AS of Monday this week, at least 3,836 members of the US military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003 – and 28,327 US service members have been wounded in hostile action there. But, as American military families mourn their dead, and tend to their injured, they might like to cast their mind back to a veteran of an earlier Gulf war – Navy veteran Cecil Sinclair, 46 – before they allow prod-nose Christian busybodies to interfere in their lives

When he was afflicted with a heart condition round six years ago, Sinclair – a Navy veteran who served in Operation Desert Storm, helping rescuers find downed pilots – attracted the attention of the Rev Gary Simons, of High Point, a non-denominational mega-church in Arlington, Texas, who wanted to bring “love” and “healing” to the sick man.

Even though Sinclair was not connected with the church, his brother Lee was – and church members started praying for him.

Said Simons:

To the best of our ability, we tried to express the love of Christ.

Prayer, as always, proved useless, and when Sinclair died of an infection – a side effect of surgery intended to keep him alive long enough for a heart transplant – a member of the church staff was immediately sent to minister to the family, said Rev Simons.

Church members were now anxious to give Sinclair a good Christian send-off. The church volunteered to host a memorial service, feed 100 guests and create a multimedia presentation of photos from his life.

Then came the bombshell. When church members converged on the Sinclair family to gather pictures of the dead man, it soon became clear that he was one of those!

Said Rev Simons:

The photos that the family selected alerted church officials that there might be a problem with the service. Some of those photos had very strong homosexual images of kissing and hugging. My ministry associates were taken aback. When it became clear that Sinclair’s homosexuality would be identified in the service, the church withdraw its offer of a memorial service.

Rev Simons added:

High Point Church opposes homosexuality, and there was no way the church could host a service that appeared to endorse it.

The issue was not so much that Sinclair was, from the church’s perspective, an unrepentant sinner, he said. It’s that it was clear from the photos that his friends and family wanted that part of his life to be a significant part of the service.

Sinclair’s sister, Kathleen Wright said the church’s claim about the pictures was “a bold-faced lie.” She said she provided numerous family pictures of Sinclair, including some with his partner, but said none showed men kissing or hugging.

Left in the lurch 24 hours before the planned funeral, Sinclair’s family, including his partner Paul Wagner, found a local funeral home to hold the event. The church offered to pay for the service, but Sinclair’s angry family refused the offer.

To show that there were no hard feelings, the church sent to the funeral food and the video it had made – minus the images church officials found to be offensive!

The 5,000-member High Point Church was founded in 2000 by Simons and his wife, April, whose brother is Joel Osteen, the well-known pastor of the 38,000-member Lakewood Church in Houston. High Point meets in a 432,000-square-foot facility in Arlington, near Dallas.

You can read the full story here and here.