There’s a beautiful house for sale on St. Simons Island in Georgia. Over the years it was made even more beautiful by the loving companionship of the two women who made it their home from 1967 to the death of one of them in 1996.
In 1961, bestselling evangelical author and novelist Eugenia Price and her longtime companion, noted children’s author Joyce Blackburn, were driving back to Chicago from a book signing in Florida. They took a short side trip to St. Simons Island and knew right away that this would be where they would spend the rest of their days. In her St. Simons Memoir, Genie recalled Joyce’s drawing a “rough sketch” of their dream house “on the back of a Lippencott envelope.” After a quarter century together, she wrote of her partner’s “flare for holding together [Genie] herself”.
In the Afterword to Where Shadows Go, her last historical novel published before she died in 1996 (Joyce would die in 2009), she wrote: “Through twelve novels since we found and seemed unable not to make St. Simons Island our home, I have tried to find words adequate to thank my dearest friend, Joyce Blackburn, not only for her line-by-line editing of my writing style – tough, careful, superbly critical – but for believing in me as she has unwaveringly done through more than thirty years in which we’ve shared life and our home here in the sun- and shadow-streaked woods. I have always failed to find adequate words. I’m failing again. Because she knows me as she does, it mattered so much that Joyce knew, perhaps even more than I, how I feared and dreaded the writing of the inevitable ending of this book. Both of us were sharply aware that I did not want Anne to lose John. The shadow of his going even before I wrote it, hung for days over our lives. … These are basically true stories and John Fraser did die and he is buried in Christ Church cemetery. His name and the dates are on his marker. … I had no choice but to stick to the facts, heartbreaking as they were to us both.”
On June 18, 1976, Ralph Blair sent her his An Evangelical Look at Homosexuality. On June 23, she replied that it “had special meaning for me.” She added:
“I wish I had time today (difficult chapter to untangle on the current novel) to go into more detail concerning my excitement and deep, deep appreciation of what you are doing now among homosexuals. YOUR MATERIAL IS, IN MY OPINION, ON DEAD CENTER. True, true, true. I receive so many booklets and literature on projects of one kind or another, I confess I can’t read it all. But I did read yours and am more enthusiastic than these few hastily written (and poorly typed!) lines will convey. Right on, man! Jesus Christ backs you up every step of the way.
“From my heart (and my mind) I thank you again for sharing with me. The big need in the past has been (in my ‘humble-dogmatic’ opinion) God’s blind people even more than homosexuals. Why set us apart in little villages anyway? Any of us?”
Don Dent, the gay man whose mutual friendship with Dallas Theological Seminary faculty and students was so meaningful for all concerned, died of cancer on June 11. He’s survived by his longtime partner, Marion Weger, as well as by his mother and sister, relatives and friends. He was a member of Park Cities Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Dallas and the church’s senior pastor, Mark Davis, officiated at his service. EC readers will recall Don’s poignant impact on Northwest Bible Church, reported in the summer, 2009, issue of Record. Don’s 2008 You Tube testimony, only two months after coming to Christ, is titled, “Does Jesus Love Gay Men Too?”. Dallas Seminarian Chris Plekenpol conducted that interview.
George A. Rekers, psychologist, co-founder of the antigay Family Research Council and advocate of reparative therapy for gays, was photographed with a young gay male traveling companion on their return to Miami International Airport on April 13, after a 10-day European vacation. The companion, Lucien, is a 20-year-old whose services and physical attributes were listed at homoerotic Rentboy.com. Rekers says it was on a friend’s recommendation that he hired Lucien to handle his bags and that he’d had no idea he was a prostitute. But Lucien says there was no way the two could have met except through Rentboy.com. He says Rekers contracted him for daily massages throughout their trip.
Rekers is claiming: “I have not engaged in any homosexual behavior whatsoever. I am not gay and never have been”. He has resigned from the reparative therapy network, NARTH, and has hired a lawyer.
In an emailed interview with Christianity Today, posted on the CT website on May 13, Rekers writes: “I have committed myself to ongoing meetings with an experienced pastor and counselor from my church, so I can more fully understand my weakness and prevent this kind of unwise decision-making in the future.” He refused a CT phone interview and has stopped granting any interviews.
World, the relentlessly antigay newsmagazine of the Religious Right, has been totally silent on the scandal but continues to push promises of “healing” for homosexuality, e.g. in the May 21 issue, and carries a full-page Family Research Council ad claiming that it’s a myth that “sexual orientation can never change”.
