“Q: Is the gradual winning-over of religious fundamentalists a better strategy than confrontation and anger?” This question was posed to readers of the March 14 issue of The Advocate, the gay and lesbian periodical. The response: 53 percent said “yes”, 38 percent said “no” and 9 percent said they were “unsure.” Said one respondent: “My personal experience as both a conservative person of faith and gay has been that simply being present has opened people to new ways of thinking and in several cases changed points of view.”
Another question in The Advocate Poll, for June 20, was this: “Do you think an abbreviation like LGBT or GLBTQ, etc., should replace use of the phrase gay and lesbian?” The results were: 65 percent said “no”, 23 percent said “yes” and 12 percent said “unsure.” One respondent put it succinctly: “I’m not an abbreviation; I’m not a buzz word.”
Though in Africa and other developing parts of the world, heterosexual sex is the primary means of transmission of HIV, in America, HIV continues to impact men who have sex with men [MSM] more than any other group in this country.
Data in New York City, for example, show “a 50 percent hike” in newly diagnosed cases, according to Dr. Lucia V. Torian, director of the health department’s HIV epidemiology program. Says Torian: “It’s big. It’s part of a five-year trend. I personally don’t need a significance test to tell me something is wrong with this picture. … Among young, black MSM under 30 there is an increase. There is an increase among young Hispanic MSM and among young white MSM.”
The American prison population has an HIV infection rate nearly five times that of the general U.S. population according to figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The New York Times editorialized on July 24: “With inmates who participate in unprotected sex and share needles while using illicit drugs, the prisons are perfect incubators for deadly diseases, including AIDS.” The editorial went on to lament the denial on the part of prison officials and the Bush administration’s hostility toward condom distribution as well as the fact that “diseases that fester in prison spill over into society as a whole when the infected inmates return to the streets.”
President George W. Bush nominates another openly gay ambassador. This time it’s Mark R. Dybul, a physician slated to lead the global AIDS program at the State Department – a position that is at the ambassadorial level. If confirmed by the Senate, he will head a $15 billion program, initiated by Bush, to combat AIDS in the Two-Thirds World. The President had previously appointed openly gay Michael Guest to be the U. S. ambassador to Romania.
The Pentagon is revising a document that labels homosexuality a mental disorder. A Defense Department spokesperson announced in June: “Homosexuality should not have been characterized as a mental disorder in an appendix of a procedural instruction.”
The Presbyterian Church (USA) has voted to permit ordination of gay people to ministry at the discretion of the church’s local and regional jurisdictions. The 2.4 million-member denomination retains rules requiring “fidelity in marriage … and chastity in singleness.”
In June, 54 Presbyterian congregations – from Ann Arbor to Berkeley, but also from Anderson, South Carolina to Chanute, Kansas – observed More Light Sunday in support of gay men and lesbians. Participation was higher than ever before.
The Evangelical & Ecumenical Women’s Caucus held its annual conference in Charlotte, NC in July. Six of the speakers and workshop leaders have been keynoters at the connECtion conferences of Evangelicals Concerned: Anne Eggebroten, Reta Halteman Finger, Nancy A. Hardesty, Ken Sehested, Nancy Hastings Sehested and Virginia Ramey Mollenkott. Letha Dawson Scanzoni, editor of the EEWC periodical, Christian Feminism Today, has also keynoted EC’s connECtions. Most recently she co-authored, with David G. Myers (another keynoter at connECtions), What God Has Joined Together: The Christian case for gay marriage (Cf., Review, Summer, 2005). For more information on EEWC go to www.eewc.com.
The clergy of St. Agnes Catholic Church in Roeland Park, Kansas told the church organist that he’d have to stop directing the gay Heartland Men’s Chorus, agree to celibacy, and state that homosexuality is a disorder – or be fired. Joe Nadeau refused to comply and played his last service. By that 5 PM Mass, he says “the entire room was packed with people, not just from the parish but also members of the Heartland Men’s Chorus.” He and the Chorus members did Bette Midler’s “God Help the Outcast” from The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Nadeau says: “it was a very powerful moment.” After being offered positions in three different churches, he is now playing the organ for a Lutheran congregation.
WorldPride, a gay rights rally set to begin on August 6 in Jerusalem, was cancelled because of the war in Lebanon. But on August 10, some 200 gay rights activists – Jews, Christians and a few Muslims – defied a ban and held a vigil in one of Jerusalem’s parks. Antiwar demonstrators and Israelis shouting for the gay people go to Lebanon or the Gaza Strip interrupted the vigil. New York rabbi Yehuda Levin of the Union of Orthodox Rabbis complained: “At a time when Jewish blood is being spilt in Lebanon, all that these self-indulgent, narcissistic, selfish, perverted people can think about is engaging in sodomy.”
