“Toward hope and healing for homosexuals” was the grab-line at the top of the full-page ad in The New York Times on July 13. (Similar ads appeared in The Washington Post and USA Today.) Under this grab-line was a big picture of Anne Paulk, identified as “wife, mother, former lesbian.” Under this, in bold type: “I’m living proof that Truth can set you free.” But in the fine print on the bottom half of the page, the claims are more modest than the headlined “ex-gay” promise. In the smallest typeface in the ad, it is said that these so called ex-gays “have walked away from their homosexual identities,” not homosexual orienta-tion. The “healing” turns out to be a refusal to “identify” oneself as gay or lesbian. Says Paulk: “Leaving homosexuality was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.” She claims that God “changed me forever.” But what was changed? “Gone was the hardness. Gone was the hurt. And gone was the shrill cry… I found forgiveness.” But she does not claim that the homosexual orientation is gone.
Fifteen antigay organizations on the Religious Right paid for the ads. Included among them: Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, Christian Coalition, Coral Ridge Ministries, and Concerned Women for America. The 800 number that was listed for “ex-gay” solutions turned out to be the number of an Alabama electrical contracting company. When in an interview with The Baltimore Sun, Ralph Blair was told that the listed number was incorrect, he said to the reporter that the electrical contractor would be as successful in changing callers’ sexual orientations as the Paulks would be. Anne Paulk is now married to a former drag queen named Candi. He is John Paulk, head of Focus on the Family’s antigay office. He is quoted in Newsweek as acknowledging: “I still find men can be attractive.”
John Paulk has written a book entitled Not Afraid to Change: The remarkable story of how one man overcame homosexuality. He tells of his life as a gay prostitute, a drag queen, years of promiscuity with hundreds of men, drugs, and attempted suicide. Toward the end of the book he says: “I could even call myself an ex-gay man. But a full, normal heterosexual man? It still didn’t seem to fit, no matter how hard I tried.” So his mentor in the “ex-gay” movement tells him that “the label of ex-gay is still connecting you with the past, John, I think you should start connecting your identity with the future, not with who you used to be. … So, from now on … you’re not an ex-gay; you’re a man. And not just a man, but a heterosexual. That’s how everyone sees you.”
The director of a Detroit “ex-gay” organization writes that “my wife and I both found freedom from a gay past.” He says his gay past included “300-400 sexual partners,” depression, alcohol abuse, cocaine, and attempted suicide. He is now married to “a former lesbian.” He admits that “our first year of marriage was torture” and he says he “began to seek solace in phone sex with men.” He then heard a broadcast in which Elizabeth Moberly said that homosexuality was “about same-gender deficits.” (Moberly is no longer in the “ex-gay” movement.) He thought that what he needed was to follow Moberly’s advice and find a close male friend with whom he would not have sex. He says that God “sent two men within the next year” and then sent a third man, a heterosexual, “to whom I would have been strongly attracted back in my gay life. … Slowly I was learning that I could be intimate with a man without being sexual with him.” This is the front-page testimony in the June issue of the Exodus “ex-gay” newsletter. Ironically, he reports on the painful experiences of childhood when other boys called him a fag and a sissy and beat him up. His father was furious that he wouldn’t fight the other boys: “He forced my hands up and started jousting with his fists, but I only stood there and cried. I hated my father for forcing me to be something I could never be.”
The California-based “ex-gay” organization called Desert Stream announced in its 1998 summer newsletter that just before Christmas “we discharged our associate … due to conduct unbefitting a minister.” Though nothing more than this was reported on the incident, the dismissal is but one of the latest in a long line of such dismissals and resignations in the “ex-gay” movement.
