James Hartline is an ex-gay gadfly who lives in San Diego and spends his remaining days fighting against the “evils of homosexuality”. Hartline has a history of crime, drug use, and mental instability and it is clear that he suffers from delusions. However, he is occasionally quoted by religious media sources that are looking for a particularly venomous anti-gay quote.
In the past, Hartline has claimed that God was going to heal him from AIDS and this healing was going to be the start of a great revival. He also believes God spoke to him through a television, that there is a conspiracy to recruit people to homosexuality for the purpose of spreading AIDS, and that though he spent many years having unsafe sex and abusing drugs, he was deliberately infected with HIV while having a sex and drug binge at a bathhouse. Needless to say, these more sensational claims don’t make it on to the Christian media websites.
Now James Hartline is claiming a miracle occurred.
In addition to AIDS, Hartline has Hepatitis C. Recently he went into a government subsidized clinic for the results of a liver biopsy (after haranguing other sick patients in the lobby). His results showed that there was not scarring on his liver unlike what is often the case with Hepatitis C patients. In a blog entry entitled And The Gates Of Hell Did Not Prevail: Christian Activist James Hartline Receives Miraculous Healing Report!, Hartline (who writes about himself in the third person) says
Truly this medical report was a welcome miracle for James Hartline. And welcome news to the hundreds of Christians around America who regularly pray for this well known Christian activist.
As James Hartline, walked through the clinic, passing those very ill gay activists that were mocking him earlier, he just holds his head up, smiles and reminds himself that God is still in the business of defending His servant. And healing a sick body as well.
I am happy for Hartline. I’m glad that liver damage and a regimen of interferon will not be added to his many difficulties. And I also believe in the possibility of the miraculous and have lived long enough to not deny the impact of prayer.
But I suspect that this story is not one of God’s intervention into the medical conditions of James Hartline. I suspect, rather, that this claim of a divine miracle demonstrates that his mental health is continuing to deteriorate.
And it saddens me that the anti-gay activist community to which he has attached himself does not intervene. Instead they use James, quoting him and encouraging him and giving him a platform from which to speak while covering over and not reporting his more bizarre and peculiar proclamations.
But will they be there for James when he is no longer rational enough to periodically sound sane? Or will they find him no longer a useful tool in the demonization of gay persons and lives and just toss him aside?
The medical attention that was fought for by gay men and women, and frequently provided by the same, will continue to be there to do what can be done for Hartline’s ravaged body. But will his political allies continue to be there for him when dementia finally claims his rather fragile mind?
That guy is spooky. Kind of looks like the crypt keeper from Tales From The Crypt.
Seriously let them hold this guy up as an example of “healing”, etc. and then when he goes completely off his rocker they will be eating crow and realize what fools they have made of themselves.
James Harline lives in my hometown of San Diego. He has quite a following — 8,000 folk on an email distribution list.
My friend Mike Hampson is the one who allegedly gave a death threat to Hartline (My Gethsemane: Wrestling With Death To Gain Eternal Life – From The Journal Of James Hartline). It wasn’t a death threat. You can read Mike’s original letter in Hillquest here. That Hartline still interprets that letter as a death threat a year and-a-half after it was published online…
I’ll agree with Timothy…..James Hartline seems to be getting more delusional as time goes on. I’d pity him, except for the damage he does to real LGBT people with his words and actions.
Because “Neener neener, God likes me better than youuuuu, evil Gay Activists!” is the ultimate in Christlikeness.
His compatriots might want to consider that he’s not exactly the best advertisement for “compassionate conservatism,” or whatever political tagline they’ve hitched themselves to lately.
I’ll have to agree on this one too, he does come off as a delusional loose cannon, not exactly someone that the conservatives should align themselves with if they expect to be taken seriously. I’ve never really delved heavily into any of his opinion writings or anything, but the few things I have read are the sort of thing I’d expect to see on the journal tablet of an institutionalized paranoid schizophrenic.
The intersection of religious ideation and mental illness is an amazing but frequent phenomena. I have been in many psych wards as a chaplain and met people like Harline. I wish I understood it better but it seems like religion becomes the stabalizing, integrating factor of a very disturbed personality. Why, I am left to wonder in Harline’s case, is HIV being treated but not the mental illness? It could prove to be as fatal as HIV if untreated.
I started a joke, which started the whole world crying,
But I didnt see that the joke was on me, oh no.
I started to cry, which started the whole world laughing,
Oh, if Id only seen that the joke was on me.
I looked at the skies, running my hands over my eyes,
And I fell out of bed, hurting my head from things that Id said.
Til I finally died, which started the whole world living,
Oh, if Id only seen that the joke was on me.
I looked at the skies, running my hands over my eyes,
And I fell out of bed, hurting my head from things that Id said.
til I finally died, which started the whole world living,
Oh, if Id only seen that the joke was one me.
:Bee Gees: I Started A Joke
I do not know this Hartline guy but I wonder who will be his friend in time of need?
I wouldn’t count on the Religious Right to be his friend when he needs them. I suspect to them he’s a “useful idiot”.
Don Wildmon doesn’t quote him to evangelize to US, he quotes Hartline to his followers to paint the gay community in the worst possible light.
Hartline is a sick man, a delusional man, at times a very scary man. Unfortunately, he’s alienating the community that would probably step up and help him the most if he were ever to fall ill.
I sincerely doubt Peter LaBarbera (who used Hartline just today in a press release) will be there in James’ time of need.
I haven’t heard much of Peter helping Michael Johnston out, I don’t expect much from him when it comes to James Hartline.