Before the cancellation, a Knesset investigation found opposition to WorldPride at 63 percent among secular Jews, 81 percent among conservative Jews, 99 percent among national religious and 100 percent among Orthodox Jews. Among Arab Muslims and Christians, the opposition was at 92 percent. Israel’s leading Sephardic rabbi, Shlomo Amar, had asked Pope Benedict XVI to issue a rebuke “to this terrible phenomenon [in order to] deter evil people from corrupting humanity.” Rabbi Levin had warned: I promise there’s going to be bloodshed – not just on that day, but for months afterward.”
On the World Wide Web, Saudi Arabians and Filipinos outpace all others in Google-searching for “gay sex.” This is a finding of a new Internet tool, Google Trends, that tracks search terms by countries. Saudi Arabia, of course, is a Muslim country, while Muslims in the Philippines constitute the second largest group – behind Christians. In Africa, the search term, “gay sex”, is most popular with Kenyans, Tanzanians, Namibians, Zimbabweans and South Africans, while Algerians and Moroccans use the term “la homosexualite” and “sexe gay.” In most of these countries, homosexuality is against the law and it is also considered sinful by the Islamic and Christian religious leaders.
The Church of Scotland is the first major church in Britain to formally allow the blessing of same-sex couples. The vote in the General Assembly came in at 322 to 314.
A “militant queer mentality” was the basis of his opposition to same-sex marriage. That’s what New York writer Andrew Belonsky notes in an essay in The New York Blade. He writes, in the verbiage of postmodernist culture studies: “Many queer activists see marriage as nothing more than a heteronormative, capitalistic ploy employed the [sic] bolster the work force and perpetuate queer objectification … an insidious turn toward assimilation that negates a queer idealism that seeks to dismantle constrictive sociosexual parameters.” But he has changed his mind. He now says: “The very sanctions that make marriage so alluring also make it so impressive. To stand upon an altar – or under a chupah or wherever – and assert a conjugal commitment is a huge act of courage. … Seeing two people, no matter what gender, declare their love should be admired, not dampened or disparaged.”
Among white, evangelical Protestants, 78 percent are opposed to same-sex marriage. The figure is 74 percent among African-American Protestants, 58 percent among white, non-Hispanic Catholics, and so-called mainline Protestants are almost evenly divided on the matter. Among self-described “secularists,” the figure is 27 percent against. These are the findings of a telephone survey in July, sponsored by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
The Pew research finds that 51 percent of the general public is currently opposed to marriage for same-sex couples – down from 63 percent in 2004.
An attempt to create a constitutional ban against marriage for same-sex couples was once again soundly defeated in the U.S. Senate on June 7. The vote of 49 to 48 fell far short of what the antigay forces needed for the two-thirds majority required to pass a Constitutional amendment. Four Republican Senators who have been divorced are among the supporters of the proposed ban against marriage for gay and lesbian couples.
On July 18, the House of Representatives voted 237 to 187, defeating a proposed constitutional amendment to ban marriage for same-sex couples. Representative Marilyn Musgrave, Republican of Colorado, vowed to be “tenacious” in fighting on “for marriage.” Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, asked rhetorically: “How does the existence of same-sex marriage discourage or retard heterosexual marriage?”
On marriage for same-sex couples, which she and her father support, Mary Cheney says: “I don’t have the luxury of being a single-issue voter … there are other issues that concern me more, issues like the War on Terror, national security.” The Vice-President’s daughter speaks up in her memoir, Now It’s My Turn. She says she and Heather Poe, her lesbian partner of 14 years, consider themselves married even if the law does not. “We’ve built homes together, we’ve built a life together … We’re just waiting for everybody else – the state and the federal government – to catch up with us.” She says the President and Laura Bush have invited her and her partner, as a couple, to dinner at the White House. She praises the President for telling her that he would understand if she issued a public statement against his position on same-sex marriage but, she says, all that would have done would have been to turn her into a “prime-time campaign issue.”
Although Elizabeth Birch, formerly head of the GLBT’s Human Rights Campaign, hailed Cheney’s book as a “teachable moment [that] has the potential to be a transforming moment for all Americans,” angry gay Bush bashers call her a Nazi and gay columnist Wayne Besen joined Right-wing activist Alan Keyes in calling her a “selfish hedonist.” Dismissing her public support of gay rights over the years, Besen charged: “It took a big fat book advance before she stepped out to ostensibly advance gay rights.”
