or not you’re going to get everything done that you want to get done while you still can do it.
And things like that becomes so overwhelming that it’s all you can think about. just, uh, a period of release from that. And fortunately with this, uh, it’s, it lasts for half an hour, an hour or whatever, not all day, not all night. Um, right. But sometimes the freedom from the omnipresent anxiety, uh, is, is important…it’s welcome.
Christopher Beale: Alright, it’s the summer of 1996, and Jim is getting ready to begin giving out pot to AIDS patients in church.
Jim Mitulski: We had rules, no money could be exchanged. The pot had to be donated. People had to provide a note. We did have security and we were promised by the supervisors and the health department that the city would protect us as much as they could. There would be no city prosecution, and they would try to protect us from any state or federal prosecution, which they couldn’t guarantee wouldn’t happen.
Christopher Beale: That first Sunday, it seemed like everyone was watching. The media was there in the back row.
Jim Mitulski: I preached on, if you want to have an increase in your spiritual growth or spiritual life, act on your conscience. That was my sermon. I took a risk. I used my body. I acted on a belief that was motivated by my desire to provide healing and comfort for my friends. And I didn’t know what else to do that I could do, but this was something I could do. And I did it. When you talk about did you experience God? I experienced God then.
MUSIC UP
Jim Mitulski: And the risk was real and the spiritual intensity was real. And the tangible relief for the people who, who used it was real.
And here’s what Phyllis said that I still remember.
She said, “If the attorney general had to spend a whole morning trying to get his son to eat a half a bowl of cereal, like I did, [tearing up] he would understand what we’re doing right now.”
After church patients would come forward, presented their notes, and left with a small baggie of marijuana. And that first Sunday the police and officials, the they all stayed away. In fact the entire length of the ministry there were no arrests, and no harassment.
I swear angels protected us I still believe that and many people were praying for us. They could have arrested us. They could have, but they didn’t. And whether it was optics or whether it was, I think that a lot of people knew we were doing the right thing.
This was in the summer and by the fall, there was a proposition on the state ballot.
Christopher Beale: Proposition 215, which permitted the use of medical cannabis in California was passed by voters on November 5, 1996.
Jim Mitulski: Yup. And then we just stopped.
Christopher Beale: How many people would you say you reached with that ministry
Jim Mitulski: Oh, a couple of thousand, probably. Not all of them, gay or people with AIDS, but many of them were, but other people too, that was interesting to me that there was this whole other kind of community that had been that benefited from the gay community’s model of using community, organizing around HIV to achieve a shift in policy around health.
[music]
Jim Mitulski: What’s my regret? That we did all that activism on health care on AIDS healthcare on AIDS care in the eighties and nineties, and somehow did not end up with universal healthcare. Crazy.
Christopher Beale: A few months ago I took Jim back to Eureka St.
While the caretaker unlocked the now abandoned church Jim walked down the sidewalk examining these memorial plaques honoring church members, and other allies in the community…many of whom have died.
Can you read some of them to me?
Jim Mitulski: In a minute… [sounds of crying] I remember all these people. Good Lord. People whose both weddings and funerals I did. Good God.
Christopher Beale: There’s your name on this plaque of senior pastors…
Jim Mitulski: Yeah, I still rode that horse longer than anybody else.
Christopher Beale: So can we go in?
Jim Mitulski: Let me get the other door.
Christopher Beale: Jim left the Metropolitan Community Church in the Castro in 2000, and hasn’t been back in the church in over a decade..
Jim Mitulski: So of course in my mind, this was the size of grace cathedral but I can see now it really isn’t very big is it? But it seemed bigger and I will say, we used every square inch of it.
Sunday nights in the Castro was a thing. Seven o’clock this room filled, it sometimes filled early. And it was all about singing, we sang gospel music. Sometimes for two hours, two-and-a-half hours. It started and it built. And you know there was the sermon and there was communion and then it just kept going.
We’d try and end the service and people wouldn’t stop because it was just a release of energy that we had to have. But to see it now you can’t tell maybe but it was this amazing energy place!
Christopher Beale: I asked Jim what he learned from his time as the Marijuana Minister?
Jim Mitulski: Let you let your acts of love guide you, even if it means great risk, the greater love, the greater the risk, and you will never regret acts of great love.
HOST OUTRO
Olivia Allen-Price: That was reporter, producer and Bay Curious sound engineer Christopher Beale. He also hosts Stereotypes, the podcast where he first aired this documentary.
Special thanks to Reverend Jim Mitulski, Todd and Miguel Atkins Whitley, the Castro Patrol, Kyana Moghadam and Josh Taylor.
Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED. Our show is produced by Amanda Font, Christopher Beale and me, Olivia Allen-Price. With support from Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Cesar Saldana, Maha Sanad, Holly Kernan and the whole KQED family.
I hope to see you at our AIDS Memorial Grove Walking Tours this weekend. Again, find details and tickets at KQED.org/LIVE.
I’m Olivia Allen-Price. Have a great week.
