Who is Jim Bailey?
Early Life, Coming Out, and Advertising Background
Jim Bailey was raised in Kentucky until 1961 when he moved to a (then) remote part of Louisiana due to his father’s work. He attended public school and a Southern Baptist Congregation Sunday School. His ten years of being involved in the Sunday School, from second grade all the way through high school, were very life-shaping, and Bailey quotes that it was “such a valuable experience.” The curriculum was very relevant to daily life for a kid. He learned about being honest, not lying, stealing, or cheating, and he learned the certainty of God’s love for us. It was such a good foundation that later he would be able to recognize the hypocrisy of the church and the fallibility of some of the church’s teachings. Bailey remembers comparing the little song “red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight” to the firm stance of the grade school principal against school integration. He was a member of the church. And to hear for so many years that God loves all, then to hear the pastor say there are those that God hates, was such inconsistency as to be unbelievable.
Bailey never experienced much of a conflict between his spirituality and sexual orientation as so many others have. Never tried to pray the gay away. Bailey did not question his worthiness to God thanks to what he learned in that little Sunday School. However, as Bailey grew older, his desire for an intimate relationship pushed him to find a way to come out.
After attending Delgado College and Tulane University where he studied business administration, he served as an administrator for Catholic Charities of New Orleans at a residential treatment center for learning disabled/emotionally disturbed youth. In the mid-80s, Bailey's love for media and graphic arts resurfaced. He worked for a time as a designer, first for Cox Newspapers, then for the corporate advertising department of one of the South's largest retail distributors. It was Bailey’s experience in advertising that laid the groundwork for the historic Second Stone publication.