“That man is really disgusting.” This was Francis Schaeffer’s assessment of Jerry Falwell, “growled” to son Frank once the two were out of Falwell’s earshot. The apologist was reacting to antigay bigotry Falwell had suddenly blurted: “If I had a dog that did what they do, I’d shoot him!” Schaeffer says his father had tried to inform Falwell that homosexuality is “complicated”. This incident is recalled in Schaeffer’s 2007 memoir, Crazy for God.
He remembers: “I grew up in a community where homosexuals (the term ‘gay’ was not in use) were not only welcomed but where my parents didn’t do anything to make them feel uncomfortable and regarded their ‘problem’ as no more serious (or sinful) than other problems, from spiritual pride – a ‘much more serious matter,’ according to Dad – to gluttony. And I never heard any of the nonsense so typical of American evangelicals today about homosexuality being a ‘chosen lifestyle’.” He continues: “Dad defended them against people who would judge or exclude them. Dad thought it cruel and stupid to believe that a homosexual could change by ‘accepting Christ’ [and he] always counseled gay men and women against getting married to a heterosexual if they were doing it in the expectation that it would change them, let alone to impress their parents. This was in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when few people in secular circles, let alone evangelical circles, would even admit that there were gay people.”
“They don’t qualify for Christ’s salvation in terms of the Gospel!” Theologian J. I. Packer pronounced this midsummer judgment on all who are “living in homosexual relationships”. He’s caught up in the Anglican battle over homosexuality and speaks of the attempt to “play catch-up with the culture” by adopting whatever “is the in-thing”. But is Packer adopting the Religious Right’s “in-thing” and forgetting his Reformed doctrine of sola fide? He once wrote: “Christ’s vicarious righteousness is the only ground of justification, and it is only by faith that we lay hold of Christ, for his righteousness to become ours.”
“Christ’s own blood was not spilled to forgive such depraved sin.” The preacher said this about homosexuality, as he ranted about the torments awaiting the gay young man whose funeral he was conducting. This incident is reported by the young man’s former boyfriend, Gregory Morisse, now a minister, in his letter to The Christian Century, August 12. He was responding to an article on hell.
In response to a note from EC, thanking him for his letter, he added: “I was just coming to faith at that time in my life. And somehow, even in the midst of that violation, Christ’s love surrounded me and reassured me that my ex was safe and in heaven and that even this preacher would be redeemed. It actually drew me closer to Jesus (if not exactly closer to the church!).”
Fuller Seminary professor and filmmaker, Craig Detweiler, sees gay people as among the “others” who’ve been sinned-against by Christians. In a recent interview on Relevantmagazine.com, his comments on the award-winning film, The Lives of Others, could be applied to the life of a gay couple as much as to that of the couple in East Germany. Detweiler says it’s “a beautiful film about a spy listening in on this couple who are artists, and as he listens to their life, he starts weeping at the beauty of how they love each other and care for each other. As a Christian that’s a huge challenge. If somebody was spying on my life, would my life be so beautiful that it would cause people to change? If they knew my secret, would they weep at how I live? Or would they be horrified?”
A prayer request in the “Prayer Room” at Relevantmagazine.com on June 20 read: “Please pray for those gay youth who [are] contemplating suicide at this very moment. Lord, teach us how to love them.”
“A rethinking of the church’s stance on homosexuality is needed.” This is what a Southern Baptist has been suggesting in his recent opinion columns for Associated Baptist Press. David Gushee, distinguished professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University says there are “good missional reasons for Christian leaders to back off of public crusades against gay rights.” He detects “an uneasy ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ ethos” when it comes to gay people in churches, yet he says it’s clear that gay people are looking for choices other than “the closet, lifetime celibacy, change therapy, or finally rejection.”
Says Gushee: “It is clear that our churches and their leaders are rarely prepared to offer a serious discussion of the theological, biblical, scientific and ethical issues that are at stake in the contemporary homosexuality debate.” He admits: “Some of the dumbest and meanest things that anyone says about homosexuality – and a lot of other issues – are said in church.” Meanwhile: “Premarital sex among our youth is rampant. Cohabitation has become routine. Our marriages are collapsing at an epic rate. Multiple remarriages happen among us regularly and without reflection or resistance.”
