Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and James Dobson were quick to blame gays and lesbians, among others they can’t stand, for the terrorist attacks on September 11. Jerry Falwell said this on Pat Robertson’s “The 700 Club” television show: “I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way — all of them who have tried to secularize America — I point the finger in their face and say, `You helped this happen.'” Pat Robertson responded: “Well, I totally concur, and the problem is we have adopted their agenda at the highest levels of government.” In the face of the flack their condemnations elicited, both tried to control the damage, with Falwell claiming his critics had misunderstood him and Robertson saying he himself had misunderstood him. James Dobson of Focus on the Family publicly agreed with their original statements: “Yes, I believe that the attacks are God’s punishment because we are … forcing children to be taught about homosexuality.” … And this is God’s way of punishing the wicked.”
The Falwell-Robertson-Dobson blaming of gays and lesbians for God’s “lift[ing] the curtain of protection” over America, resulting in terrorist assaults, has been rejected by many other conservatives. Church historian Timothy F. George, an executive editor of Christianity Today, said Falwell’s statement was “hurtful and divisive.” Ken Connor, president of the Religious Right’s Family Research Council said: “This is not the time to further wound America’s spirit by casting blame on our fellow citizens. Scripture tells us that `all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.’ Singling out groups whose conduct offends us is not likely to bring about the national repentance that our country needs. It is more likely that such actions will simply polarize at a time when we are desperately in need of national unity.” Connor lumped Falwell with those who try to “cast out beams in our brothers’ eyes while overlooking the logs in our own.” National Review editorialized that Falwell and Robertson were “early entrants in the creep sweepstakes” and observed that Falwell’s “singling out specific sinners — who happened to be Falwell’s regular targets — was as presumptuous as it was idiotic.” Writing in The Washington Times, conservative columnist Mona Charen said Falwell’s accusations were “sacrilege.” According to the nation’s premiere conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh: “Suggestions of this kind are one of the reasons why all conservatives get tarred and feathered with this extremist, bigoted, racist, sexist, homophobic label or image that isn’t true. The words of Robertson and Falwell are not the words of all conservatives — they are the words of Robertson and Falwell.” Gay conservative and Catholic writer Andrew Sullivan countered Falwell on his Web site. He wrote: “I cannot express how personally wounded I and so many others are by [Falwell’s] attempt to associate many Americans — some of whom were victims of this evil and some of whom were heroes — with the demons who carried it out. It is unspeakably wrong and inappropriate.” A White House spokesman said that the President “does not share [Falwell’s] views and believes that those remarks are inappropriate.”
Father Mychal Judge, the much-loved New York Fire Department chaplain killed while praying with a fallen fireman at the World Trade Center disaster, has been heralded as a hero in both the secular and Christian media. A few weeks after the attack, Pope John Paul II blessed Judge’s helmet at St. Peter’s in Rome. Among the other tributes, Campus Crusade for Christ is providing more than 2 million copies of a booklet that lauds the priest. His friend, Steven McDonald, the paralyzed police detective, says: “First and foremost, he was a priest in love with Jesus. Where there was Father Mike, Jesus was there.” But virtually all the media except the gay press ignores Judge’s long time membership in the pro-gay Roman Catholic group, Dignity, and his strong advocacy for gay Catholics.
New York’s Republican governor, George Pataki, has signed an executive order allowing partners of gay men and lesbians killed at the World Trade Center to be eligible for the same Crime Victims benefits as surviving heterosexual spouses. Fundamentalist Presbyterian preacher Lou Sheldon, the founder of Traditional Values Coalition, attacked this plan for assisting same-sex spouses. According to Sheldon, aid should be given on the basis of “one man and one woman in marital relationship.” Matt Foreman, director of Empire State Pride Agenda, replied: “Any group that purports to be Christian and says relief shouldn’t go to people who need it is perverting religion in the same way as Osama bin Laden.”
Born-again Christians are just as likely to get divorced as other adults. The figures are 33 percent and 34 percent respectively. This is a finding of the evangelical Barna Research Group. The Barna study also found that 25 percent of born-again Christians cohabit outside marriage, compared to 39 percent of adults who do not identify themselves as born-again.
Meanwhile, conservative pundit William J. Bennett’s new book, The Broken Hearth, deplores sex at an earlier age, “cohabiting in unprecedented numbers,” later marriages with fewer children, and more frequent divorcing. But he’s against marriage rights for gay people even though, in his words: “We have relatives, friends, acquaintances, colleagues, who are fine, impressive, thoroughly decent individuals — and who may also be gay or lesbian.” Says he: “You can be tolerant of others while declining to accept what they do as right, or as entitling them to public endorsement.”
