(PDF version available here)
The newest Public Religion Research Institute survey finds that 53 percent of white evangelicals, ages 18 to 29, support same-sex marriage. That’s just 8 percent below the 61 percent of Americans across ethnic and racial groups that support same-sex marriage. Even among white evangelicals, 65 or older, 25 percent support same-sex marriage.
In response to a letter from conservative Anglican bishops about the acceptance of same-sex relationships, a spiritual LGBT-support charity in the U.K. cautions that these bishops are not up-to-date about the many evangelicals who have changed their minds on the subject: “What may come as news to these bishops is that the evangelical world has moved on – indeed, perhaps this letter arises out of the fear of recognizing just this reality.” Conservative bishops are told that, “they no longer speak for all evangelicals; their sisters and brothers still hold their evangelical identity dear, but have been courageous and open-hearted enough to see a bigger God emerge. … Ultimately, we must all answer before God for those we have drawn to faith, and perhaps especially for those we have turned away, blocking the movement of the Spirit.”
Azusa Pacific University administrators dropped the evangelical school’s policy that attempted to prevent same-sex romances among students. But, within days, the Board Trustees reversed the administration’s revision. The Trustees did not address APU’s previous dropping of antigay statements attached to its declaration that marriage is between “a man and a woman”.
APU students protested the Trustees’ reversal on same-sex romance. They sang in support of the school’s LGBT community and wrote notes in chalk on sidewalks and pasted sticky notes around the campus to declare their welcome and affirming of LGBT students. They held prayer meetings and announced: “There is a holy rumbling happening, and we anticipate the Spirit’s work in Christian student communities across the country.” A recent APU graduate says that the Board “falsely assumed that same-sex romances always involved sexual behavior. But queer students are just as able to have romanticized relationships that abide by APU’s rules” as are heterosexual students.”
Trinity Western University has dropped its student covenant’s prohibition of sex outside of traditional marriage. This action was in the wake of Canada’s Supreme Court ruling against TWU’s law school policy that’s now been dropped in terms of the students’ compliance. The old policy still applies to faculty and staff. The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada had backed TWU and opposed the Supreme Court’s decision. The controversy involved the accreditation of TWU’s law school graduates.
Eugene Peterson – evangelical pastor/scholar and Bible paraphraser of The Message – passed away in October. Over 20,000,000 copies of The Message have been published.
Last year, some of his fellow evangelicals were upset when, in his reply to a gay evangelical journalist’s question on same-sex marriage, Peterson went beyond what they found comfortable. Later, he tried to clarify: “I would still love such a couple as their pastor. They’d be welcome at my table, along with everybody else.”
John Stackhouse, a fellow evangelical scholar, remembers his friend and colleague: “Eugene didn’t think about ‘issues.’ He thought about persons. He paid patient and kind attention to whoever was in front of him, and spoke to them of the mysteries of Christ, the glories of creation, the self-destructive vapidity of consumerism. He could do that with parents raising a gay child or with quite conservative traditionalists. That so many of us cannot imagine such a wide spectrum of people to love shows just how great his capacity for love was, and how narrow ours has become.”
Christianity Today’s editor-in-chief Mark Galli recently mentioned “another momentous day in my life, my 44th anniversary”. All should be glad for the Gallis’ good marriage. Yet, Galli himself goes on to gripe: “Much to our disappointment, it is now the law of the land to permit other forms of ‘marriage’.”
Happily married to someone of his choice, he’s disappointed that same-sex couples can now marry a person of their choice. His disappointment is disappointing to evangelical same-sex couples, but it’s not unexpected. As Galli celebrates a marriage that meets his own needs yet refuses to respect marriages that meet others’ needs, he displays a morass of ignorance and a refusal to apply Golden Rule empathy, even though, what makes the Golden Rule so practical is that, all it takes to live it, is to look into one’s own needs and see there, the same needs that others have. Sadly, failure to do so also provokes heterosexual Christian authors of antigay books to dedicate them to their wives – oblivious to their gross insensitivity or in order to register their own heterosexuality.
Ironically, Galli here quotes G. K. Chesterton’s observation: “I have known many happy marriages, but never a compatible one. The whole aim of marriage is to fight through and survive the instant when incompatibility becomes unquestionable. For a man and a woman, as such, are incompatible.” Chesterton’s insight on the incompatibility of heterosexual couples no doubt disturbs those who claim that same-sex couples are the ones that, “as such, are incompatible.” But, both heterosexual and same-sex couples have this challenge in common, for all couples, attracted as they are to what each finds so fascinatingly other in the other, find some of that otherness to be, indeed, frustrating.