Gushee argues that where “the classic understanding of Christian sexual morality has survived and even flourished”, we can imagine the “kind of Christian community [that] might one day be in a position to consider the pleas of homosexual believers that have formed families and seek inclusion into the community of those whose permanent, covenanted relationships receive the church’s recognition and support.”
Bethel University students – some gay, some straight – have been meeting together for mutual support. The group has no official standing on their Evangelical campus in St. Paul, but the students hope that the school’s administration will learn from their modeling of Christian love for one another and allow the establishment of a recognized gay-straight alliance at Bethel.
Sarah Pulisse, a 2008 graduate of Kuyper College, says that, in her year’s internship at Gays in Faith Together, she’s been “stretched in ways that have truly helped to mold me into the social worker I just graduated to become.” The school (formerly Reformed Bible College) is a ministry-focused 4-year college and Gays in Faith Together (GIFT), led by Calvin Seminary graduate Jim Lucas, is a pastoral care and education ministry for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and their families. Kuyper and GIFT are both located in Grand Rapids. Pulisse’s main conclusion from 125 completed surveys: “a disconnection exists between LGBT youth and LGBT adults, with each finding support amongst their own age group and neither seeking to communicate and learn from the other.”
Younger Evangelicals reject the Religious Right’s opposition to homosexuality and gay rights as the test of faith. Especially among urban center ministries such as the Southern Baptist-launched outreach models, The Journey and The Well, and other cutting-edge missions such as Mars Hill’s Acts 29 Network and Jay Bakker’s RevolutionNYC that congregate in bars and other kinds of venues usually not associated with Evangelical Christianity, there is a welcoming of marginalized people like gay men and lesbians without overpowering them with antigay rhetoric.
After hearing of the cruel treatment and subsequent struggles with drug addiction and promiscuity that a devout gay man had after being thrown out of his Southern Baptist church, the pastor of one of these newer ministries told him he was profoundly humbled: “I struggle to walk in the valley and you’re on the mountaintop.”
Pew Research, Barna Research and Beliefnet find that attitudes on homosexuality are changing among younger Evangelicals. There’s an increasing acceptance of both gay civil rights and same-sex partnership among younger Evangelicals. As summarized by Steven Waldman of Beliefnet: all of these surveys show that “younger evangelicals are just as conservative as their parents on abortion but increasingly liberal on gay rights”. In fact, the younger Evangelicals tend to be even more pro-life than their elders while they’re only half as likely to have a problem with homosexuality.
“Witty, disarming, engaging, informative, and above all, great fun to read. The best response to the ‘New Atheism’ to date.” This is Oxford University Evangelical theologian (and molecular biophysicist) Alister McGrath’s rave review of social psychologist David G. Myers’ new book, A Friendly Letter to Skeptics and Atheists (Jossey-Bass). The book includes a chapter on “God and Gays”, a synopsis of Myers’ keynote at EC’s connECtions in 2006 and his 2005 book, co-authored with Letha Dawson Scanzoni, making the case for same-sex marriage. Other Evangelicals who are highly recommending A Friendly Letter are Owen Gingerich, Astronomy Professor at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and author of God’s Universe and Francis S. Collins, Director of the Human Genome Project and author of The Language of God. Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine, chimes in: “Read this book [by this] world class debunker of all things nonsense, and yet a man of faith.”
“I liked it because it wasn’t protesting. It was trying to have conversation.” This was Jay Bakker’s sense of the GLBT Soulforce visit to Willow Creek Church outside Chicago in June. The megachurch’s senior pastor, Bill Hybels, and several of his staff and church members met with Bakker and the Soulforce delegation. The gay and lesbian visitors said they were particularly pleased to hear several of the leaders say that, contrary to antigay rhetoric, they do not believe gay people choose to be gay. Some expressed the hope that Hybels would do more from the pulpit to make life safer for gays and lesbians and their families.
Randy Owen, lead singer for Alabama, will do a benefit concert for victims of this summer’s shooting at a Unitarian church in Knoxville. The attack left two people dead and six wounded. The alleged shooter ranted against “liberals and gays”. The church had hosted Knoxville’s predominantly gay congregation, the Metropolitan Community Church, during its first eight years and is home to the city’s chapter of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. Owen appears on the new Gaither CD/DVD, “Rock of Ages”.