Marital problems and sexual misconduct account for 35 percent of all ministers’ or their spouses’ phone calls to The Pastoral Ministries department of James Dobson’s Focus on the Family. Dobson says Focus’s hotline for pastors gets calls from some 500 ministers each month. According to Dobson, sex addiction among ministers is “rampant.” He points out that it used to be that, for a pastor to get his hands on pornography, he’d have to take the risk of being spotted going into a porno store. Now all he has to do is go to his study, close the door and get on the Internet.
On July 12th, a Marriage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was proposed by a multicultural and religiously diverse group called the Alliance for Marriage. The proposed amendment reads: “Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this constitution or the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups.” Two-thirds of both houses of Congress must vote to propose a Constitutional amendment and it must be ratified by 38 state legislatures.
Walter Fauntroy, a former delegate to Congress from the District of Columbia, claims that such an amendment is needed for the welfare of African-Americans. He says: “When I left the White House with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on July 2, 1964, upon the signing by President Johnson of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 25% of African-American children were born out of wedlock. Today, it is up to 80%. If we don’t do something about this pandemic, we will soon be back to the slavery era.” Chinese Community Church pastor Bill Teng of Washington says the weakening of marriage is “so far advanced” that only a Constitutional amendment can save it. According to Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua of Philadelphia, the amendment “would achieve the essential objective of protecting through the law of the land the true definition of marriage.” A Marriage Amendment cover on the July 23rd National Review featured this statement from Princeton University professor Robert P. George and The Editors: “Only an amendment to the Constitution can end the abuse of the judicial process and protect both marriage and democracy in America.” Inside, he argues that while “everybody knows that marriage is in trouble, … there is something unique in the threat posed by the movement for `same-sex marriage.'” George warns that without this amendment, the courts will one day allow “marriage” beyond the bounds of two people.
Meanwhile, as the summer newsletter of the pro-family Institute for American Values notes: “From 1979 to 1997, the crude divorce rate fell by about 25 percent; the refined rate declined by about 10 percent. … your and your friends’ first marriages in 2000 are significantly more likely — perhaps as much as 20 percent more likely — to last for life than was the case when your parents and their friends got married in the 1970s. … In a few years, we will understand a divorce rate of `more than half’ not as a description of current reality, but as something that happened in the old days, when the sexual revolution was young.” And in terms of the children, notwithstanding media headlines to the contrary, Institute director David Blankenhorn’s research shows that the proportion of children living with their married biological parents remained steady at 62 percent from 1991 through 1996. These statistics lend credence to the Human Rights Campaign’s suggestion that this proposed Marriage Amendment is really nothing more than “a gratuitous attack on lesbian and gay Americans.”
William H. Willimon writes on “Why `Family Values’ is Not a Good Idea.” The always-biblical but independent Duke University chaplain’s remarks appear in Family Ministry for Spring, 2001. Says Willimon: “Thumb through the Bible looking for material on `family values’ and you will have a rough go of it. … one would be hard-pressed to find supportive material in the rather sordid accounts of family life among the patriarchs and matriarchs of Genesis. The Book of Ruth? No, no help there. The Song of Songs? No, I said we were looking for material on families, not raw sex. … Moving right along to the New Testament, matters get worse for the family. Here is Jesus, with almost nothing being said about his family. On the few occasions, after his early childhood in Luke (and the rest of the gospels appear to know absolutely nothing of Jesus’ childhood and family), whenever Jesus’ family enters, it is usually in a rather unflattering way, Jesus makes it quite clear that his family does not consist of his biological brothersw and sisters, or even his mother. Then he proceeds to go about Galilee asking people to leave their families and follow him.” Willimon continues: “Jesus appears to be, if not absolutely negative towards family, at least utterly nonchalant toward family. Jesus broke the hearts of many families.” He concludes: “Therefore, as Christians, we do not believe in the family, at least not in the sense that the word is used today. We do not believe in the family; we believe in the Family of God. Church.”
The Assemblies of God church has voted to approve ministerial ordination for men and women who were divorced before becoming Christians. The large Pentecostal denomination approved the measure by secret ballot. Some observers said that the secrecy of the balloting helped pass the resolution.
New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has been living with a gay couple since early this summer. In the midst of his acrimonious divorce, the mayor moved out of Gracie Mansion and into the apartment shared by car dealer Howard Koeppel and his partner, Mark Hsiao, a concert pianist. The Koeppel-Hsiao home has been Giuliani’s home base throughout his overseeing of the rescue and recovery efforts following the September 11th attack on the World Trade Center. Nearly 600,000 same-sex couples identified themselves as such in the latest federal census data.
President George W. Bush has appointed an openly gay man to be our U.S. ambassador to Romania. Long-time state department employee Michael Guest was sworn into office in September by Secretary of State Colin Powell. During the ceremony, Powell acknowledged Guest’s partner, Alex Nevarez.