We often hear the remark: “I don’t see what she sees in him” or even, “I don’t see what he sees in him.” And we don’t. We can’t. It’s too personal, and quite involuntary.
Christianity Today’s entire archive – every issue since its first in 1956 – has now been released online. Mark Galli admits that, reading what was written in CT over those 62 years, makes “an editor in chief wince.” He notes articles by J. Edgar Hoover, who tried to blackmail Martin Luther King Jr. in order to “derail the civil rights movement”. And he notes a Southern Baptist biblical scholar’s defense of racial segregation. Says Galli: “Clearly, we were naïve about the ugly realities of segregation.” Back then, others were not naive; they saw and they spoke up against the ugly realities. But, Galli cavils, “we were completely ignorant about the nature and stubbornness of structural injustice”. He does say, though, that, “In short, during this crucial era of American history, CT did not lead as much as reflect the moral ambiguity and confusion of that era’s white evangelical churches”. He grants: “We must acknowledge and repent of this part of our history.”
Yet, back in 1953 – three years before he founded CT – Billy Graham, a son of the South, insisted that his Crusades in the South have integrated seating. When racist ushers refused to remove ropes separating the races, Graham, himself, removed ropes saying: “Either these ropes stay down or you can go on and have the revival without me.”
Since CT’s earliest years, editors have shown similarly willed ignorance on issues of homosexuality, with their culturally habituated prejudice footnoted by Bible verses.
EC’s arguments in opposition were met with rude questions from a former CT editor, demanding details of EC founder’s sex history while bragging about his own sex history.
In 1977, J. Ernest Runions, Principal of evangelical Carey Hall and a member of the University of British Columbia psychiatry faculty, offered CT editors his wise heads-up on homosexuality. But they could no more afford to appreciate his advice than they could afford to deal with evidence EC had offered them. Runions wrote to CT, saying: “As a theological and medical educator, as a pastor, and as a consulting psychiatrist, I know of few subjects as perplexing or troublesome in counseling, church work, family life, or institutional development as homosexuality.” He faulted the CT editors for their superficial thinking on homosexuality and for their promoting promises of “cure.” He was firm: “Christian experience [does not] alter the condition.” He said, “it is sad that evangelical writers can show little pastoral sensitivity to the heartache of families and to the agony of those beset by homosexual fears and temptations, or understanding of the relief and integration (with apparent personal benefits) for the person who finally ‘comes out’ [as gay].”
In Runion’s Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society review of Jay Adams’ antigay “pastoral counseling”, he panned it as “superficial – excruciatingly so”, filled with “infuriating oversimplifications and claims”. He objected that Adams “ignores the secular data incorporated by the Holy Spirit”. In 1976, Adams’ book was the very first to be reviewed in the first volume of EC’s quarterly Review. To see how wrong Adams was on homosexuality, one needed to read no further than this: “It is the effeminate-looking person that the practiced homosexual is looking for.”
Meanwhile, as in their resistance to the civil rights movement, CT editors refused to examine their ignorance, prejudice and eisegesis on homosexuality.
Against all the early warnings about “ex-gay” frauds provided by EC, CT published a 1981 cover story bannered: “Homosexuals CAN Change”. That capitalizing of “CAN” unwittingly evidenced the defensiveness of CT editors. Tom Minnery was the reporter. He’d later move to Focus on the Family where John Paulk would head its “ex-gay” efforts before and after he, himself, was spotted in a gay bar while in D.C. on behalf of Focus’ “ex-gay” propaganda. His own “change” had been hyped in his two books and in a Newsweek cover story, but Paulk finally left the “ex-gay” movement, honestly admitted that neither he nor anyone in the “ex-gay” movement had changed. He now says that, as an openly gay man, he has peace he never had before.
In 1996, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Christianity Today, the editors reprinted excerpts from what ten Christians had written in its pages 40 years before. Three were, understandably, from CT’s three founders. One of the other seven was from Eugenia Price, one of EC’s very earliest and most enthusiastic supporters. Then, for CT’s 50th anniversary in 2006, the CT editors chose Roz Rinker’s bestselling book, Prayer: Conversing with God, as the one book that had most shaped evangelicals during CT’s first half-century. Rinker, too, was one of EC’s earliest and enthusiastic supporters and she also keynoted EC summer conferences. Many others associated with CT have also strongly supported EC, with prayers, recommended referrals and financial support.