A gay man who lives with his partner of many years in Milledgeville, Georgia, a place he calls “the reddist of the red states”, tells The New York Times: “The last time I was called a faggot was on Eighth Avenue” in New York City. Having been a longtime New Yorker, Joe Windish says: “I don’t have that here, and I’m an out gay man.” He acknowledges that many of his neighbors are fundamentalist Christians who oppose gay marriage but they are people “who all like me personally.”
America’s two black governors have given their support to same-sex marriage. Gov. Devel Patrick of Massachusetts, along with his wife, Diane, and daughter, 18-year-old Katherine, publicly shared the fact that Katherine disclosed: “I’m a lesbian” and, as the governor put it: “it’s just no biggie”. Weeks earlier, Gov. David Paterson of New York shared, on the front page of The New York Times, his fond remembrance of his “Uncle Stanley” and “Uncle Ronald”. The two men helped him with his spelling when he was growing up in Harlem. Paterson says that that good experience influenced his decision to direct state agencies to recognize out-of-state same-sex marriages.
Alliance Defense Fund, a group Arizona Christians, is challenging Gov. Paterson’s directive in court. ADF complains that Christians will be forced to pay for social services for gay couples, though ADF lawyer Brian Raum claims: “This isn’t about morals or ethics, it’s about a legal standard in New York.”
Later in the summer, and with the active endorsement of Gov. Patrick, the Legislature of Massachusetts repealed a 1913 law that was used to prevent out-of-state gay couples from marrying in the Bay State.
Pew Research has found that whites oppose gay marriage by 49 percent to 40 percent while blacks oppose it 56 percent to 26 percent. Meanwhile, Quinnipiac University research finds that in New York, whites approve of Paterson’s decision by 54 percent to 40 percent and most black do, too – 47 percent to 41 percent.
A gay son’s or daughter’s coming out as gay or lesbian can be a powerful teaching moment. As with Governor Patrick, Vice-President Dick Cheney, San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders and U.S. Representative Steve Rothman – and regardless of party affiliation – a politician can come to clarity if open and receptive to such revelation. Rothman is only one of the most recent parents to learn this lesson and then change his mind on same-sex marriage, for example. But there are evangelical megachurch ministers, a well-known systematic theologian and other Christians whose adult children are in faithfully committed same-sex unions and yet these fathers are still not teachable.
“We’re here to take a stand for the righteous!” “We’re standing up for the Lord Jesus Christ!” These were the rallying cries of more than 250 angry, antigay preachers in Albany in June. They were protesting Gov. David Paterson’s directive for state agencies to recognize same-sex marriages legalized elsewhere.
While 50 percent of Americans say that homosexuality should be accepted by society, 59 percent of Californians say so. These are findings of the 2007 U. S. Religious Landscape Survey based on 36,000 interviews in English and Spanish. The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life produced the survey.
“I am not going to publicly advocate Prop. 8 or the larger traditional-marriage movement it is a part of, given what I discovered about the people running that movement.” David Benkof posted this clarification on his withdrawing from the effort to ban marriage equality in California. He posted this at slog.thestranger.com on July 15. Two days before, he’d stated on his own blog: “I recently learned quite a bit of disturbing information that makes it impossible for me to continue supporting a movement I no longer respect.” He says he has not decided on whether he will give any further explanation on the matter.
Before his conversion to Orthodox Judaism, Benkof – under his original name, David Bianco – wrote on gay issues from a gay activist point of view.
Over half of U.S. couples who married in the late 1970s never made it to their 25th anniversary. And unmarried adults now represent more than half of all U.S. households. Among Americans in their 20s, 73 percent of the men and 62 percent of the women have never been married.
Evangelical preacher Tony Campolo has a solution to the same-sex marriage debate. The popular sociologist says that the state should get out of the marriage business and should guarantee legal rights for all couples through civil unions. He says this would leave religious institutions free to conduct marriage services however they defined them while there would be legal support for both heterosexual and same-sex partnerships.
Norway is the sixth nation to extend marriage equality to same-sex couples. By a vote of 84-41, the Norwegian Parliament followed the governments of the Netherlands, Canada, Spain, South Africa and Belgium in allowing same-sex couples to be legally married.
