“A Ministry to the Fallen” by Jerry Falwell
“Homosexuality and the Bible” by Paul D. Feinberg
“Counseling Homosexuals” by Paul D. Meier
“Such were Some of You” by Michael Braun
“Helping Children Grow Up Straight” by George A. Rekers, The Fundamentalist Journal, March 1985.
by Dr. Ralph Blair
No more influential American regularly voices his opinion on homosexuality than Jerry Falwell, whom U. S. News & World Report finds is the third “most influential” person in the private sector and the fourteenth “most influential” among all Americans, inside or outside government. One of the many hats he wears is as Executive Editor of The Fundamentalist Journal, published by his Old-Time Gospel Hour.
In “A Ministry to the Fallen”, a title that betrays his claim that all sins are equal in the sight of God, he introduces four articles on what he sees as the sin of homosexuality. He lists matters of sex and alcohol in a more reprehensible category than a list that includes “some of us [who] are victims [?] of pride, jealousy, hatred, rage, anger, bitterness, or an unforgiving spirit”. How much of a crusade does Falwell wage against these, his fellow “victims” of the sins of hatred, rage, pride and jealousy? That the “sin of homosexuality” is presented by Falwell as the big sin is evidenced by the tremendous attention he pays to fighting against the rights of homosexuals as over against the rights of the proud, the jealous, the unforgiving and the righteously indignant.
In Feinberg’s discussion of “Homosexuality and the Bible”, this Trinity Evangelical Divinity School teacher does not appeal to the creation accounts or to Deuteronomy as other Fundamentalists do. He makes little effort to base his argument in any part of the Old Testament. He admits that “it is true that Sodom and Gomorrah were exceedingly wicked cities” apart from any homosexuality, but he insists that they were punished for homosexuality. He grants that the “Holiness Code” of Leviticus condemns “idolatrous practices” and “ceremonial uncleanness” and that “we are not bound by these commands today”. Turning to Romans 1, he misrepresents the argument of “homosexuals”, trying to dismiss it by rejecting the fact of homosexual orientation, what he calls by the old term, “inversion”. To Feinberg, “nature”, as Paul used it, means “God’s intention” even though, in the same letter, Paul says God acted “against nature”. Feinberg does not report this. When he turns to I Corinthians he tries to build his case on two words from a vice list Paul evidently adopted. But he admits: “These words are difficult to translate” and he acknowledges that he has no first century evidence for translating or interpreting them. But this does not stop him from saying that these terms that are “difficult to translate” mean all homosexuals today. He concludes with terminology from his discarded Holiness Code, asserting: “God calls [any and all homosexuality] an abomination”.
Assuming that “The Bible calls it a sin”, Meier, a psychiatrist, offers guidance in counseling persons out of homosexual acts. He, too, rejects the fact of homosexual orientation, strangely insisting that the “person who has homosexual temptations is not necessarily a homosexual. A homosexual”, he says, “is someone who willfully practices homosexuality”. Such a strictly behavioral definition is convenient for Fundamentalist rhetoric but it fails to recognize the clinically obvious deep-seated psychosexuality involved. And it fails to meet needs of homosexuals Meier admits will be tempted homosexually “throughout life” and who will, with “occasional lapses back into a homosexual act, … come back to counseling overwhelmed with guilt”. But Meier dismisses continuing temptations i.e., orientation, as unimportant. He even urges that such “former homosexuals … date girls … even though they may not have any sexual desire for them”. He says: “Primary emphasis should be on developing friendships with males [especially with] one or two male friends their own age with whom they can eventually share anything”. This is a really bizarre prescription for a male struggling with the tendency to fall into a romantic interest in another male. Meier insists that homosexuals really do not have “desires to practice sex with other males [but do] have one crush after another on males who remind them of their fathers” and he gives as an example of this a patient whose lovers all were musical and sported a moustache just like his father did!
The next article is by a Florida preacher and though it is titled “Such Were Some of You” it is not about “ex-gay” claims. Pastor Braun bases his arguments against gays on Right-wing publications that even the conservative Presbyterian Journal and Christianity Today have warned are inaccurate embarrassments. He joins the others in paying lip service to the notion that homosexuality is no more sinful than, say, love of money, and then joins in its further stigmatization by saying: “Outrage is certainly legitimate” Christian response to any and all homosexuality. Asserting: “god’s judgment has fallen heavily upon homosexuals” in the form of AIDS, syphilis and gonorrhea, he overlooks the worldwide heterosexual transmission of AIDS, the fact that homosexuals constitute the only group least hit with AIDS (lesbians), and the fact that the incidence of syphilis and gonorrhea currently has decreased dramatically, not among heterosexuals, but among homosexuals.
The final article is adapted from Rekers’ book previously examined in REVIEW (Fall, 1982). Rekers is a fundamentalist and a psychologist who claims that homosexuality can be caused by curiosity or an accidental observation of a gay act. Incredibly, he promises parents that they can help their children “grow up straight” by teaching them “Bible standards” and keeping them out of “places of homosexual contact”.
These fundamentalists’ silly and simplistic notions about homosexuality apparently derive from their defensive dogmatism that will not deal with data they cannot afford to understand.