“By no means would we ever say change can be sudden or complete.” This is what Alan Chambers, head of the Exodus “ex-gay” network, told the Los Angeles Times in mid-June. He admits to his own continuing sexual attraction to men while now married to a woman and identifying as “straight”. And he’s now joining a long line of “ex-gay” leaders who, when pressed, back away from the term, “ex-gay”. Yet they continue to speak of “change”. Chambers has said often: sexual orientation “is not a light switch you can turn on and off.” But Exodus still uses the term, “ex-gay”. And radio promotion for a recent Exodus conference promises change that is “sudden, radical and complete”.
After other “ex-gay” leaders faulted Chambers’ reservations and admissions in the Times, Exodus issued a press release in which Chambers is quoted as saying: “The world needs to see an accurate reflection of what ‘change’ really is.” He explains that change “is an extremely difficult journey” while adding: “but for those of us who are living remarkably different lives, we know what it is.”
The Christian Post recently cited Chambers’ saying that, instead of describing himself as an “ex-gay”, he’d prefer to say: “I’m a man. I’m a Christian. I’m a husband. I’m a father. I’m a son.” But observers point out that this statement is evasive. And it sidesteps the issue of homosexuality’s being an orientation and not merely acts. Also, of course, Chambers’ preferred self-identities apply as well, both to men who accept their homosexual orientation and live it out in a committed same-sex relationship and to men who have never struggled with same-sex attraction.
“Exodus International does not endorse the work of Richard Cohen or the methods utilized in his practice.” This statement was made to distance Exodus from “some of the techniques Mr. Cohen employs [that] could be detrimental to an individual’s understanding of healthy relational boundaries and disruptive to the psychological and emotional development of men and women seeking clinical counsel and aid.” Cohen, an man who claims to be “ex-gay”, has demonstrated these “techniques” on CNN. They include his cuddling and stroking male clients in his lap. He claims that this technique gives his gay clients the male-to-male touching experience they failed to receive from their fathers. According to Cohen, the absence of such cuddling led them into homosexuality. Exodus head Alan Chambers has resigned from the board of PFOX, an organization of parents and friends of “ex-gays” because PFOX refuses to disassociate itself from Cohen and his cuddling practices.
Three more pioneers in the Exodus “ex-gay” movement have publicly apologized once again for the harm they caused while promoting the “ex-gay” claims. At a news conference in Los Angeles, on the eve of this summer’s Exodus convention, Exodus co-founder Michael Bussee, Jeremy Marks, former head of Exodus International in Europe, and Darlene Bogle, who led an Exodus affiliate in Hayward, California and wrote Long Road to Love: A True Story of Hope for the Homosexual (Chosen Books) in 1985, issued a joint statement that read, in part: “Some who heard our message were compelled to try to change an integral part of themselves, bringing harm to themselves and their families. Although we acted in good faith, we have since witnessed the isolation, shame, fear and loss of faith that this message creates.” Said Marks: “We are committed Christians, but we’re still gay.” He now heads Courage UK, a gay-affirming evangelical ministry in England. See www.Courage.org.uk.
The Southern Baptist Convention has commissioned a Texas preacher to promote “ex-gay” claims throughout the denomination. Bob Stith, who is not himself “ex-gay” but associates himself with the Exodus “ex-gay” network, says he’s changed his attitude on homosexuals: “My whole attitude toward homosexuals was negative and condemning.” Now, he says, he sees homosexuality as no bigger sin than any other sin. His new assignment will be to promote the “ex-gay” promise in SBC churches and seminaries across the country. Stith says he’s frustrated that so many churches are still at the condemning stage, without offering an “ex-gay” promise. He adds: “Many churches convince themselves they don’t have this problem. And a lot of people would just rather avoid it.”
Michael Glatze, the former editor of Young Gay America Magazine has announced he’s turning away from life as a gay man. He’s been baptized into Mormonism. In spite of his turning to Mormonism, antigay Christians are cheering what they say is another “ex-gay miracle”.
