Campus Crusade for Christ has no room for a gay hero. In the aftermath of the World Trade Center terror, Campus Crusade joined with many others in heralding the heroism of Father Mychal Judge, the New York City Fire Chaplain who was killed by toppling rubble while ministering to his fallen comrades at Ground Zero on September 11. In its 16-page post-9/11 “remembrance” magazine, distributed free to many millions, Campus Crusade devoted a double-page spread in tribute to Judge, saying he “died as he lived: serving God as he served others.” Since then, Judge’s homosexual orientation and his strong support for gay Catholics has been noted in the press. Campus Crusade has now issued a revised version of the magazine. It is virtually the same except for the double-page tribute to Judge. That has been thrown out.
Evangelical leaders join Christian gays, liberals and others in a joint response to 9/11. “Deny Them Their Victory: A Religious Response to Terrorism” was a full-page ad in The New York Times on November 19. The copy read in part: “Those culpable must not escape accountability. But we must not, out of anger and vengeance, indiscriminately retaliate in ways that bring on even more loss of innocent life. … We must not allow this terror to drive us away from being the people God has called us to be. We assert the vision of community, tolerance, compassion, justice, and the sacredness of human life, which lies at the heart of all our religious traditions. America must be a safe place for all our citizens in all their diversity.” The ad was endorsed by many Muslim and Jewish leaders as well as by a wide range of Christian leaders including Troy D. Perry, founder of the [openly gay/lesbian] Metropolitan Community Churches, Ron Sider, president of Evangelicals for Social Action, Duane Litfin, president of Wheaton College, George D. McKinney of the Charismatic Churches of North America, David Beckman of Bread for the World, Judy Mills Reimer of the Church of the Brethren, Barbara Williams-Skinner of the Skinner Leadership Institute, Jim Wallis,of Sojourners, sociologist Tony Campolo, Wesley Granberg-Michaelson of the Reformed Church in America, the Episcopal Church’s presiding bishop Frank Griswold, Bob Edgar, general secretary of the National Council of the Churches of Christ, Msgr. William P. Fay, general secretary of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and David Neff, editor of Christianity Today.
A lesbian/gay/bisexual and transgender faith-based alliance has written to Franklin Graham. The multi-faith organization, the National Religious Leadership Roundtable, includes representatives from Al Fatiha, American Friends Service Committee, Q Spirit, the Metropolitan Community Churches, Kashi Ashram, and the United Church of Christ, among others. The letter said they were “utterly distressed to learn of your statements denouncing Islam [as] ‘a very evil and wicked religion.’” and called his statements “misguided, false, and inflammatory” and invited him to meet with the Council on America-Islamic Relations.
“World Trade Center terrorist Mohamed Atta and several of his bloody henchmen led secret gay lives for years.” So screams the National Enquirer. Brooklyn College political scientist Corey Robin observes that rumors of Atta’s alleged homosexuality, less spectacularly spread about in the mainline press, “are part of a long American tradition.” Writing in The New York Times, he notes innuendo and insinuation about “enemies” in the past – Dean Acheson, Earl Browder, the Rosenbergs. He says that, “indifferent or hostile to the politics that lead men and women to embrace radicalism or violence, our cultural oracles turn to psychology as the best – or most interesting – explanation.”
Handel and Hitler were homosexuals? That’s what two writers are claiming, but historians and gay journalists are finding the “outings” fairly unconvincing. Ellen T. Harris, who teaches music at MIT says that she has no new evidence but bases her conclusion on what she calls “the clear homosexual subtext” in his operatic works: “It is quite striking and very emotional.” She states: “It denotes something that cannot be said – love that dares not speak its name, if you like.”