Ralph Blair’s critique of Rekers’ major book, Growing Up Straight, can be read online in the EC archive of reviews at www.ECinc.org. It’s in the Fall, 1982, issue.
Ted Haggard claims his counselors say he’s heterosexual and so he’s launching another house church in Colorado Springs. “I have an incredible heart for broken people.” In the wake of scandal over drugs and sex with a gay prostitute in 2006, he left New Life Church, the megachurch he founded as a house church in 1985.
Roger Grindstaff – known as “ex-gay” leader “Roger Dean” in the 1970s – has died. Thirty years ago, this Korean War veteran and Teen Challenge homosexuality consultant moved from California to Providence, RI to be with Paul, his longtime gay companion who preceded him in death. Together, they bred pugs as show dogs and he served as president of the city’s LGBT community center. His last pug, Trudy, died the day after he, himself, passed on.
“My Birthday Wish”, from Michael Ray Huerta on his 24th birthday, is a 4-minute You Tube video for GLBT youth. It’s also a message for their families and friends as well as preachers and politicians who, though well-meaning but ill-informed, contribute to the torment and suicides of GLBT youth.
A well-known British Baptist minister, Steve Chalke, now says the church has been wrong on homosexuality. In a recent message at his church, this evangelical leader and BBC presenter affirmed his support for committed same-sex partnerships.
Psychologist David G. Myers endorses Jack Rogers’ Jesus, the Bible, and Homosexuality (revised 2009 edition) in his review for Perspectives (May 2010). He says that, increasingly, Christians are affirming these same views. He cites the late Lewis B. Smedes from 1994: “Homosexuality is a burden that homosexual people are called to bear, and bear as morally as possible, even though they never chose to bear it.” Myers then cites an email he received from Smedes in 2002: “I wish that the sentence following the ‘burden to bear’ clause could be something like this: ‘It is a burden most obediently and creatively born in a committed love-partnership with another.’”
Smedes keynoted the eastern EC conference in 1995 and the western EC conference in 1999. Rogers keynoted the western EC conference in 2007.
Evangelical Lutheran Lowell O. Erdahl’s “Positive Reflections on Homosexuality and the Church”, presented to Grace Lutheran Church of Eau Claire, WI, is available on DVD. Erdahl, who taught at Luther Seminary in New York, is Bishop Emeritus of the St. Paul (MN) Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. He tells of his move from ignorance to affirmation of gay and lesbian people. He has authored several books including Pro-Life/Pro-Peace and Be Good to Each Other (a book on marriage written with his wife, Carol Erdahl).
Dove Award-winner and Grammy-nominated Christian folk rock musician Jennifer Knapp has been in a committed same-sex relationship for eight years. Coming out as gay, she’s also come out with a new album, “Letting Go”. Antigay religionists are accusing her of being a “fake Christian” who’s “going to hell”.
Asked about her “struggle” in an interview with Christianity Today, the 36-year-old singer songwriter replies: “The struggle I’ve had has been with the church, acknowledging me as a human being, trying to live the spiritual life that I’ve been called to, in whatever ramshackled, broken, frustrated way that I’ve always approached my faith.” Asked why she’s now “come out of the closet”, she says that though she’s not “leading a charge for some kind of activist movement”, she finds “the heartbreaking thing to me is that we’re all hopelessly deceived if we don’t think that there are people within our churches, within our communities, who want to hold on to the person they love, whatever sex that may be, and hold on to their faith.” The interviewer presses: “What about what Scripture says on the topic?” “The Bible has literally saved my life”, she replies. She speaks of “the conservative evangelical who uses what most people refer to as the ‘clobber verses’ to refer to this loving relationship as an abomination” and she testifies of “a spirit that overrides that for me, and what I’ve been gravitating to in Christ.” Echoing Jesus and Paul, she affirms: “I’ve found no law that commands me in any way other than to love my neighbor as myself, and that love is the greatest commandment.”
Oral Roberts’ grandson comes out as gay and fondly remembers his gay Uncle Ronnie, his grandfather’s eldest son and the one “Oral had hoped would inherit his kingdom”.
Randy Roberts Potts (35) recalls “growing up gay in the Oral Roberts family”: “In seventh grade, I went thought a series of crushes on boys, five of them to be exact, each one more painful than the one before. I would fall for them, spend a lot of time around them, and then, realizing eventually that they would never feel for me the way I felt for them, would suddenly stop talking to them.” It would take years of struggle, heterosexual marriage and rejection of his “Evangelical past” before he accepted his homosexuality.