Fifty-six percent of Americans think gay men and lesbians cannot change their sexual orientation. This is a finding of a CNN / Opinion Research Corporation Poll done this summer. This figure has evolved from 45 percent in a similar poll in 2001 and 36 percent in 1998.
Sociologist Tony Campolo has coined the term “red-letter Christians” to differentiate himself and other evangelical Christians from gay-bashers, antifeminists and others on the Religious Right. “Red-letter Christians” are so called after the practice of some Bible publishers’ printing the words of Jesus in red. Campolo wants “to assure that Jesus is neither defined as a Republican nor a Democrat”.
Sociologists estimate that some 35 percent of evangelicals qualify as “red-letter” Christians. According to Melissa Rogers of Wake Forest University Divinity School, politically moderate evangelicals remain conservative theologically. She notes: “The media has realized they’ve given too much attention and fed the presumption that the evangelical community is monolithic, and they need to go back and revise that.” The Washington Post reports that moderate political opinion among evangelicals may be “the big American religious story of this decade.”
The UN Economic and Social Council, with the US voting in the affirmative, has given observer status to two gay-affirming groups. The groups are from Sweden and Canada. Russia, China and Islamic countries cast votes against inclusion.
In a televised forum on gay issues, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards have repeated their opposition to marriage rights for same-sex couples. They said they support gay civil unions – in effect, aligning with the positions of George W. Bush, Rudolph Giuliani and John McCain. Long shot candidates Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel voiced their support for gay marriage. The forum was telecast from Los Angeles on August 9th. In his next-day analysis in the New York Post, the executive director of New York’s Empire State Pride gay rights organization, Alan Van Capelle, wrote about the front-runners: “They don’t get it. There is no such thing as partial equality. You either have equality or you don’t.”
Overlooking Rudolph Giuliani’s support for civil unions for same-sex couples, Pat Robertson gave him an enthusiastic welcome for a summer stump speech at Regent University. Regent’s founder called the Republican presidential hopeful “a dear friend and a great leader”. During his speech, Giuliani did not mention his positions on homosexuality or abortion – positions at odds with Robertson’s. And much to the chagrin of pundits on the Religious Right, none of the Regent students and staff asked him about these issues in a follow-up Q&A.
“Gay couples should be allowed to legally marry.” This statement comes closest to the view of 44 percent of 17-29 year-old Americans. Among their age-mates, another 24 percent agrees most with this statement: “Gay couples should be allowed to form civil unions, but not legally marry.” “There should be no legal recognition of a gay couple’s relationship” is the opinion of another 30 percent. These are the telephone survey results of a New York Times / CBS News / MTV Poll conducted in June. A poll by the Times and CBS earlier this year found that the respective statistics for all Americans over 18 were: 28 percent for marriage rights, 32 percent for civil unions, and 35 percent against both marriage and civil union rights.
“Evangelical teenagers are just as sexually active as their non-Christian friends” and 88 percent of teens pledging to abstain from sex until marriage do not abstain. Noting these findings of sociologist Mark Regnerus, the Religious Right’s World magazine columnist, Gene Edward Veith, suggests evangelicals should “encourage younger marriages.” He grants: “Adolescence – that time when a person is physically an adult but socially a child – is a modern invention. In the past, people married much younger, as soon as they were sexually ready. Today’s culture postpones marriage while stretching celibacy to the breaking point.”
Patrick Atkins and Brett Conrad met and fell in love at Wabash College in 1978. Now both 47, they lived in a house they bought together as joint tenants. While on a business trip in 2005, Atkins, CEO of Atkins Elegant Desserts, suffered a debilitating stroke. His religiously homophobic parents moved him into their house and bar all contact with Conrad. Mental health professionals have testified that Conrad’s presence would benefit Atkins’ recovery, but, in court papers, Atkins’ mother testified: “no amount of evidence could convince her that Brett and Patrick were happy together”. She added she’d “rather that he never recover than see him return to his relationship with Brett”. She believes the Brett’s family’s acceptance of his relationship with her son is as “evil” as the homosexuality. Observing that the gay couple had lived together longer than parents and son had lived together, the court of appeals ruled: “we are extraordinarily skeptical that the Atkinses are able to take care of Patrick’s emotional needs”. The court granted visitation rights to Brett. But the Atkinses have petitioned the court to reconsider and their lawyers say they may take the case to the Indiana Supreme Court.