President Bush has named gay Republican activist Donald A. Capoccia to the U. S. Commission on Fine Arts. Capoccia, a New York real estate developer, has served as Governor George Pataki’s liaison to the gay and lesbian community and was the keynote speaker at a gay tribute to Mayor Rudolph Giuliani at Gracie Mansion in June. Capoccia serves as vice chair of the Republican Unity Coalition (which former Senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming serves as honorary chairperson). The RUC was founded by President Bush’s openly gay campaign adviser, Charles Francis. Earlier in the year, the President appointed the head of the gay Log Cabin Republicans of Wisconsin, Scott Evertz, to be the new director of the White House National AIDS Policy Office.
Former President Gerald Ford says he “applaud[s] that President Bush has appointed three people who are gay. That is a big step in the right direction.” In an interview with the Detroit News, the high-ranking Republican and evangelical Christian added that he endorses a call for the federal government’s providing equal benefits for same-sex couples and married couples.
First Lady Laura Bush participated in the “Close the Book on Hate” campaign in October. This Anti-Defamation League/ Barnes & Noble campaign’s “National Allies” included the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. The reading list of anti-hate literature includes Heather Has Two Mommies, Two Teenagers in Twenty: Writings by Gay and Lesbian Youth, and Overcoming Heterosexism and Homophobia. Responding to criticism from the Religious Right, he First Lady’s press secretary said: “She’s emphasizing the need for all of us to come together as Americans.”
Senator Gordon Smith (R-OR) has become an outspoken advocate for a federal hate-crimes bill aimed, in part, at protecting gay people. The conservative Republican says that the murder of Matthew Shepard was a turning point in his thinking on hate crimes legislation. He says his Mormon faith “teaches me the principle to love one another. … Jesus said that all men should know that `he shall not be my disciple if he have not love for one another.'” In response to his critics who say he’s turning his back on “family values,” Smith says: “I’ve come to believe there are real family values and there are values that parade in those clothes but are counterfeit.” He says he understands, as a Mormon, what it can mean to be in the minority: “I had ancestors who were literally raped, robbed, murdered, and driven into the wilderness because they didn’t conform to the mores of mainstream society.”
The evangelical Journal of Psychology & Christianity has published an article supportive of gays and lesbians. It appears in the Spring 2001 issue of this quarterly of the Christian Association for Psychological Studies. The editorial board includes faculty from such evangelical institutions as Azusa Pacific University, Rosemead School of Psychology, Wheaton College, Gordon College, Goshen College, Houghton College, Mount Vernon Nazarene College, Grove City College, Roberts Wesleyan College and Fuller Theological Seminary. Author Rudy Serra addresses some of the fallacious notions many Christians hold about homosexuality, e.g. that homosexuality is chosen and that the orientation can be changed. He notes the Christian complicity in the holocaust, slavery and Jim Crow laws and concludes: “Whether the church will be identified with social justice or with persecution may well depend on whether and if Christians, lay and professional, will listen to the voices of gay and lesbian people.”
A Fordham University sociologist says half of all American exorcism rituals aim at “demons of lust, or demons of homosexuality, or demons of bisexuality.” In his new study, American Exorcism, Michael Cuneo finds that the “dramatically increased market for exorcism that surfaced in the United States during the 1970s” was fueled mostly by Hollywood and New York media, and “a highly suggestible public” bought into it. He explains that many people turn to exorcism as a quick and cheap alternative to psychotherapy — and “it fits in beautifully with victimization themes of our culture.”
Tammy Faye was the keynote speaker at Tampa’s PrideFest. The former wife of Jim Bakker and his co-host on the PTL Club of 1980s televangelism told her GLBT listeners that “God loves you just the way you are.” She said: “Like you, I’ve suffered. We’ve all been misunderstood. We’ve all been made fun of.” She then led the crowd in a chorus of “Jesus Loves Me.”
Coretta Scott King addressed the National Black Leadership this past summer. She said: “Sadly, homophobia is still a great problem throughout America, but in the African-American community it is even more threatening. … We have to launch a national campaign against homophobia in the black community.”
Canada’s Supreme Court ruled 8-1 that the British Columbia College of Teachers was wrong to deny teaching certificates to graduates of church-related Trinity Western University over alleged discriminatory beliefs about homosexuality. The 2,800-student Evangelical Free Church school requires all students to refrain from “sexual sins” including homosexual behavior while enrolled. According to the high court ruling: “In considering the religious precepts … instead of the actual impact of these beliefs on the school environment, the College of Teachers acted on the basis of irrelevant considerations. It therefore acted unfairly. … The freedom to hold beliefs is broader than the freedom to act on them. Absent concrete evidence that training teachers at TWU fosters discrimination in the public schools of British Columbia, the freedom of individuals to adhere to certain religious beliefs while at TWU should b e respected.”