Lothar Machtan, who teaches history at Bremen University in Germany, repeats the old rumors that Hitler’s homosexuality is a “historical fact.” But he concedes: “We don’t have sources that describe his sex life in great detail, so I think this is a matter of speculation. But you know, that is the task of every historian: to evaluate those sources and to look if there is maybe only a piece of truth in it.” Walter Reich, a lecturer in psychiatry at Yale, concludes in his New York Times review: “Though Machtan doesn’t succeed in proving that Hitler was an active homosexual, he does demonstrate that his life, in both the personal and the political spheres, was suffused with homosexual themes and personalities.”
The U. S. western division of The Salvation Army had agreed on November 1 to extend health care benefits to domestic partners of employees. However, after hostile protests from the Religious Right’s American Family Association and other antigay lobbies – “unprecedented” opposition, according to long-time Salvationists — the policy was rescinded. The ministry was accused of “turn[ing] its back on evangelical Christianity in pursuit of the money it receives from government sources.” After a four-hour conference call among members of the national board on November 12, the Army’s commissioner, Lawrence R. Moretz, issued an order that stated: “We will not sign any government contract or any other funding contracts that contain domestic partner benefit requirements.” He added that the Army may cut services rather than provide such health benefits. Welcoming that decision, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson said: “I am so please by this. This is wonderful.” He said that the Army’s earlier decision to offer health benefits to homosexuals was “based on cultural considerations rather than on what is ethical and right.”
(For the ninth year in a row, The Salvation Army topped The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s list of the nation’s major charities. The Army raised $1.44 billion in 2000.)
The Flint, Michigan chapter of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) responded to the Salvation Army’s decision to withhold health service benefits from homosexuals by launching a campaign to drop notes, not cash, into the Army’s kettles at Christmas. The notes read: “I would have donated Five Dollars but the Salvation Army decision to discriminate against gay and lesbian employees prevents my donation now and in the future.” Angered by this move, the Religious Right’s American Family Association of Michigan (AFA-M) tried to stop the protest by announced that it would pay $5 (up to $1,000) for every note the parents put into the kettles. “What homosexuality advocates intend for harm,” said the AFA-M president, “we will turn to good.”
“The Gift of Our Son” is the testimony of Walt Marston, father of a gay son, in the autumn issue of the newsletter of GIFT, a faith-based support group in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Marston writes: “As John grew through elementary and into middle school, it seemed to Sue and me that he was just about the perfect son. He was handsome and smart (always got the best grades), but also gentle, kind and considerate. … Then, when at age 13 and still in 8th grade, John told us that he was gay, I at first thought (at least in the back of my mind), ‘Wow, not only is he not perfect, but this is the big not perfect.’” But Marston and his wife have learned much since then: “We were glad for him and for us that this awareness came out early in his teenage years so that we could grow together for the next several years that he would share our home. … The joy we have found with John has been so much greater than we could have imagined.” The Marstons are actively involved in the GIFT ministry, pastored by Jim Lucas, an openly gay graduate of Calvin Seminary.
A Youth Advisory Delegate to the Presbyterian (USA) General Assembly spoke up for her gay brother. Amy Bell stepped up to the mike and said: “Many are saying that the issue is not just homosexuality, but that’s all we can talk about.” Having cleared with her gay brother, Adam, what she would say to the delegates about the church’s antigay policy, she spoke of his call to ministry and then asked: “If you were in Adam’s situation, how would you feel? What would you do?”
Maryland now bans discrimination against gay men and lesbians in housing, employment and public accommodation. It is the 12th state to do so. Antigay lobbies mounted a crusade against the law but they did not prevail. Some 7,000 signatures gathered to defeat the measure were judged to be invalid.
The American Psychological Association is ending its effort to force all graduate schools of psychology to agree to include gay/lesbian faculty and students. The APA’s accrediting committee has announced it’s dropping the proposal in view of “recent Supreme Court decisions that show an increased deference to First Amendment interests over anti-discrimination statutes.” The announcement comes as a relief to Christian graduate schools that were threatened with non-accreditation for resisting the APA demand.
