A major proponent for Prop 8’s ban on gay marriage admits: “It is almost certainly true that gay and lesbian couples and their children would benefit from having gay marriage.” David Blankenhorn, founder of The Institute for American Values, acknowledged this under David Boise’s cross-examination in California in January. Blankenhorn went further. He granted that same-sex marriage is “a victory for the worthy ideas of tolerance and inclusion” and that it could even reduce anti-gay prejudice and hate crimes against homosexuals.
The Benny Hinns are divorcing. Hinn, a worldwide “health & wealth” Pentecostal leader, has long preached against gay people and same-sex marriage. At the Orlando Christian Center on December 31, 1989, Hinn declared: “The Lord tells me to tell you: In the mid-‘90s, about ’94, ’95, no later than that, God will destroy the homosexual community in America.” To this “revelation”, Hinn’s audience broke into loud applause. Hinn then added: “He [God] will destroy it with fire!”
Washington, D.C.’s same-sex couples began applying for marriage licenses in March, following lawmakers’ legalizing same-sex marriages. Angry opponents, led by Harry Jackson and other black preachers and churches, vow to fight the legalization by demanding a District-wide vote that they predict would overturn the measure.
“In D.C., outreach to African-Americans wasn’t part of the campaign. It was the campaign,” said black gay activist Michael Crawford. Same-sex marriage proponents drew parallels to Martin Luther King Jr.’s work for racial equality. But many black folks disagree. During the 2008 election, the Associated Press found that 70 percent of black voters supported California’s Prop 8, the antigay-marriage bill, contrasted with only 49 percent of white voters who supported Prop 8. There was a similar racial split in the vote on same-sex marriage in Florida.
Antigay politicos were upset that the Congressional Republican leadership did not stop the legislation. Family Research Council Action’s Tom McClusky complained that he hadn’t seen any effort to stop it. William Donohue of the New York City-based Catholic League said: Republicans “have an inarticulateness about homosexuality that they don’t have on economic issues. They can talk on and on about the free market but when it comes to gays, they’re jittery.”
U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts rejected an appeal to block D.C.’s new same-sex marriage law. Roberts ruled: “It has been the practice of the court to defer to the decisions of the courts of the District of Columbia on matters of exclusively local concern.” His decision infuriates the Religious Right’s anti-marriage activists who are continuing to try to overturn the law.
Family Research Council’s Peter Sprigg says he favors criminalizing and exporting gay Americans. This Baptist preacher and FRC – along with other Religious Right activists – oppose President Obama’s aim to end the Clinton Administration’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy in the U.S. military.
But Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen stated his support for the President’s plan in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. He said: “I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens. For me personally, it comes down to integrity – theirs as individuals and ours as an institution.” Noting that, since 1968, he’s served with homosexuals who put their lives on the line every day, he said that, “putting individuals in a position that every single day they wonder whether today’s going to be the day, and devaluing them in that regard, just is inconsistent with us as an institution.” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates says: “The question before us is not whether the military prepares to make this change but how we best prepare for it. We received our orders from the commander in chief, and we are moving out accordingly.” Colin Powell, former chair of the Joint Chiefs, agrees: “I fully support the new approach.”
Ryan Sorba was booed off the stage at the 2010 Conservative Political Action Conference when he “condemn[ed] CPAC for bringing GOPride (sic) to this event.” GOProud – gay and lesbian conservatives – took an active role in sponsoring this year’s conference. Sorba, of Young Americans for Freedom, has gained a reputation for what some conservatives are calling his “bullying obsession” with homosexuality. Much of the Religious Right boycotted the conference because of GOProud’s inclusion. Still, 10,000 conservatives were in attendance – a spike of 20 percent over last year’s CPAC.
Dick Cheney got a “rock star welcome” with his surprise appearance at CPAC. The ex-VP and former Defense Secretary supports marriage equality and repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”. Responding to Cheney’s declaring on ABC’s “This Week” that, “The society has moved on” in terms of homosexuality, John Nichols of The Nation wrote: “Cheney’s acknowledgment of the reality that society has moved on puts him in a more progressive position on this issue than the Obama Administration.”
A February CNN/Time poll finds that Americans are evenly divided on whether or not same-sex relationship is morally right or wrong. In another result of the poll, 69 percent said they’re for allowing gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the military.
The Lutheran Church of Sweden now celebrates same-sex weddings. Five months after same-sex marriage became legal, 70 percent of Sweden’s largest church body voted to adopt a marriage rite for same-sex couples. Ministers who conscientiously object to performing such weddings may refer a couple to another minister.