High Point Church in Arlington, Texas cancelled a memorial service for a gay Navy vet, explaining that since the family planned to publicly celebrate his homosexuality in an “open mike” format led by gay people unaffiliated with the church, holding the memorial service at High Point would appear to give the church’s endorsement to “the homosexual lifestyle”. The deceased was not a member of High Point, though his brother worked at the church as a janitor.
Because of national media coverage of the controversy, Gary Simons, pastor of the 5,000-member High Point Church, issued a statement indicating that the church had offered and paid for an alternative site that the family declined to accept. The church also produced the family’s requested memorial video of photographs supplied by the family and also prepared and delivered food for the family’s one hundred relatives and friends. Also, some on the church staff attended the memorial service to support the family.
Simons is the brother-in-law of Joel Osteen, pastor of Houston’s 38,000-member Lakewood Church.
About 150 antigay churchgoers used noisemakers, placards and shouts of rebuke as they marched along the Pride Parade route in Sacramento in June. A member of the Bethany Slavic Church accused the gay and lesbian parade participants of “destroying this country, the family, moral values – everything.” A Unitarian countered: “With interracial marriage a half century ago – people thought it would be the end of the world, too”. Members of Sacramento’s Congregation B’Nai Israel asked rhetorically if the antigay protesters ate shellfish and pork. People on both sides called out to each other: “We love you!”
U. S. Muslims and Evangelical Christians score the closest – and highest – among American religious groupings wishing to discourage homosexuality. About 6 in 10 Muslims and Evangelicals said that homosexuality should be discouraged, while fewer than 50 percent of mainline Christians said so. White Roman Catholics scored the lowest, at 27 percent favoring discouragement of homosexuality. The polling was reported by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
A new website has been launched to endorse the inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Christians “without sacrificing the Gospel and the Apostolic teachings”. Justin R. Cannon, www.InclusiveOrthodoxy.org creator, says he “decries” dependence on the pro-gay advocacy of clergy, such as Bishop John Shelby Spong, who deny basic Christian doctrines. He notes: “It seems that the more inclusive an organization or denomination becomes, the further it strays from the Apostolic faith and core orthodox Christian teaching. Unlike many postmodern, revisionist, relativist ‘Christians’, we believe that the Church can be inclusive of lgbt individuals without sacrificing the Gospel and the Apostolic teachings.”
Cannon is currently studying at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific. He’s looking toward a vocation in the Episcopal priesthood.
Connaissez-vous quelqu’un qui sache lire le français? French translations of writings by Ralph Blair and Roy Clements, supportive of evangelicals who happen to be gay, can be found at http://journals.aol.com/fredness/ChristianGay/. The blog, by translator Fred Wells, also links to French-speaking Christian websites, and includes meditations based in Wells’ personal reading, e.g., some thoughts inspired by Les Misérables, where Bishop Myriel meditates on various biblical names for God.
The 2008 Gay Christian Network Conference theme will be “In Him We Live” and will be held at the Holiday Inn in Alexandria, Virginia – just outside Washington, DC. The dates: January 3-6, 2008. Speakers will include Jay Bakker, senior pastor of Revolution Church in New York and star of the television series, “One Punk Under God”, J. R. Finney II, senior pastor of the Covenant Community Church in Birmingham, Alabama, and Justin Lee, GCN founder and executive director. Lee has keynoted both the eastern and western summer conferences of Evangelicals Concerned. Log into www.gaychristian.net for further information and to register for this event.