More than 1,000 Anglicans opposed to homosexuality are setting up a rival power bloc to Canterbury. Meeting in Jerusalem in June, these clerics – mostly from Africa and Latin America – contend that they represent the vast majority of Anglicans. The primates of Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda, West Africa and the Southern Cone are all part of this antigay coalition.
Maine’s Religious Right has ended its fight to overturn the state’s law prohibiting discrimination against gay people. The director of the Christian Civic League says the group failed to attract enough voter, volunteer and financial support. The CCL thus failed, as well, to bar towns from licensing civil unions.
The Presbyterian Church (USA) General Assembly has voted 54% to 46% to end its ban on ordaining gay men and lesbians. For final approval, though, the matter must be sent down to the church’s 173 regional bodies. It is predicted that congregations will defect from the denomination over this GA vote. Even before this latest decision, some 130 congregations threatened to leave or left. While more conservative Presbyterian denominations are growing, the PCUSA has been losing members for decades – more than 57,000 in just the last year.
President George W. Bush has signed his $48 billion Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief. It’s “the largest commitment by any nation to combat a single disease in human history” and renews a program credited with saving millions of lives in Africa alone. According to The Advocate, it’s “widely seen as one of the major achievements of the Bush presidency”. He said the goal was to prevent 12 million new HIV infections, treat more than 2 million with antiretroviral drugs, support care for 12 million people with AIDS, and train at least 140,000 new health care workers.
The President’s action also repealed the 1993 ban on HIV-positive foreign visitors and immigrants.
The number of new infections of HIV in the U.S. is higher than earlier estimates. The latest count: 56,300 new cases in 2006. The greatest effect is among men who have sex with men of all races (53 percent of all new infections) and among African- American men and women.
The brains of homosexuals resemble the brains of heterosexuals of the opposite sex. Scientists at Stockholm’s prestigious Karolinska Institute scanned the brains of 90 healthy homosexual and heterosexual women and men and found that lesbian women and heterosexual men shared a particular “asymmetry” in their hemisphere size, while heterosexual women and gay men had no difference in the size of their hemispheres. Other similarly significant differences were observed. For example, in lesbians and heterosexual men there were more nerve connections in the right side of the amygdala, compared with the left. The reverse was found to be the case in heterosexual women and homosexual men. The amygdala is associated with emotional responses, arousal and hormonal secretions. The study was published in the U.S. in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Neither Male Nor Female, God Created Them”. This was the title of a lecture on intersexuality at the 2008 annual meeting of the American Scientific Association, an professional society for Evangelicals in science. The speaker was Calvin College biology professor Hessel Bouma III. He presented some of the scientific evidence that indicates that sexuality – whether anatomical, chromosomal, hormonal, psychological, social, etc. – is not neatly dimorphic. He closed by reading Jesus’ words in Matthew 19:12. Bouma urged Christians to accept people who must live with a sexuality for which they’ve too often been shamed instead of understood and supported. The lecture can be heard at ASA3.org.
Many Evangelicals call for mandatory informed consent when someone seeks an abortion but many reject such mandatory informed consent when someone seeks “reparative therapy” for homosexuality. Mathew Staver, dean of the Liberty University law school, warns that counselors who urge “reparative therapy” may be bound to a mandatory informed consent rule when urging such an approach since all the major mental health professions assess it to be an unproved and possibly harmful treatment modality. According to Staver: “State licensing laws and professional boards responsible for enforcing ethical codes of conduct may pose one of the most serious threats to Christian counselors” if informed consent is mandated.
John Wyatt, Professor of Neo-natal Pediatrics at University College London, explains that “many women are profoundly traumatized by what was promised to be a neat solution” in an abortion. But he notes that this “quick fix” can result in “life-long distress”. Mental health professionals warn of similar harm from the promised “neat solution” of attempted “reparative therapy”.
AND FINALLY:
“Tyson Homosexual was a blur of blue, sprinting 100 meters faster than anyone ever has.” What was that? That’s the way the antigay American Family Association’s Internet filter automatically revised Olympic trials athlete Tyson Gay’s last name as the AFA relayed a reworked news story from Associated Press. The AFA refuses to use the term “gay”, insisting on using the term, “homosexual”, with what the lobby evidently hopes is a more “clinical” or “sick” connotation. Its coverage concluded: “Everyone expected Homosexual to make the U.S. team.”