Meanwhile, an openly lesbian Lutheran minister in a same-sex partnership has been consecrated as the new Bishop of Stockholm.
Thirty-six percent of some 3,000 British citizens say “sexual relations between two adults of the same sex are always/mostly wrong”. Two decades ago that figure was 75 percent. Thirty-nine percent say it’s “not wrong at all. Two decades ago that figure was 11 percent. The British Social Attitudes Report published these statistics.
Same-sex couples deserve the “same sacrament of fidelity” as heterosexual couples, according to Massachusetts Episcopal Bishop M. Thomas Shaw III. He says that priests may officiate or decline to officiate at same-sex weddings.
“I’m holding my nose as I say this, but I miss George W. Bush,” said AIDS activist Gregg Gonsalves. “On AIDS, he really stepped up. He did a tremendous thing. Now, to have this happen under Obama is really depressing.” Gonsalves was referring to President Obama’s scaling back on U.S. aid on global AIDS in favor of the worldwide fight against pneumonia, diarrhea, malaria and other plagues. Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel (Rahm Emanuel’s brother), advocates Obama’s approach in The Journal of the AMA.
Clay Aiken spoke at the Human Rights Campaign Gala in Raleigh in February. He substituted his own comments for those the HRC had given him to read – having found HRC’s speech too negative (and Bush-bashing). He was cheered throughout as he repeatedly said, “it’s about damn time” GLBT folks had the rights enjoyed by others. He noted that, throughout American history, it’s always been a struggle for groups to win their rights, and when they have, “it’s always been about damn time” they did. This 31-year-old pop singer and committed Christian came out as gay in 2008.
Comic/artist Teresa Roberts Logan, “The Laughing Redhead”, wrote a comment to ChristianityToday.com in response to its report of the Maine vote against same-sex marriage. She said: “Jesus never mentioned homosexuality. So stop pretending this is his gig. It isn’t. This is sad, sad, sad. We should not be taking away marriage rights from consenting adults, when we enjoy those rights. I believe gays should have the same marriage rights that I, as a straight female follower of Christ, have.”
Logan has appeared on A&E, HBO, the Gospel Music Channel and the DVD, “Thou Shalt Laugh”. She’s now to be seen on the new “Comedy Angels” DVD.
“There’s sin. There’s sexual SIN. And then there’s HOMOSEXUAL SIN. At least that’s how we Christians often act.” Darrel Rowland makes this observation in an issue on homosexuality in the weekly Christian Standard of the Christian Churches / Churches of Christ (March 7, 2010). A Bible teacher at the Worthington (Ohio) Christian Church, he’s also public affairs editor of The Columbus Dispatch. He cites a warning from Kent Paris, a leader in the Exodus “ex-gay” movement: “We’re losing our kids to the gay lie/life, and with growing numbers.” Paris claims he’s “a victim of family incest and sexual abuse from several teachers”. Now married to a woman, he nonetheless admits: “This does not deny one’s attractions, thought-life, temptations, etc. Those are real and must continue to be yielded to Christ.” Paris says those who are tempted homosexually should stop identifying as either “gay” or “ex-gay”.
James Donovan, minister at Southwest Christian church in East Point, Georgia, asks: “What is God’s desire in this?” and says: “I do not believe in a one-size-fits-all approach. Scripture is very clear on the issue of homosexual promiscuity, which I believe is what Paul addresses in his writings in the first century.” Donovan goes on to say: “However, I don’t believe the majority of gays and lesbians whom I have met have chosen being a homosexual any more than I have chosen to be heterosexual. It is so easy for us heterosexuals to say they have chosen to be a homosexual.”
In his “And So It Goes” column, editor Paul S. Williams avers: “We may draw boundaries where others would not draw them, but we need not cut off all contact because of those decisions. That stops us from remembering that positions always involve people – individuals created in God’s image.”
“I never felt I fit in at Exodus because, as much as I have looked at my childhood, I don’t see any ‘unmet needs’ that have contributed to my SSA [same-sex attraction]. I grew up a happy, confident, masculine child with very strong relationships to my father, brother and male peers and no history of abuse.” So says “College Jay” in a thread comment on an Exodus website. He urges a reorientation of explanations and goals, away from the neo-Freudianism of reparative therapists and reorientation. “None of the [hundreds] of people I know have converted to heterosexuality. They may behave heterosexually with their wives or husbands (and truly and intimately love their wives or husbands) but they are still SSA. … In fact, most of the people I know who did fall away back into a gay lifestyle after being involved in Exodus blamed the fact that Exodus held up orientation change as the goal, instead of simply help when it came to controlling the desires.”