“Satan’s plot for our children” is what the pastor of Choice Hills Baptist Church in Greenville is calling homosexuality. He preaches that it’s “demonic” and “a stench in the nostrils of God.” And a Republican candidate for the post of South Carolina Agriculture Commissioner has charged that the “homosexual agenda” is a threat to the state’s farming industry. At a campaign rally he said: “We can’t have farming based on Bob and Bob being married.” Jay Leno joked about the comment on his television show, “But,” says the Parents And Friends Of Lesbians And Gays newsletter, “what is funny on Leno isn’t funny for South Carolina gays, lesbians and their loved ones.”
PFLAG has selected a Presbyterian laywoman as the national organization’s new executive director. Kirsten Kingdon says she brings to her new post what she’s learned from her work in the Presbyterian church: “you’re not going to get changes, lasting changes, working on the national level unless you get changes on a local level.” Kingdon has been involved in advocacy on behalf of gay men and lesbians within the Presbyterian church and was once the head of the federally mandated Physicians Standards Review Organization, monitoring quality of care for Medicaid patients.
University of Notre Dame theater professor and priest has resigned in protest over the failure of the Roman Catholic university to better embrace its gay students. Father David Garrick says he “could not remain in [his] ivory tower” while young gay Catholics struggle with feelings of shame and unworthiness that are, at least in part, fostered by the antigay positions on campus.
Oberlin College has hired a gay man as its new athletic director. This school in Ohio has always championed the oppressed. It long fought to abolish slavery and served as a station on the old Underground Railroad. Evangelist Charles G. Finney was professor of theology and president of Oberlin in the 19th century.
The new housemasters at Harvard University’s Lowell House have been in a lesbian partnership for 22 years. They are Harvard comparative religion professor Diana Eck and Drew University associate professor of psychology and religion Dorothy Austin. Austin is also an ordained Episcopal priest and she spends half her week at the United Methodist Drew campus in New Jersey. The couple will be live-in surrogate parents to 450 male and female students at Harvard.
The Board of Memorial Church at Harvard University, after a year of serious study, has decided to allow the facility to be made available for commitment ceremonies for same-gender couples who are members of the University family. Memorial Church’s pastor is Peter Gomes, the culturally conservative gay preacher who wrote the best-seller, The Good Book: Reading the Bible with Mind and Heart, published by Morrow.
United Methodist-affiliated Emory University will allow gay and lesbian couples to hold same-gender commitment ceremonies at the campus chapels if an ordained and official campus minister conducts the service. At the present time, only two campus clergy are willing to do so — the United Church of Christ minister and the Reformed rabbi.
United Methodist Bishop Joel Martinez decided against reappointing Jimmy Creech to the pastorate of the First United Methodist Church of Omaha. Creech had just won a church trial over issues arising from his having performed a commitment service for two lesbians. At issue was the applicability of the “Social Principles” section of the denomination’s rule book that, since 1996, states: “Ceremonies that celebrate homosexual unions shall not be conducted by our ministers and shall not be conducted in our churches.” Since Creech is a minister in good standing in the 8.5-million member denomination, he must be offered another job somewhere in the church but his plans are indefinite.
“Is it worth putting gay-friendly ministers’ jobs at risk in order to have same-sex unions?” This was asked in an Advocate Poll on the internet in June. The Advocate is the country’s leading gay/lesbian newsmagazine. Among the readers, 61% said “yes,” 26% said “no,” and 13% were “not sure.”
A book that makes the case for fidelity in marriage is given an almost enthusiastic review in the evangelical periodical, Christianity Today. Why only almost? Because the author, Catherine M. Wallace, writes that “sexual fidelity is a practice intrinsic to the happiness of a happy marriage” whether heterosexual or homosexual. Reviewer John Wilson observes that “It is rare indeed to find a book about sexuality that is neither sleazy nor clinical, neither saccharine nor joyless. And a Christian sex book, too.” Nonetheless, he is upset with her support of gay and lesbian couples. He thinks homosexual unions are “clearly condemned by Scripture.” But then, somewhat incongruously, he adds that “it would be a pity … if gay and lesbian readers refused to attend to Wallace’s case for fidelity.” The book, For Fidelity: How Intimacy and Commitment Enrich Our Lives, is published by Knopf.