On his mother and her brother, Uncle Ronnie (Ronald David Roberts), he muses: “I suppose it makes sense I wanted to be like him. I didn’t know, when I was a kid, that the ‘path’ my mother said brought him down [he committed suicide in 1982 at age 37] consisted of being gay, intellectual, and godless. All I knew was, I wanted my mother’s eyes to light up like that when she talked about me. Having ended up on the same ‘path’ (gay, intellectual, godless), her eyes don’t light up anymore, and haven’t in years – for the last five, at least. And that’s a shame, because I really do think that if she got along with Uncle Ronnie she could find a way to get along with me.”
These excerpts from his thoughts for a forthcoming book, are in his online open letter, “Something Good is Going to Happen to You”, at ThisLandPress.com, May 25.
Southern Baptists are battling repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”. At the church’s annual meeting in Orlando in June, a resolution was adopted that condemned allowing openly gay men and lesbians to serve in the military. Among the some 3,000 chaplains of the armed forces, Southern Baptists supply 448 – more than any other religious group. The Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission warns that the possibility of repeal “discourages [the SBC] from continuing to engage in chaplaincy ministry.”
“Love Them Anyway” is a recent sermon that Sharon Ferguson gave at Metropolitan Community Church in North London. In a follow-up, Ferguson writes: “I know from the number of comments I received after my sermon on Sunday night that many people found this call to love those who discriminate against us or abuse us in any way for whatever reason a very difficult thing to do.” Again citing I Corinthians 13 and John 14, she grants: “None of us can be sure that we have the fullest of understandings of God’s will.” And she goes on to point out: “No amount of fine words or theological argument will ever change a person’s mind. But the prompting of the Holy Spirit alongside the evidence of our keeping Christ’s commandment to love one another, will. … Take that first step today by resolving in your heart that with God’s help you will love them anyway.” Ferguson’s approach contrasts with the vitriol that flies back and forth
between LGBT activists and the Religious Right. Besides serving at MCCNL, she is chief executive of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement in the UK.
The Religious Right’s Robert Knight is angry because so many conservative pundits are endorsing repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”. He cites Stephen Hayes of The Weekly Standard, Steve Chapman of Human Events, Phillip Klein of The American Spectator, Fox News analyst Margaret Hoover, psychiatrist Charles Krauthammer of Fox News’ “Special Report” and George Will of ABC’s “This Week”. Overturning DADT is, in Klein’s words, a “no-brainer” and Krauthammer reminds us of the racial integration of the military in 1948. Says Will, those who don’t want it overturned are “not being very intelligent”. Knight, on his Coral Ridge Ministries blog, accuses all these conservatives of “embracing the centerpiece of [the Left’s] war on American values”. He counters with an historically erroneous reading of the American Psychiatric Association’s diagnostic revision on homosexuality and with quotations from Confucius and Paul.
American Spectator founder R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. says: “We should privatize marriage.” Writing in The Washington Times, this conservative journalist advocates that the state should enforce “contracts between two people, a man and a woman, a woman and woman, a man and a man. Meanwhile, the churches and synagogues extend the sacrament for those who want it. Get the state out of the love and sacrament business.”
Tyrrell notes that “two major legal minds of the conservative movement [Ted Olson and Charles Cooper] are on either side of the case over Proposition 8.” He says: “Both are friends of mine, and I respect both men’s views, though I side with Mr. Cooper.” He adds that he thinks it’s wrong to deny rights of hospital visitation, shared health policies, insurance and inheritance rights to same-sex couples.
When Elton John sang at Rush Limbaugh?s recent wedding, fans and foes of each were shocked. But Limbaugh and John both support gay civil unions rather than gay marriage. Further controversy whirled around antigay “pro-family” preacher and onetime NFL star Ken Hutcherson?s presiding over this, Limbaugh?s fourth wedding. He defended his part in the “absolutely fantastic” wedding, rationalizing: Limbaugh “never gave up on the institution of marriage.”
Laura Bush is for same-sex marriage. On “Larry King Live” in May, the former First Lady said: “When couples are committed to each other and love each other, they ought to have, I think, the same sort of rights that everyone has.” She added that, due to changing generational attitudes, same-sex marriage will be legalized.
Surveys show that she is correct on the generational shift in attitudes. In Alabama, the state that least supports same-sex marriage, well over a third of 18-29 year olds support it, compared to ten percent of Alabamans 65 or older. In only 12 states do fewer than 50 percent of the 18-29 residents support it – and except for Utah, these states are all in the South. In Massachusetts, the most supportive state, some 75 percent of 18-29 year olds support it, compared to some 35 percent of those 65 or older.