So, when will the day come when a CT editor in chief will finally wince over CT’s archived discrimination against folks of an involuntary same-sex orientation, as Galli winces now over CT’s archived discrimination against folks of an involuntary color?
Tim Bayly is still ranting against “homosexualist” Christians – even when they are committed to lives of celibacy. This Predestinationist warrior-preacher contradicts the good sense and Gospel spirit that his famous father, Joe Bayly, showed to gay folks almost half a century ago. Today, Tim Bayly sneers at the gay and lesbian Christians of the Revoice “crowd”, as he calls them. He twists their commitment to lifelong celibacy, saying: “What makes them allies is their unison voice in promoting the permanence of homosexual orientation and opposing ‘reparative therapy,’ ‘conversion therapy,’ or ‘sexual orientation change.’ ” He cold-heartedly dismisses the evidence of dismal failure and tragic suicides throughout the decades of the hyped hoax of “ex-gay” and “reparative therapy”. Denouncing Revoice folks’ dedication to celibacy, he asserts: “They are united in repudiating any call to redirect their disordered, unnatural, and shameful same-sex sexual desires. According to their homosexualist ideology, every call to them to plead with God for change in their sexual longings and desires is tantamount to a call to them to repudiate the person God made them.” Actually, they know full well, through their many years of personal struggle, that, pleading with God for sexual orientation change is, evidently, not God’s plan. But Bayly chooses to ignore their honest testimonies and the conclusions of former leaders of the now defunct “ex-gay” movement: Nobody’s sexual orientation changed!
Bayly ignores the fact that, by choosing celibacy, they’re giving up the blessings of an intimate, loving partner who matches their same-sex orientation. Bayly might figure out how such a voluntary absence would feel by extrapolating from the comfort of his family (a wife, five children and more than twenty grandchildren). But he doesn’t. Still, Pew Research finds that, by far, Americans say that what gives their lives meaning is “family” (69%). The closest anything comes to that significant meaning is “career”, selected by 34%. “Faith” is ranked most meaningful by only 20% of the folks that were surveyed.
(For the late Joe Bayly’s compassionate approach to people who coped with same-sex orientation in those earlier years – and for what he had to say about those who, back in his own day, sounded like his son sounds today – read EC’s Review, Winter 2018.)
CBS’ Sunday Morning recently focused on so-called “conversion therapy” for gay men and lesbians. All of the interviewees testified that their same-sex orientation never changed. Guests included Alan Chambers, the leader of the Exodus “ex-gay” network as it finally closed down in 2013 after its 37 years of failed promises of “change”. The end included heartfelt apologies from organization leaders over all of the damage that had been done throughout the decades of unfounded and misleading promises and cover-ups.
Of course, another guest, Focus on the Family issues analyst, Jeff Johnson, told CBS’s interviewer: “I want people to know that God changes people, that leaving homosexuality is a possibility.” Johnson makes this meaningless claim, even after John Paulk, Focus on the Family’s celebrity “ex-gay” leader, left the movement, frankly admitting that he’d never changed and neither did anyone else in any of the “ex-gay” programs, including the Focus on the Family’s, Exodus’ (where he’d also been the leader), etc. Paulk now opposes such “conversion therapy”. Johnson, however, conflating terms, says: “I want people to know that God changes people, that leaving homosexuality is a possibility.” But Johnson finally grants that, “same-sex attractions do not change by direct action against them”, saying, “they don’t go away just because a person “tries really hard” not to have same-sex feelings or “prays really hard” that they’ll go away. Yet, the promise was always: “Same-sex attractions change!” Focus on the Family’s website still trumpets these very false promises with embellished rhetoric: “The good news is homosexual attractions and temptations do change, dissipate and even disappear for many.”
So, what exactly does Focus on the Family mean by “homosexual attractions and temptations do change, dissipate and even disappear for many”? What does Focus on the Family mean by “leaving homosexuality”? Double-talk was never what the desperate ever sought from the “ex-gay” movement. What they had in mind – both those who struggled with their own same-sex attraction and the parents who sought help for their gay sons and lesbian daughters – was change of sexual orientation from homosexual to heterosexual and happy heterosexual marriage for the “ex-gays”. That, they never got.
The fine print at Focus’ website states that, “leaving homosexuality” means: “Change in Behavior”, “Change in Motivation”, “Change in Identity”, “Change in Attitude” and “Change in Relationships with Men and Women.” In other words, it means no change in one’s involuntary sexual orientation. “Conversion therapy” is about trying to behave heterosexually, trying not to behave homosexually, and, too, not identifying as “gay”.
