The American Psychiatric Association, in December, issued its findings on psychiatric treatment and sexual orientation. The APA unequivocally concludes that efforts to “change” a homosexual orientation are based on the faulty assumptions that homosexuality is a mental disorder, that homosexuality should be changed, and that homosexuality can be changed. The president of the 42,000-member APA, Dr. Rodrigo Muñoz, summed up by saying: “There is no scientific evidence that reparative or conversion therapy is effective in changing a person’s sexual orientation. There is, however, evidence that this type of therapy can be destructive.”
The American Psychoanalytic Association has financed a comprehensive review of scientific research on homosexuality that will be published by The University of Chicago Press. It concludes that “there is no evidence that any form of therapy, including psychoanalysis and the Christian therapies, can change sexual orientation.” It also concludes that, in the words of analyst Robert Galatzer-Levy: “homosexuality is not associated with psychopathology in any way.”
The featured “ex-gay” testimony in the Exodus newsletter for December is that of the mother of a gay son. Though the masthead promises “Freedom from Homosexuality Through the Power of Jesus Christ,” the author, Gloria Zwinggi, reports that “my son has been living in homosexuality now for 15 years.” She ends by saying that she is still waiting and praying for his “return” from what she calls “the trap of homosexuality.”
John Paulk, whose “ex-gay” testimony is Not Afraid to Change and is now associated with Focus on the Family, returned to his hometown of Columbus in November. He was there to speak at a suburban church. He said that when “the media” says that homosexuality is unchangeable: “Don’t believe it.” He attacked the “normalizing” of homosexuality. “We want to get out the other side,” he said. Ralph Blair’s review of Paulk’s book is in EC’s REVIEW, Fall 1998.
The editorial line in Christianity Today (December 7) is still pushing the claim that “a change in [homo]sexual orientation is possible” and states that “a recent ‘truth in love’ advertising campaign … produced ex-gays to prove it.” The ads CT references are of “ex-gays” who speak of continued homosexual temptation as “ex-gays.” When it comes to outrageous claims — apart from those about cures for homosexuality — the CT editors warn: “Our advice to you is this: Wise up. Don’t get suckered. Over the past few years, CT has published multiple news stories about godly people who have lost millions because they believed what were essentially unbelievable promises …. You can get suckered, swindled, taken for a ride, and given a bath by a charming, Christian confidence man.” The editors warn that “Christian publishers [have put out] ‘Christian’ books on [everything from] financial management [to] weight loss, and child discipline” — and, it should be added, but CT doesn’t — the “ex-gay” promises. The editorial concludes: “Remember, having clean hands and a pure heart does not require getting taken to the cleaners.” [November 16]
Gary Bauer defended his Family Research Council’s co-sponsoring of the “ex-gay” ad campaign against New York Times columnist Frank Rich’s criticisms by writing a letter to the Times. He objected that the ads were not anti-gay rhetoric but “the truth that sets [homosexuals] free.”
“Your SURVEY DOCUMENT was assigned and prepared especially for you.” That was the come-on of a bulk mail fund-raising appeal from Gary Bauer and his “Campaign for Working Families.” Even Ralph Blair was assigned his very own “registration number!” All dolled up in an important-looking orange and purple look-alike package, the so-called “Worldwide Express” envelope was marked with six “urgents,” one “extremely urgent,” and one “rush” in order to raise quick cash to “defeat Ted Kennedy’s ‘Homosexual Rights’ bill.” A number of other organizations of the Religious Right also have been doing mass mailings dressed up in designer drag. Joel Belz of the Religious Right’s World newsmagazine editorialized against these bulk mail pieces “designed to look like expensive Federal Express and Express Mail packages.” [November 28, 1998] Belz says that when he expressed his concern about the deception to several people responsible for the mailings “the response I got back was distressing. ‘You’ve got to understand,’ I was told, ‘how wonderfully effective for good these methods have proven to be.”’ World readers agreed with Belz, calling the mass-mailings “dishonest,” “fake,” “bogus,” and “highly deceitful … And then they rail against the president’s deceptions!” Said another: “Anything that purports to be something that it is not is a lie and a sham, and does not deserve to have the word Christian associated with it.”