The Supreme Courts of New York and Washington State have ruled that a decision on their states’ granting marriage recognition to same-sex couples should be up to legislatures and the general electorate. Editorials and Op-Ed pages in media from the conservative New York Post to the liberal New York magazine and the GLBT New York Blade noted that the place for making changes is the legislature.
“In crass political terms, [patience is necessary] to avoid a national backlash,” writes same-sex marriage supporter Ryan Sager in his column in The New York Post. He points out that polls show that, over a very short span of time, “we’re winning the argument. … If you’re rooting for gay marriage, root for a loss in court.”
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice urges “sensitivity” and “respect” in discussion of marriage for same-sex couples. She says: “This is an issue that can be debated and can be discussed in our country with respect for every human being. … When we get into difficult debates about social policy, we get into difficult debates that touch people’s lives; the only thing that I ask is that Americans do it with a kind of sensitivity that real individuals and real human beings are involved here.”
Laura Bush urges “a lot of sensitivity” in discussing marriage for same-sex couples. On the May 14th edition of Fox News Sunday, the First Lady said: “I don’t think it should be used as a campaign tool, obviously. It requires a lot of sensitivity to just talk about the issue – a lot of sensitivity.”
Right-wing activist James Dobson warns: “Marriage is under vicious attack now, I think from the forces of hell itself. And I believe with that destruction of marriage will come the decline of Western civilization itself.” He said this on his Focus on the Family radio show, Family News in Focus, on May 30.
Meanwhile, Christianity Today reports that more than half as many evangelical Christians as Americans in general say “it’s a good idea for a couple who intend to get married to live together first” and Harper’s reports that 35 percent of born-again Christians in the U.S. have been divorced, the same percentage as Americans in general.
“If homosexual practice is not sin, what is? … How about … let[ting] everyone into the church, including unrepentant prostitutes, murderers, liars, thieves and atheists.” This was a comment posted on TownHall.com by Right-wing columnist Cal Thomas on June 22.
Southern Baptist preacher Terry Fox has resigned his Wichita, Kansas pulpit in order to travel the country in a campaign against same-sex marriage. “We’re real excited. Barbara [his wife] and I have been wanting to do this for a long time. [It’s] the passion of my heart.”
The 17-year-long experience of legal marriage or registered partnerships for same-sex couples in Denmark, Norway and Sweden contradicts the fear-mongering of antigay activists in America. According to legal scholars Darren R. Spedale and William N. Eskridge, Jr., the authors of Gay Marriage: For Better or Worse? What We’ve Learned from the Evidence (Oxford University Press), after these countries passed gay partnership laws, more heterosexual couples per capita got married and, in Denmark, marriage rates have not been so high since the 1960s. Divorce rates among heterosexual couples in all three countries went down after the gay laws went into effect. And out-of-wedlock birthrates in each of these countries have either held constant or declined. For more information, go to gaymarriagebook.com.
More than half of Fortune 500 Companies now offer domestic partner benefits to their GLBT employees. Discrimination based on sexual orientation is prohibited in 86 percent of the Fortune 500. Among the companies are Bristol-Meyers, Pfizer, MetLife, PepsiCo, IBM and Citigroup.
Openly gay actor Chad Allen joined in the Soulforce gay rights vigil at the gates of Focus on the Family in July. His upcoming movie, “Save Me,” is a love story set in a Christian “ex-gay” ministry. He is also starring in the thriller, “Shock to the System,” in which he plays a gay detective. Asked by Gay City News what attracted him to this role, Allen says: “More than anything, it’s the loving, monogamous relationship between Strachey [his character] and his life partner, Tim. They’ve been together for a good long time and complement each other in exactly the right way. Strachey would fall apart without him.”
Allen’s playing the part of missionary/martyr Nate Saint in the recent film, End of the Spear, was supported by the producers and Saint’s son, Steve, but many Fundamentalists boycotted the film because of Allen’s honesty regarding his being gay.
AND FINALLY:
“Our Catholic Church Has a Testosterone Deficiency.” With headlines such as this and snide reference to “The Lavender Mafia,” the Religiously Right-wing New Oxford Review seeks subscribers. Ad copy contains such come-ons as: “Have you ever wondered why so much of Catholicism is gutless, anemic, and wimpy these days? Is it because there are so many touchie-feelie types in the priesthood?” “How could a patriarchal Church become feminized? Because of all the homosexuals in the priesthood and episcopate.” “We sit around hearing from fey priests about tolerance. … Hey, it’s time to get rid of those pablum pushers and replace them with real men. … But don’t subscribe if you’re a bozo or a sissy, for we hereby forewarn you: Doing so will give you a hissy fit.” Apparently the New Oxford Review doesn’t realize that, in this society, being gay is definitely not for sissies!