“Civil rights are a problem for the American Right: a political problem, an intellectual one, a moral one.” This is the lead sentence in Ramesh Ponnuru’s article, “The Right’s Civil Wrongs” in National Review (June 21). This conservative columnist and an NR senior editor laments the fact that, repeatedly, conservatives took positions on civil rights in the past that today’s conservatives now reject: “Most contemporary conservatives who know this history regret it and find it embarrassing”.
An evangelical bishop in the Church of England says that allowing for differing opinions on homosexuality is “consistent theologically and ethically”. Bishop James Jones of Liverpool explains that such disagreement is similar to diversity over pacifism or Just War Theory. He says: Christianity “has come to allow a variety of ethical conviction about the taking of life and the application of the sixth commandment so I believe that in this period it is also moving towards allowing a variety of ethical conviction about people of the same gender loving each other fully.”
Boston’s Archdiocese is finding another Catholic school for a young boy after one Catholic school rescinded his acceptance because two lesbians are rearing him.
Says an archdiocesan spokesperson: “We want kids to come to Catholic schools.” The superintendent of Boston’s Catholic schools states: “The Archdiocese does not prohibit children of same-sex parents from attending Catholic schools” and she added, “We will work in the coming weeks to develop a policy to eliminate any misunderstandings in the future.”
Vienna’s Roman Catholic Archbishop, Christoph Schonborn, says the Church should focus on “the quality” of gay relationships. Interviewed in The Tablet, a British Catholic periodical, Cardinal Schonborn said: “We should give more consideration to the quality of homosexual relationships. A stable relationship is certainly better than if someone chooses to be promiscuous.” On each St. Valentine’s Day, gay folk are blessed in Vienna’s St. Stephen’s Cathedral.
An openly lesbian Catholic is helping to lead the public effort to honor Mother Teresa’s 100th birthday in New York City. Christine Quinn, the City Council Speaker, joins with Catholic League president Bill Donohue in this cause after Tony Malkin, the Empire State Building owner, said he refuses to light the city’s tallest tower in blue and white in the nun’s honor on August 26. The Empire State Building tradition of lighting up in relevant colors to honor important events and personages has included celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the Communist take-over of China, the honoring of NASCAR, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Mariah Carey and even blue M&Ms.
Ed Koch says: “Enough is enough.” Expressing disgust with media’s bashing of Pope Benedict XVI and the Catholic Church – allegedly over “pedophile priests” – the former Democratic Congressman and three-term mayor of New York City writes in The Jerusalem Post that the continuing attacks are “manifestations of anti-Catholicism. The procession of articles on the same events are, in my opinion, no longer intended to inform, but simply to castigate.” He observes that, “many of those in the media who are pounding on the Church and the pope today clearly do it with delight, and some with malice.” Koch believes this is due to their being incensed over Catholic opposition to abortion, gay marriage and several positions with which he, too, takes issue. But, as a Conservative Jew who attends an Orthodox synagogue, Koch says he recognizes that a religious organization has a right to hold to its views.
Koch calls what some clergy did to boys “horrendous” but notes that Church hierarchy have acknowledged that, paid out billions in restitution and taken steps at prevention. He closes by quoting Jesus on the casting of stones.
AND FINALLY:
“Where’s John Piper When You Need Him?” This is the title of Internet Monk’s blog for June 15. Continuing the legacy of the late Michael Spencer, the new Chaplain Mike alludes to Piper’s thoughts on last summer’s gay-affirming assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, during which, a nearby Lutheran church steeple was damaged by a tornado. (see Ralph Blair’s Review, Winter 2010, Vol. 35, No. 1) Piper said that the tornado was “a gentle but firm warning to the ELCA and all of us: Turn from the approval of sin. Turn from the promotion of behaviors that lead to destruction.”
In June, lightning totally destroyed the 62-foot Styrofoam and fiberglass “Touchdown Jesus” in front of the “ex-gay”-promoting Solid Rock Church on I-75 in Monroe, Ohio. Chaplain Mike says “we need to hear from folks like John Piper again to discern what our current weather means. Or maybe, since Piper’s on sabbatical, Pat Robertson might want to chime in. … Is God sending a message of judgment? On ‘graven images’? On conservative evangelical Christianity? On obnoxious kitsch?”