Tony and Peggy Campolo presented their differing views on homosexuality at a meeting at the University of Toronto in early December. Sponsored by a coalition of Christian groups, the Campolos were joined by three panelists: two Anglicans representing opposite positions on homosexuality and the pastor of Toronto’s largely gay/lesbian congregation, Christos Metropolitan Community Church. The editor of the conservative Christian Courier reports that “Tony and Peggy set the tone with their loving disagreement.” In fact, this evangelical husband and wife team agrees on quite a lot about homosexuality and gay rights. They agree, for example, that homosexual orientation is not something that a person chooses, that there’s no evidence that homosexual orientation can really be changed, and that gay men and lesbians should not be discriminated against in civil rights. Peggy affirms loving, sexually-monogamous gay and lesbian relationships and Tony does not — citing his interpretation of Romans 1 and church tradition. But Christian Courier editor Bert Witvoet thinks that Tony’s disagreement with Peggy hangs by “an awfully slender thread …. Tradition has been wrong before …. We need more than an appeal to tradition to hold on to the view that God does not approve of same-sex unions.” One bisexual in the audience objected to Peggy’s stand on monogamy because, as he argued, he was attracted to both men and women. Peggy replied: “You may have twice as many gardens as I do but if you’re coming from where I am in scripture, you get to pick only one flower.”
The colorful Lord Soper has died in London at the age of 95. A Methodist minister for 42 years at the large Kingsway Hall, he was also a Labour peer who was the most famous and longest-running soapbox orator at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park in London. According to The New York Times obituary: “With stirring fluency of language, a prodigious vocabulary and a sonorous gravely voice, he inveighed passionately against disparate enemies including war, poverty, drinking, smoking, McCarthyism, gambling, apartheid, blood sports, abortion, euthanasia, exploitative employers, slave labor, capital punishment and profit. Decades before they became fashionable, he campaigned for the ordination of women, homosexual rights and vegetarian eating habits to spare animals …. But he insisted on dwelling on sin. ‘Talking about Christianity without saying anything about sin is like discussing gardening without saying anything about weeds,’ he explained.”
Nobody seems to know the whereabouts of Madalyn Murray O’Hair, the atheist who, in the 1960’s, led the effort against school prayer. She was last seen in 1995 at her American Atheists office in Texas. The Federal Government confiscated the contents of her home to sell at auction to cover what she owes in back taxes. Among the items are her diaries that rail not only against Christians but also against Jews, blacks, gay men and lesbians.
The Georgia Baptist Convention proposed barring “deviant” churches that encourage charismatics and homosexuals early last fall. Charismatic and Pentecostal Christians comprise 25 percent of the world’s Christians and homosexuals are at least “closeted” members of virtually every congregation. The vote against gay people passed in November but the vote against charismatics fell short of a required two-thirds majority.
Militantly anti-gay Southern Baptists voted in November to break away from the 2.7-million-member Texas state General Convention, the largest state organization of the 16-million-member Southern Baptist Convention. They are angry over the “very weak” stand of the state organization against an Austin congregation that ordained a gay Baptist as a deacon earlier in the year.
The Kentucky Baptist Homes for Children fired a supervisor after agency employees saw a picture of the woman and her lesbian partner taken at the Kentucky State Fair. In the picture she is wearing a T-shirt with a map of Greece and the words “Isle of Lesbos.” Five KBHC employees resigned to protest her termination and Spalding University and the University of Louisville’s School of Social Work have withdrawn their students from the KBHC programs. The schools say that discrimination based on sexual orientation is contrary to the ideals of social work.
A ceremony proclaiming two lesbians “loving partners together for life” was conducted in the Sacramento Convention Center in January. More than 90 United Methodist ministers took part. The “holy union” was witnessed by more than a thousand well-wishers. What the ministers did is considered to be a violation of a 1996 rule in the denominations Book of Discipline. Anti-gay pickets protested across the street with signs reading “Brides of Satan” and “Methodist Fag Church.”
“The Salvation Army’s Position on Homosexuality” was published in The War Cry, the Army’s national publication (September 5, 1998). In part it reads: “The Army recognizes that same-sex friendships can be enriching, Christ-honoring relationships, bringing joy through mutual companionship and sharing. However, same-sex relationships that are genitally expressed are unacceptable …. In obedience to the example of Jesus, whose compassionate love was all embracing, Salvationists seek to understand and sensitively to accept and help those of a homosexual orientation and those who express that orientation in sexual acts. Salvationists are opposed to the victimization of persons on the grounds of sexual orientation and recognize the social and emotional stress and the loneliness borne by many who are homosexual.” The statement goes on to say that “The Army regards the origins of a homosexual orientation as a mystery and does not regard a homosexual orientation as blameworthy in itself or rectifiable by will. Nevertheless … Homosexual practices render a person ineligible for Salvation Army soldiership.” The statement was approved by the Army’s Commissioners’ Conference in 1985 and revised in 1992.