Louie Crew, who founded Integrity, the caucus of gay and lesbian Episcopalians, was a deputy at this year’s General Convention of the denomination. Commenting on the fact that proposed approval of a ceremony for the blessing of same-sex couples failed, though by only two votes, Crew says that “there is a certain inconsistency in damning people for promiscuity and then damning them to be promiscuous by not allowing them access to a committed, recognized relationship.”
The retired Episcopal bishop of Atlanta, Bennett J. Sims, who used to be antigay, now says that church support for same-sex unions “is a plain matter of justice. It is also a matter of providing a sacramental structure for the expression and protection of the Christian sexual ethic of monogamy, fidelity and life-long intent.” In his essay, “How to be True to the Bible and Say `Yes’ to Same-Sex Unions,” Sims reminds his readers that “the Christian Church did not invent `opposite-sex unions.’ Long ago we simply entered into blessing what we believed God to have ordained … [and] which canon law of the Episcopal Church enumerates as `mutual fellowship, encouragement, and understanding; secondly for the procreation, if it may be, of children …, and for the safeguarding and benefit of society.” His comments are carried in the spring 1998 issue of the newsletter of the Episcopal Church’s gay/lesbian caucus.
“There is nothing holy about this union, and it is a mockery of marriage.” This was the response of the Right-wing’s Family Research Council to the holy union service for Michael Galluccio and Jon Holden-Galluccio, the two men whose New Jersey lawsuit won the right of adoption for unmarried couples. The service was held on Father’s Day at the small Church of the Atonement in Fair Lawn, New Jersey. Four Episcopal priests presided at the service in this, the couple’s home church. Each man’s parents as well as around a hundred parishioners and friends attended. As the well-wishers exited the church, a protester shouted at them: “If you think it’s hot out here, wait till you get to hell.!” Her husband added: “Yeah. This is air conditioning!” Other protesters carried signs reading: “There are no gays in Heaven — repent.”
The Southern Baptists amended their Baptist Faith and Message Statement for the first time in 35 years while meeting in Salt Lake City in June. They added a statement that defines marriage as “the uniting of one man and one woman in covenant commitment for a lifetime.” It passed overwhelmingly in a show-of-hands vote of the 8,500 delegates.
Judaism’s Reform movement agreed not to take a position on same-gender unions at its annual convention in June. It was argued that a vote to support such relationships would have an adverse effect on efforts to have the Reform movement recognized in Israel, where the Orthodox are in charge of religious affairs. Gay-supportive rabbis called the decision a failure of courage and inconsistent with other Reform positions at odds with the Orthodox establishment in Israel.
Los Angeles Episcopal priest and gay activist Malcolm Boyd keynoted a recent gay religious retreat and spoke out against “a minority of anti-religious zealots in the gay movement” who, he said, have distorted “the public image of gays as nonspiritual, anti-religionist hedonists.”
An invited editorial against abortion was published in the country’s leading gay/lesbian newsmagazine, The Advocate, on March 3, 1998. The founder of the Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians shared the group’s opinion with the magazine’s readers. With members in 46 states — a third being lesbians — PLAGAL is not the media’s image of a gay/lesbian organization. “We are united in the conviction that abortion is far more than a personal choice: It is the taking of a human life.” The group’s position is “not based on religion” but on the members’ “experience as a sexual minority. … We know what it is to be considered something less than fully human.” PLAGAL can be reached at P O Box 33292, Washington, DC 20033.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa has called on the liberal World Council of Churches to denounce the “thoroughly reprehensible homophobic statements” of Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe. Mugabe has called homosexuals “pigs” and “perverts” and “a Western perversion” unknown in African culture. The next WCC assembly is scheduled for this coming December in Zimbabwe’s capital. Tutu again expressed his support of committed, monogamous same-sex relationships and said that a WCC statement condemning homophobia “is a matter of ordinary justice.” But WCC spokesman John Newbury responded by saying that the WCC’s 330-plus member churches have widely differing views on homosexuality and so “the WCC is not in a position to take a unified stand.” One church in the Netherlands will be boycotting the meeting because of Mugabe’s antigay statements. Meanwhile, Mugabe and Zimbabwe have other troubles: Zimbabwe is in political turmoil, in the last year the Zimbabwe dollar has fallen 70%, inflation is nearing 40%, and more than 1 in 4 people there are HIV-positive, including 32% of pregnant women.