“Boy Erased” is the first wide-release film that deals with the “ex-gay” promises of “change” that always were, and still are, a hoax. Based on the 2016 memoir of Garrard Conley, a gay son of an Arkansas Baptist preacher, the film stars Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe and Lucas Hedges.
In 2004, Conley, then 19, was subjected to what 700,000 have had to endure in a futile effort to become “ex-gay”, even though, back in 2001, the U.S. Surgeon General said clearly: “There is no valid scientific evidence that sexual orientation can be changed.”
Since before EC’s founding in 1975 – and, based on the EC founder’s mid-1960s doctoral research and evaluation of the etiological and treatment literature – there’s never been valid scientific evidence that sexual orientation can be changed. Psychologist Carlfred B. Broderick, editor of the Journal of Marriage and the Family, wrote: “Blair is scrupulously thorough and shows a remarkable analytic ability in his evaluation of the research of others. Indeed, his survey on the etiology of homosexuality is, to my mind, the best in existence.” The Mayo Clinic’s Walter C. Alvarez said in his syndicated medical column: “Blair has written a splendid survey of the etiology of homosexuality.”
The New York Times’ A. O. Scott says of the film, “Boy Erased”: It “tries to be more than a simple culture-war morality play. The mood is not of indictment but of kindness, a virtue that Jared [the gay young man in the film] has clearly learned from his mother and father, even if they differ as to its meaning.” But, Scott observes, “their personalities are too neatly diagramed, their conflicts too emphatically articulated, for ‘Boy Erased’, moving as it is, to feel like more than a summary of its own noble intentions.”
NPR’s Ella Taylor asserts that, while the film does not “shake an accusing finger at the parents or, for that matter, at Christian belief per se”, it doesn’t let parents “off the hook for seeking to radically alter and deny [the homosexual orientation and] willingly consign them to the ‘care’ of dubiously qualified saviors lugging their own unexamined baggage of guilt and self-loathing.” That last comment refers to the continuing same-sex attraction – and same-sex behavior – of the “ex-gay” leaders who promise “change”.
Predictably, the antigay Rightwing World magazine’s review of “Boy Erased” must claim that, “the abusive practices the film depicts, whether portrayed accurately or not, are by no means universal.” That rationalizing for its readers tries to obliterate the many confessions of the Exodus network’s utter failure, admitted by its former leaders, including World magazine’s own annual “Daniel of the Year” award-honoree, Alan Chambers, 2 years before Chambers led in the closing of the Exodus “ex-gay” network.
World magazine, having pushed decades of “ex-gay” promises – now turns to the actual reality of sex abuse inside churches. World warns that such is, “crouching at every door”. Three articles on this are prefaced with a “trigger warning”: “Warning: This special report contains disturbing information about alleged ministerial abuse.”
After noting the much publicized sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic Church, it admits that, “evangelicals should recognize that clerical sex abuse is widespread, and some evangelical and fundamentalist churches do cover up problems and pass them on to others.” It’s explained, or rationalized, that, “Some congregations have dominating pastors with unchecked authority. … Evangelical culture has a conference and lecture circuit with celebrities and quasi-celebrities who come to cities for weekend workshops and one-night lectures that provide opportunities to sin and go, leaving behind casualties. …Megachurch leaders face the ordinary temptations but also extraordinary pressure to cover up problems, knowing that a sniff of scandal will summon packs of critical reporters.”
World says that it’s “not saying these problems are new”. It reports on a 1984 Fuller Seminary survey of 1,200 ministers, showing that, “1 in 5 theologically conservative pastors admitted to some sexual contact with a church member outside of marriage. More than two-fifths of ‘moderate’ pastors and half of ‘liberal’ ones acknowledged the same. A 1993 survey showed 6 percent of Southern Baptist pastors acknowledged sexual contact outside of marriage with someone in the congregation.”
In 2002, the director of the 3,000-member American Association of Pastoral Counselors estimated that 15 percent of pastors “either have [violated] or are violating sexual ethical boundaries”. And, in 2007, the three largest insurers of Protestant churches and nonprofits in the U.S. said they get some 260 reports of child sex abuse every year.
Full-page ads in evangelical magazines cite statistics on porn use by pastors and church members. These ads are for programs to counteract the porn habits. They report that, “50% of pastors view porn on a regular basis” and “only 7% of pastors say their church has a program to help people struggling with pornography [while] 57 % of pastors say porn addiction is the most damaging issue in their congregation.”