The Christian Reformed Church should repent for its failure in ministering to homosexuals. This is the conclusion of the conservative denomination’s Committee to Give Direction about and for Pastoral Care for Homosexual Members. According to the committee’s report, its survey of CRC pastors “paints a picture of lack of awareness, denial, and systematic neglect of homosexuals by pastors and congregations, with only a few exceptions.” The committee says that the call to repentance is where the church must finally begin to carry out plans for ministry to homosexuals that were launched by the governing board of the denomination 26 years ago.
“Disappointed” by other letters about gay people and the church, a reader in Chicago wrote to The Church Herald of the Reformed Church in America to say: “It is not mysterious to me that gay people still seek a home within the church, but neither am I mystified that so many have turned away and ‘wiped off the dust from their sandals’ in judgment over its angry rejection of them that even now continues.”
The Presbyterian Church USA’s judicial commission has ruled that the ordination of a gay man as elder at Second Church in Fort Lauderdale was “irregular” but that the court had no authority to remove him. The court went on to warn the congregation not to do it again.
J. Barrie Shepherd, minister of The First Presbyterian Church in New York City, wrote an open letter to the parents of the slain Matthew Shepard, expressing his congregation’s “support and prayers. … Your son Matthew’s death has brought grief to our entire nation and reminded many of us of the complicity of the church in creating attitudes which produce such shameful acts.” The pastor told the parents that during Matthew’s funeral and throughout the following week, First Presbyterian would fly the rainbow flag over lower Fifth Avenue in sympathy and in “support of our gay members, neighbors, and friends, and for the larger cause of full participation in both society and church for all homosexual persons.” He said that the Session of the church was making “a small contribution” to Matthew’s Memorial Fund. That same week, Shepherd spoke of the tragic murder in his sermon, “A Certain Uncertainty.”
African American clergy and laity ran an ad in the Presbyterian Outlook this past year, speaking from their own “historic struggle against Christian prejudice and discrimination.” The ad went on: “We know the pain of separation, disparagement, and discrimination. We cannot be neutral in the atmosphere of hostility which currently seems to focus on those whose opinions, actions, sexual orientations, or self-understandings may not be conventional or sanctioned by many. Love demands that we accept and respect each other in Christ, and set aside self-righteous scorn and ridicule, political wrangling, and ecclesiastical terrorism.”
New York Presbyterian Hospital has been running a full-page ad in city newspapers (including the gay press) aimed at HIV patients and featuring photographs of happy young men embracing each other.
The United Church of Christ mailed out a pastoral letter from its president, Paul H. Sherry, in November. It was sent to the more than 6,000 local congregations of the 1.4-million-member denomination. It defended the rights of lesbians and gay men in church and society: “We have sometimes failed to recognize how the Bible has been used by some to perpetuate prejudice and to justify violence against homosexual persons.” The letter continued: “When so many in our society would reject and exclude, it is critical that we … support the full inclusion and participation of all God’s children in the membership and ministry of the church.”
The Episcopal Bishop of California says that the recent Anglican resolution at Lambeth, rejecting all “homosexual practice as incompatible with Scripture,” was wrong. Bishop William E. Swing says the conference “erred in its understanding of Holy Scripture and of homosexual people.” As Swing sees it: “The basic problem was that Lambeth thought that it could make a balanced statement. Homosexuals should be treated with compassion on the one hand and with the Bible on the other hand. This is similar to saying ‘we must love the sinner but hate the sin.’ The problem is that the hatred inspired in the literal acceptance of the Bible is vastly stronger than the compassion encouraged in the resolution. Biblical blood lust is stronger than mild resolutions about compassion.’ Swing said he did not believe “that an appeal to a few words of Leviticus should take precedence over the Bible’s comprehensive, total wisdom.”