The Family Research Council gave football star and Baptist preacher Reggie White its Family, Faith and Freedom Award in May. White’s earlier speech to the Wisconsin state legislature, in which he made his much-publicized antigay remarks, went over very well with the antigay FRC. But in accepting the Award, White tried to put his own position in perspective: “I have guys in our locker room who are just as wicked as any gay guy could ever be.”
A celibate gay Christian Reformed minister’s credentials were dropped by the denomination’s Classis Grand Rapids East in May. Jim Lucas, who publicly acknowledged his homosexual orientation in a talk at Calvin College in 1992, has been removed from his ministry to gay church members because he is now questioning the denomination’s condemnation of committed, monogamous same-sex unions. A church official says: “We love Jim as a brother in Christ; we want to support Jim in his Christian walk, but [he would be] encouraging relationships that are not in accord with the guidelines of the 1973 synodical report on homosexuality.” Lucas replies: “Where is the action to show the concern and love for homosexual persons that the 1973 synodical report asks for?” He is quoted in the denomination’s magazine, The Banner, as telling gays in the CRC: though the church is “rejecting you and shaming you, remember God does not reject you but loves you very much.”
Antigay pastoral care professor Melvin Hugen has retired from Calvin Theological Seminary. The Christian Reformed school has hired Ronald Nydam of Denver to replace him. Asked how he would respond to a senior seminarian who told him he was gay, Nydam replied: “I have a 17-year-old student who tried to kill himself three times because he couldn’t reconcile his sexuality and his faith, so there is a seriousness with which we have to conduct our discussions.”
New York City’s Republican mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, together with the City Council, passed a historic gay civil rights bill by which the registered domestic partners of gay men and lesbians will receive the same benefits as spouses in future contracts with unions of city workers, visitation rights in city hospitals, and bereavement leave. The vote was 39 to 7 with one abstention. In reaction, New York’s Roman Catholic head, John Cardinal O’Connor, lambasted the provisions from the pulpit of St. Patrick’s Cathedral and in the newspaper of the archdiocese. A group of Hasidic rabbis protested with candles and rams’ horns in front of City Hall. Carrying placards reading “Remember the Fate of Sodom” and “An Abomination unto the Lord,” the rabbis invoked what they said was a “biblical curse” on all who had promoted or supported the bill.
The Salvation Army in San Francisco has elected to forgo $3.5-million in city contracts to provide services to the poor rather than abide by the city’s law that protects domestic partners of lesbians and gay men. The law “conflict[s] with our basic theological position,” according to the Salvation Army’s Richard Love. The Roman Catholic archdiocese had already reached a compromise with the city, agreeing to provide “spousal equivalent” benefits instead of “domestic-partner” benefits.
The newly-elected moderator of the Presbyterian Church (USA) says “We need some breathing space, to pause for a while,” in the long discussion of human sexuality and gay/lesbian issues in the 2.7-million member church. Both he and the runner-up for moderator favored such a moratorium.
AND FINALLY:
Pat Robertson has criticized the city of Orlando for flying banners to welcome tourists to Gay Days: “I would warn Orlando that you’re in the way of some serious hurricanes, and I don’t think I’d be waving those flags in God’s face if I were you.” He later said the same thing about the fires that broke out in Florida. Robertson went on to warn: “A condition like this will bring about the destruction of your nation. It’ll bring terrorist bombs; it’ll bring earthquakes, tornadoes and possibly a meteor!”