Tammy Faye Bakker Messner was one of the few Christian celebrities who reached out to gay people with a love they could recognize. When she died on July 20th, they were among her most appreciative mourners. Mel White explained that “gay people liked Tammy because Tammy liked gay people”. In fact, she said she felt the love of gay people more than she felt the love of many Christians – especially through the many difficult times in her life of the last several years. Her son, Jay, caught his mother’s spirit of unconditional love for gay people and, in his own ministry, has spoken out on behalf of gay people. And, not surprisingly, Jay Bakker has received the same religious abuse that his mother received.
The North American Baptist Fellowship has told two gay-supportive Baptist groups that they cannot participate in the NABF’s historic “Celebration of a New Baptist Covenant” scheduled for 2008. The two groups are the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists and the Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America. NABF general secretary Alan Stanford asks for the “forbearance and understanding” of these excluded groups, explaining that “we cannot hold together the large coalition of Baptists needed to create a new Baptist voice in North America and address the issue of sexual orientation at the same time.”
The Murdock brothers – one heterosexual, the other gay – have been priests in neighboring Episcopal parishes in Massachusetts. But now Bill Murdoch, 58, is going to Africa to be consecrated a bishop by the antigay Anglican Church of Kenya in order to return to the U.S. to lead a congregation that refuses to condone any homosexuality. Brian Murdoch, 53, is remaining in the Episcopal Church and championing its pro-gay stances. The story of these two brothers is featured in The Boston Globe (Aug 12).
They grew up Catholic, both played high school football and then got involved with the evangelical Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Brian married and went to Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Bill went to General Theological Seminary where he came to an acceptance of his being gay.
Says Bill: “My brother and I love each other and always will”. He adds: “Hostility toward gay people is a sin”.
Three congregations that broke from the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles are not entitled to church property. This is the unanimous decision of a California appeals court. The three congregations had voted to leave the denomination because, they claimed, its increasingly pro-gay position contradicted I Corinthians 6. But biblical scholars point out that, in going to court to try to retain their property, they violate the point of Paul’s argument in I Corinthians 6. Paul’s point is that Christians should not go to secular courts to solve disputes among themselves. The conservative congregations’ lead lawyer, Eric Sohlgren, says they are considering an appeal to the State Supreme Court while Jim Robb, another spokesperson for the congregations claims: “This dispute is not about property, land or money.”
Eighty-three Lutheran pastors staged a mass coming-out at the summer assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. They distributed a gay-supportive devotional booklet titled, A Place Within My Walls to the one thousand delegates meeting this year in Chicago. Later, by a vote of 538-431, the delegates passed a resolution urging Lutheran bishops to refrain from punishing pastors who are in “faithful committed same-gender relationships”. A representative of the pro-gay Lutherans Concerned group exclaimed: “This is huge.” An ELCA study committee is scheduled to release its social statement on sexuality in 2009.
This summer, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada and the Anglican Church of Canada both turned down proposals to bless same-sex unions. The Lutherans once again defeated a blessings proposal – this time by a vote of 200 to 181. The Anglican Lay delegates voted in favor of blessings, 78 to 59, and the Anglican clergy did the same, 63-53. But the Anglican bishops voted 21 to 19 against. Affirmative votes of all three Anglican orders were needed to pass the proposal for blessings.
Two gay activists – a minister and a novelist – have been awarded Canada’s highest honor, The Order of Canada. A spokesperson for the Religious Right is warning that the fact that these awards were given to people who are “undermining conservative values … even while the Conservatives were in power will not sit well with Canadian conservatives.”
On Sunday, June 10, on the Avenida Paulista in Sao Paolo, Brazil, 3 million people (by police estimates) participated in history’s largest gay pride parade. This annual event was held in a city named for St. Paul, in the world’s most populous Catholic country and where Pope Benedict rallied less than a third as many devotees on his recent visit. Marchers included the city’s mayor, the state’s governor and ministers of federal agencies. The state energy company, the state-owned bank and other companies and organizations endorsed the event. The day before, about a million Christians staged a protest called a “March for Jesus”. Bands played religious music on flatbed trucks and “Vade retro, Satanism! Vade retro, homosexuality!” poured out from loudspeakers.
Gay parades are held in 70 other Brazilian cities throughout the summer.