Cyberbullying non-heterosexual youth is a growing problem according to Iowa State University researchers following a three-year study. Approximately 42 percent of non-heterosexual participants (N=350) in an online inquiry say they received angry, rude, or vulgar messages on social networking sites within the previous 30 days. Threatening messages were received by 24 percent of them. Understandably, targeted youth felt anxious, depressed and even suicidal in response to the cyberbullying. Researcher Warren Blumenfeld says that awareness of such cyberbullying is important for state legislation, in-class curriculum and parenting.
“Seventh-Gay Adventists: A film about love, sex and eternal life”. That’s the title of a documentary SDA filmmakers Daneen Akers and her husband, Stephen Eyer, are making. Traveling across American with their cameras and their new child, they want to give gay Adventists opportunity to tell their own stories. Akers says they’re including people who are still active in SDA churches, those who wish they could be more active but who sense they’re ostracized and those who, knowing they’re unwelcome, have left the church.
Says Akers: “Everyone said they prayed mightily to be changed.” She says that most Adventists she knows are very conflicted between what they’ve always been taught about homosexuality and their personal experience of gay and lesbian people they’ve gotten to know. Says Eyer: “I really want my church to do the right thing. Wouldn’t it be a great subtext of the film – that even when we have truly profound challenges we value engaging with each other in productive and meaningful conversation?”
The Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh has released 135 priests from their licensed ministry in the Episcopal Church. The offer, which is not a disciplinary action, responded to the priests having joined the Argentina-based Anglican Province of the Southern Cone in protest to the increasingly LGBT-affirming Episcopal Church.
Three California congregations of the Presbyterian Church (USA) are leaving to affiliate with the more conservative Evangelical Presbyterian denomination. The issue is what the three congregations consider the PCUSA’s unbiblical positions on homosexuality. But unlike some dissenting congregations in other denominations, Fresno’s First Presbyterian, Trinity Presbyterian in Clovis, and Fowler Presbyterian will retain their church property. Said PCUSA representative, Rick Irish: “The relationships we share with these three congregations, as brothers and sisters in Christ, are more important than property, therefore we didn’t make property an issue.”
Israeli rabbi Ron Yosef has a website called Hod (a Hebrew acronym for homo’im datiim (religious homosexuals). He reports that most of the men who log into Hod want to continue to live a religious life but they struggle with same-sex temptations. Yosef informs them of “the dangers [of trying] to become heterosexual” but he also doesn’t urge them to “come out of the closet”. He aims simply at their having “someone to talk to”. There has been more activity on the website since this winter’s news of alleged molestation of male students by one of Israel’s leading rabbis.
Hov refers women’s inquiries to groups for religious women, such as Bat Kol.
The president of the UN General Assembly opposes a UN resolution calling for the universal decriminalization of homosexual behavior. Libya’s Ali Abdessalam Treki has said: “It is totally unacceptable. It is not acceptable in the majority of the world. My opinion is not in favor of this.” Virtually no mainstream media reported this.
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Ranking Republican of the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the most senior Republican in the House, responded: “This anti-gay bigotry spewed by this Quaddafi shill demonstrates once again that the UN has been hijacked by advocates of hate and intolerance.”
The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Kampala says Uganda’s anti-homosexuality bill “does not pass the test for Christian caring on this issue.” According to Archbishop Cyprian Lwanga: “The targeting of the sinner, not the sin, is the core flaw of the proposed bill. The introduction of the death penalty and imprisonment for homosexual acts targets people rather than seeking to counsel and to reach out in compassion to those who need conversion, repentance, support and hope.”
The bill’s Ugandan supporters sneer at Western outcries over the bill, claiming that homosexuality, itself, is a vile Western import. Many Americans, horrified that their criticism could backfire, are declining to follow the lead of Rick Warren and others who have publicly voiced their opposition to the bill. Pope Benedict XVI, meeting with the Ugandan Roman Catholic hierarchy in March, did not publicly mention the issue.
AND FINALLY:
The Community Church of Joy, a megachurch in Arizona, voted 129-0 to leave the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America over the denomination’s decision to roster pastors in publicly committed, monogamous same-sex partnership. The Joy church’s website notes that its pastor “spends his leisure time with Mary, his wife and best friend.” Isn’t this what a gay pastor, too, does with his or her beloved same-sex partner “and best friend?” Said Jesus: “Treat each other as you want to be treated. This sums up all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 7:12)