A National Council of Churches meeting unanimously endorsed a recent call for the fostering of further discussion with non-Christian religions, “expect[ing] to find new understanding of our faith through dialogue with people of other religions.” But when Gwynne Guibord, a fellow Christian representing the predominantly gay and lesbian Metropolitan Community Churches brought greetings to the same NCC meeting, there was a standing ovation from only half of the audience. The MCC has been unsuccessful in gaining admission to member status in the NCC. Said Guibord: “People can hate us. People can hurt us. People can forsake us and even murder us. But they cannot separate us from our love of Jesus Christ.”
Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas J. Gumbleton of Detroit spoke of his odyssey on gay issues at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in New York City at the end of November. The pastor of St. Joseph’s introduced Gumbleton’s talk by saying that “this is part of what we must do to right the wrongs perpetrated by many institutions, including the Catholic Church.” Bishop Gumbleton said that it was his brother Danny’s coming out as gay in a letter to the rest of the family that was the turning point. At first he refused to read it: “I was angry at him for embarrassing me.” When his mother asked him if Danny would be condemned for all eternity for living as a gay man, the bishop said he was shocked into concluding that “God made Dan the way he is and God loves Dan the way he is.” Bishop Gumbleton is the founder of the Catholic peace fellowship, Pax Christi, and is scheduled to address Dignity, the Roman Catholic gay/lesbian support group, at its national convention in Denver this summer.
Roman Catholic Bishop Matthew Clark of Rochester indefinitely suspended Father Jim Callan in early December. The 50-year-old priest, who was a pastor at Corpus Christi church for 22 years, got into trouble for inviting Protestants to share with Catholics in the Eucharist, for blessing same-sex couples, and for allowing his female pastoral associate to participate at the altar in an alb and half-stole, performing functions traditionally done by ordained priests. The next day, about 50 supporters of Father Callan protested in the rain. Parishioners issued a statement objecting to the suspension and saying that “we see this as a serious affront to Jesus Christ and all He stands for.” Apparently Bishop Clark saw little else he could do within the rules of the church, even though he himself is not anti-gay. Last year the bishop held a Mass for gay and lesbian Catholics in Rochester’s cathedral.
Gay groups at four West Side New York Roman Catholic parishes joined members of Dignity, a gay Catholic caucus, for an Advent service at Saint Francis Xavier Church in December. A spokesperson for the combined ministry said that they are working with the New York Archdiocese’s Vicar for the West Side to educate priests about gay and lesbian issues.
The Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians had a literature table at the latest annual conference of the National Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries in western New York. “It was a wonderful opportunity to spread the word that you can be both gay and pro-life,” said Donna Kearney, who is also a member of Feminists for Life. PLAGAL is on the Internet at plagalone@aol.com.
Ministers of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints are now free to function at meetings with the church’s gay/lesbian caucus. The RLDS has been making its way toward a greater identification with mainstream Protestantism and away from the distinctives that associated it with its history with the 19th century beginnings and the Salt Lake City-based Mormons.
Hyam Maccoby of the Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Leeds in Great Britain wrote to The Times Literary Supplement (September 11, 1998) concerning a review of John Corvino’s book, Same Sex. Maccoby states that “what Leviticus forbids is not homosexuality as understood today (in other words, a permanent orientation), but homosexual acts performed by heterosexuals (for example, the molestation described in Genesis 19:4-5). That certain human beings might be radically homosexual was a conception not envisaged by Leviticus.”
AND FINALLY:
Notoriously anti-gay preacher Fred Phelps, who pickets funerals of gay men who have died of AIDS, turned his fury on Bob Jones University recently. Phelps’ web site announced that he and his supporters would be going to Greenville, South Carolina to picket BJU “for preaching ‘doctrines of devils,’ to wit: ‘God hates the sin but loves the sinner.”’ Phelps, who attended the school in 1946-47, states: “God Hates Fags. Bob Jones University and all who preach otherwise are heretics and traitors to the cause of Christ. This BJU lie is the primary cause of America’s moral decay.” The Web site showed a man with a devil’s tail preaching from a podium labeled “Bob Jones Chapel.” On November 27, Phelps and about a dozen others picketed in front of the campus, carrying signs reading “God Hates Fags” and “AIDS Cures Gays.” Three police cars stood by. A BJU spokesman said that the University family ignored Phelps, who, he said, was doing much harm to the cause of Christ.