Brown University quickly deleted its news story on a study by a Brown University researcher of groups of teens having “rapid-onset gender dysphoria”, i.e., major dissatisfaction with their gender identity that emerged within mere days or weeks.
Researcher, Lisa Littman, M.D., M.P.H, assistant professor of the practice of behavioral and social sciences at Brown’s School of Public Health, rightly wrote that, “This kind of descriptive study is important because it defines a group and raises questions for more research. One of the main conclusions is that more research needs to be done. Descriptive studies aren’t randomized controlled trials – you can’t tell cause and effect, and you can’t tell prevalence. It’s going to take more studies to bring in more information, but this is a start.”
She reported that the emergence of this phenomenon occurred with significant frequency when children who think they don’t “fit in with their peers” became aware that other children are “transitioning” to a different gender identity. “Of the parents who provided information about their child’s friendship group, about a third responded that more than half of the kids in the friendship group became transgender-identified,” said Littman. She correctly pointed out that, “A group with 50 percent of its members becoming transgender-identified represents a rate that is more than 70 times the expected prevalence for young adults.” She interviewed 250 parents of children who experienced this rapid-onset gender dysphoria. Littman said that the evidence suggests that these unusual conclusions by these children could really be a harmful coping mechanism.
But such environmental factors run counter to the politically correct narrative on gender transitioning and so, Brown University pulled the report. The Dean of Brown’s School of Public Health, Bess Marcus, even wrote a letter to “the community”, saying that the report was pulled over “concerns that the conclusions of the study could be used to discredit efforts to support transgender youth and invalidate the perspectives of members
of the transgender community.”
But Harvard Medical School’s former dean, Jeffrey S. Flier, soberly responded: “The fact that Brown University deleted its initial promotional reference to Dr. Littman’s work from the university’s website—then replaced it with a note explaining how Dr. Littman’s work might harm members of the transgender community – presents a cautionary tale.”
Flier stated the reality: “Increasingly, research on politically charged topics is subject to indiscriminate attack on social media, which in turn can pressure school administrators to subvert established norms regarding the protection of free academic inquiry. What’s needed is a campaign to mobilize the academic community to protect our ability to conduct and communicate such research, whether or not the methods and conclusions provoke controversy or even outrage.”
“Drag Queen Story Hour (DQSH) is just what it sounds like—drag queens reading stories to children in libraries, schools, and bookstores”. According to the DQSH sponsors and advocates, “DQSH captures the imagination and play of the gender fluidity of childhood and gives kids glamorous, positive, and unabashedly queer role models. In spaces like this, kids are able to see people who defy rigid gender restrictions and imagine a world where people can present as they wish, where dress up is real.
The City of Atlanta agrees to a $1.2 million settlement with Kelvin Cochran, its fire chief, who was fired in 2015 for writing a devotional book for Christian men that incidentally mentioned his personal views of the Bible on homosexuality. He wrote it in his spare time. It was not connected with his job. Having been a firefighter for 30 years, he was appointed U.S. Fire Administrator by President Obama in 2009. Cochran was dismissed as Atlanta’s fire chief for writing his book, even after an investigation concluded that he’d never discriminated against anyone on the basis of homosexuality.
Responding to the Federal District Court’s ruling in Cochran’s favor, his lawyers said:
“The government can’t force its employees to get its permission before they engage in free speech. It also can’t fire them for exercising that First Amendment freedom, causing them to lose both their freedom and their livelihoods. We are very pleased that the city is compensating Chief Cochran as it should, and we hope this will serve as a deterrent to any government that would trample upon the constitutionally protected freedoms of its public servants.
AND FINALLY:
A 69-year-old self-help guru in the Netherlands is suing to change his age to 49. He complains: “When I’m on Tinder and it says I’m 69, I don’t get an answer”. He says he “feels” much younger than 69 and claims he doesn’t “look 69”. He envisions that, by being allowed to change his age, “I’ll be in a luxurious position”. He’s says: “My biological age is 45.” – according to a visit to his doctor. He compares himself with those who are not happy with their “assigned” sex: “Transgenders can now have their gender changed on their birth certificate, and in the same spirit, there should be room for an age change.” He’s also recently changed his religion to Buddhism. Vice magazine’s Dutch edition asks: Is he “disturbed or accidentally extremely woke?” Meanwhile, a judge, referring to the years that this Dutchman wants to delete, asked him: “For whom did your parents care in those early years? Who was that little boy back then?”