Lesbian Marine With Severe PTSD Harassed By Evangelical Nurse At VA

One of my friends was a Lesbian. At first she was afraid to tell me knowing that I am a deeply devoted Christian and a Chaplain. When she finally trusted me enough, she approached the topic by asking me what I thought about one of her friends. I told her exactly what I thought.

God did in fact create humans through evolution but like the angels, the soul is not male or female. When the Bible said "God breathed life into him" that meant the soul was sent into Adam's body. The soul is perfect but the body of humans is made up with all kinds of things that do not fit in with perfection. We get sick, get old, die young as well as at advanced ages. No one can explain how a two day old child dies but another person lives to 102. I told her that sex outside of marriage is a sin and so is getting remarried after divorce but most of us do it anyway. That Christ said one sin is not worse than others, so if we sin in one thing, we cannot pass judgment on others and that we are all sinners in the eyes of God. It isn't up to me to judge the sins of others if I expect to be forgiven for my own.

Then she told me that she was gay. It didn't matter to me because I knew where her heart was and how much she cared about other veterans. Over the years I have met a lot of "gay" veterans but never once did I feel it was my duty to point out their "sins" to them. It was my duty to help them heal and try to reconnect them to God again. It is one of the reasons why I ended up attending First Church of Christ in Orlando. They feel the same way I do. All of us are flawed and none of us live without sin.

With this nurse working for the VA, it is not her job to do anything more than address the medical condition of this female veteran. If Esther Garatie had a spiritual issue she wanted to address, she would have gone to see someone associated with the clergy. She didn't need to hear it from a nurse or end up feeling judged by her and told she's going to hell.

Is this nurse asking every patient if they accepted Christ? What if there was a non-Christian sitting in the chair instead? Does she tell them they have to convert or go to hell as well? If this claim is true then this nurse needs to be helped to find another job and fast. I've heard too many other reports about the same problem going on and it needs to stop.

As for my friend, she passed away due to a list of health problems as well as Agent Orange and I can tell you that I am sure she's up there in Heaven and praying for Garatie to be helped the way she spent her entire life doing.

Lesbian Marine With Severe PTSD Harassed By Evangelical Nurse At VA

Written by: Bridgette P. LaVictoire on November 6, 2011.

Esther Garatie is a hero, a Marine Corps veteran, and a lesbian. It is this that has caused her problems. You see, Esther was suffering from severe PTSD with accompanying suicidal thoughts and she wanted help. She went to a Dallas-area VA hospital to get that.

Instead, what she got was some Evangelical Christian telling her that she was a sinner because she is lesbian.

Esther is still with us, but let us hope that the nurse has moved on to someplace a bit more suited to her actions like a church.

Esther told the Dallas Voice that:

I included information about my medical discharge injuries, while serving active duty, and that I was suffering from severe depression and possibly PTSD. I heard my name called, “Esther.” I got up and walked toward the voice of the woman, who barely looked at me, and called me “Sir.” I followed her into her office and before I sat down, politely said, “Actually, it’s Ma’am…. My name is Esther.” She sat down and looked at me, and her first question to me was, “Are you a Lesbian?” I honestly stopped for a moment in shock, not knowing what to say. Nowhere on the form, I had just filled out, did it ask me anything about my sexual orientation. I was so confused! I answered honestly, “Yes, I am gay.”
Alright, yes, that is actually an important question because it could impact psychological treatment. As for calling Esther ‘sir’ instead of ‘ma’am’, well, that is also explainable in that many female officers do choose to go by ‘sir’ instead of ‘ma’am’.

Of course, this was not a slip up. In reality, it was just plain rude. It goes downhill from there:

At this point I wasn’t really sure what to think. She then began to ask me about my depression and anxiety, and I became very emotional. This was why I was there, because my depression had gotten so bad that I had had horrible thoughts of suicide previously, and knew that I needed professional psychological help. Her second question to me was, “Have you asked God into your heart? Have you been saved by Jesus Christ?” This is when I realized that I was no longer a United States veteran in her eyes, I was just a homosexual.
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