“It would seem this group of Christians are not familiar with the ninth commandment. Perhaps they should spend more time in Bible study, rather than persecuting gay people.” So said a British gay activist after the Government’s Advertising Standards Authority ruled that a religious antigay group, Coherent and Cohesive Voice, had misrepresented the facts in ads against the Sexual Orientation Regulations in England, Wales and Scotland. In ads headlined “SEX”, the lobby claimed the Government’s regulations represented an “act against freedom of conscience” and would “force” a B & B to supply a room to a transsexual and “force” schools to push civil partnerships. The Authority ruled the regulations do not do so.
A Welsh Tribunal, in full hearing, has found in favor of a former Christian youth officer who was turned down for a job because of his homosexuality. The Anglican Bishop of Hereford and the Hereford Diocese were found to have discriminated against him because it required him to be celibate when other lay employees were not. Bishop Anthony Priddis had claimed: “What is at issue is the lifestyle, practice and sexual behaviour, whether the applicant is homosexual, heterosexual or transsexual.”
David Cameron, the leader of the Conservative opposition in Britain, endorses equal tax breaks for same-sex couples and married couples. He risked angering both the Religious Right, as well as Leftists who denounce the “privileging” of marriage.
The Irish Prime Minister confirms that his Government will work to ensure equal rights for same-sex partnerships by the enacting of new laws. During the launching of a gay community center in Dublin, the PM, Bertie Ahern, stated: “This Government is committed to providing a more supportive and secure legal environment for same-sex couples. … We will legislate for civil partnerships at the earliest possible date in the lifetime of this Government.”
With the backing of President Alvaro Uribe, Columbia’s lawmakers have approved a bill granting same-sex couples rights similar to heterosexual couples. Both social security and inheritance guarantees are covered in the new provisions.
As Anglican churches split up over homosexuality, a question arises: Is all this contentiousness an acceptable sacrifice? Cambridge theologians Duncan Dormor and Jeremy Morris have edited An Acceptable Sacrifice? Homosexuality and the Church (SPCK). It is argued that Jesus and Paul did not hesitate to go deeper than conventional understandings of biblical texts had allowed in their day and that that model could be ours today. Otherwise, as the book ends: “How is the Gospel good news if you’re gay?” — a thought once expressed by evangelical British sociologist Elaine Storkey in another connection: “As it is presented and practiced in our churches, the gospel is NOT Good News for women.” Desmond Tutu, in his Foreword, writes: “It is not acceptable for us to discriminate against our brothers and sisters on the basis of sexual orientation, just as it was not acceptable for discrimination to exist on the basis of skin colour under Apartheid. We cannot pick and choose where justice is concerned.”
William Stacy Johnson is a lawyer as well as a Princeton Seminary professor of systematic theology. In his book, A Time to Embrace: Same-Gender Relationships in Religion, Law, and Politics (Eerdmans), he presents a range of understandings on these issues – from non-affirming and non-welcoming to welcoming, affirming and familial. He takes into consideration our current understanding of the psychology of same-sex orientation as well as a developing legal understanding as expressed in rulings based in the 14th Amendment.
AND FINALLY:
Justin Lee, founder of GayChristian.net, gives the “ex-gay” controversy a much-needed perspective of comic relief in a spoof he’s written.
One of his songs in his revue is a take-off on the Major-General’s song from The Pirates of Penzance. (Note: “SGA” is ex-gayese for homosexual orientation.) Here’s a sample of Lee’s verses: “I am the very model of an ex-gay individual / I’ve no more gay attractions (okay, maybe a residual) / I go to ex-gay conferences, where folks hold me accountable / They say with Jesus, SGA is never insurmountable. … My father was a weakling and my mother was tyrannical / In lieu of wrestlemania, my interests were botanical / My peer group had a way of undermining my stability / Because I lacked in football any natural ability. … Now, though I hope my obfuscating language doesn’t vex you all / I’m told I am a non-gay same-sex tempted homosexual / And so despite a temporary struggle with residual / I am the very model of an ex-gay individual.”