The Archbishop of Canterbury says that Anglican conflict on sexual issues must be frankly acknowledged. Speaking before the Episcopal bishops of the U.S. early this spring, George Carey, the evangelical who leads worldwide Anglicanism, hold them that “It’s not the presence of conflict that’s unhealthy for communal life, but the premature suppression of conflict in the interest of an inauthentic unity.” He was speaking of the liberal U.S. church’s being at odds with the more conservative Anglican communions in the developing world, especially on issues of homosexuality.
The Anglican Church of Australia has released a book on homosexuality. It is a compilation of papers from a spectrum of views. All contributors agreed that both homosexual “promiscuity” and “persecution” of homosexuals are “contrary to the Christian ideal.” The reports were prepared for General Synod in July and the book was launched in May at Trinity College in the University of Melbourne.
Ugandan bishops of the worldwide Anglican communion have issued an antigay press release to “The Public and citizens of Uganda.” Reacting to the formation of a Ugandan branch of the Episcopal gay/lesbian caucus, Integrity, the gishops “categorically condemn the practice of Homosexuality [and] strongly advise our public or citizens not to let this kind of un-biblical and inhuman movement to be established in our country.”
Anglican archbishop Desmond Tutu addressed a conference on homophobia in September. He told his Cape Town audience: “I want to say sorry to you and all the others who have been made to suffer so horribly. We in the church have a great deal to answer for.”
Asked if he expects to find gay priests in Sydney as he did in Melbourne, the new Roman Catholic Archbishop George Pell replied: “Please God, no. I don’t want that sort of thing happening in Sydney.” Some of his critics said that, while in the Melbourne diocese, his inner circle had been full of effeminate gay priests they dubbed “the Spice Girls.” According to The Age of Melbourne, Archbishop Pell called the “Spice Girls” caricature a “most misleading and gratuitous slur.”
“Reports in the American media that the priesthood is becoming a `gay profession’ are inaccurate and unfair.” That’s what Timothy Dolan, the new auxiliary bishop of St. Louis, said in a recent interview with Zenit news service and picked up by the conservative National Catholic Register. “Are there some homosexual priests? Of course,” said Dolan. “Are there some actively homosexual priests? Of course, as there are some actively heterosexual ones.” But, he explained: “The priesthood is a very `manly’ vocation — we are called “Father.” He said that “seminaries are assiduous in stressing health, integrated, realistic chastity.”
The Centers for Disease Control reports that 1 in 50 black American men is infected with HIV — in contrast to 1 in 250 white men — even though blacks are just 13 percent of the U.S. population. Over 30 percent of young, black, gay men living in U.S. cities have HIV. AIDS is the leading cause of death for African-Americans between the ages of 25 and 44. Responding to this news, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert writes: “I am waiting for the so-called leaders of the black community — the politicians, the heads of civil rights organizations, the preachers — to step forward and say, in thundering tones, that it’s time to bring an end to the relentlessly self-destructive behavior that has wrecked so many African-American families and caused so much suffering and death.”
Furman University will now offer domestic partnership benefits to unmarried partners of its faculty and staff. Benefits will include medical, dental and life insurance policies. The historic Southern Baptist college — across town from Bob Jones University — severed its ties with the state’s Baptist Convention in 1992. Some 130 colleges are reportedly offering domestic partnership benefits to their employees.
Southern Methodist University will now offer benefits to its employees’ same-sex partners. The SMU administration decided that, starting next year, the Dallas-based school will offer medical benefits and reduced tuition to same-sex partners just as it already offers these benefits to heterosexual partners. Right-wing Methodists say they’re outraged at this extension of medical benefits.
The Broward County (Florida) Equal Rights Not Special Rights antigay crusade has failed. It was unable to get the 62,143 signatures required by mid-October in order to mount a vote to repeal “sexual orientation” as a protected class in the county’s Human Rights Ordinance. This is a major defeat for D. James Kennedy’s Center for Reclaiming America, the Religious Right’s American Family Association, and Christian Coalition.
The American Psychological Association is looking into dropping accreditation for any religious school that refuses to hire actively homosexual faculty. Since the APA is the only group recognized by the U.S. Department of Education as an accrediting agency for doctoral programs in clinical psychology, these religious schools’ programs and students are threatened. Though the APA admits it’s had no complaints about these schools, spokesperson Rhea Farberman says she fears that they create a hostile environment for gays and lesbians. Only a few of the APA’s 814 member schools invoke the gay-related exemption currently permitted.
AND FINALLY:
National Review senior editor Richard Brookhiser’s musings on terrorists: “They hate what they think of as degeneracy. But they also want it, and their wanting makes them hate it all the more. Add the normal erotic attraction of the Other, especially when the Other represents a superior civilization, and a poisonous mix is brewed.
“No doubt the Gay Moment in American and New York culture also excites the repulsion and the desire of some holy killers in the same fashion.”