Clear majorities of Americans support antidiscrimination laws and policies of equal health benefits and inheritance rights for gay men and lesbians. This is what the Kaiser Family Foundation reports – based on two comprehensive studies. It was found that 73% of the American public knows someone who is gay or lesbian.
Scott Evertz, the openly-gay, conservative Catholic abortion opponent who directs the Bush Administration’s AIDS policy office gave an interview to the gay press recently. Evertz, who has been in a gay relationship for the past seven years, acknowledged to The Advocate that there was Religious Right criticism to his appointment. So, he said, he “picked up the phone and called the [Right’s] Family Research Council after I heard what they were saying about me. … I said to them, ‘Maybe we should get to know each other.’ So some of their staffers came over. … I think they left saying, ‘This isn’t going to be as bad as we thought.’”
For the first time in history, the Presbyterian Church (USA) has ordained an openly lesbian candidate for the ministry. The ordination took place in San Anselmo, California on October 21, following a vote of 90-37 for approval by Redwoods Presbytery. The woman, Katie Morrison, received her M.Div. degree in 1997 from the denomination’s San Francisco Theological Seminary.
As the battle over gay/lesbian ordination continues to rage within the denomination, the church’s moderator, theologian Jack Rogers – once a Fuller Seminary professor – says he agrees with his fellow evangelicals on everything except their antigay position.
The United Methodist Church’s highest court has ruled again on “self-avowed practicing homosexual” clergy. United Methodist ministers who reveal they’re in a same-gender sexual relationship, they can be removed from a church assignment. The case involved Karen Dammann, who had been working at a United Methodist church in Seattle. She now lives in Massachusetts with her lesbian partner and their 3-year-old son. When asked by the gay press if she’s “considered switching to a gay-friendly denomination like the Unitarian Universalist Church,” she said: “I’ve thought about it, yeah. But I don’t know. I’m just weighing my options right now.”
An openly gay and non-celibate minister has been installed as pastor of a Key West congregation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. This installation of a 20-year veteran of ministry is contrary to the rules of the denomination. Other such pastors are serving in defiance in Lutheran churches in Minnesota, Iowa, Kansas, and California.
He is “one of the Church’s ablest conservative gadflies” according to [Anglican] Church Times deputy editor Glyn Paflin. He is Canon Edward Norman, the treasurer of York Minster, and his approach to theology is reminiscent of C. S. Lewis. In his new book, An Anglican Catechism, he takes up one of the church’s hottest topics. He states that homosexuality “may well not be a condition to be regretted but have divinely ordered and positive qualities.” To Norman, such “Christian believers should be assured of the full integrity of their membership of the Church, and encouraged to find in their sexual preferences such elements of moral beauty as may enhance their general understanding of Christ’s calling.” His book carries the imprimatur of the Archbishop of York.
Pope John Paul II has condemned same-sex couples once again. Speaking in November, the pope said that gay and lesbian couples threatened the “natural institution” of the family. He said: “The power of changing the Creator’s original project was not given to man” and he urged Catholics to fight laws that support same-sex couples.
Caribbean Roman Catholic bishops are opposing a Jamaica government recommendation that homosexual acts should be decriminalized. Attacking the recommendation of a government human rights committee, Monsignor Richard Albert spoke for the bishops in lashing out against “the moral unacceptability of homosexual relations.”
Romania has decriminalized homosexuality. The brutal antigay law that had been used to imprison thousands of homosexuals had been imposed during the Communist regime of the corrupt Nicolae Ceasescu. The European Union insisted that unless the law was removed, Romania could not join the EU. But now the Romanian Orthodox Church is denouncing the decriminalization. Said one bishop: “We want to join the European Union, not Sodom and Gomorrah.”
Alan Bray, gay issues advisor to the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster and a founding member of the Gay History Group, has died. He was 53 and succumbed to heart failure in November. A prominent lay Roman Catholic, he wrote a ground-breaking history, Homosexuality in Renaissance England, published in 1982. According to The Times (of London): “He showed that in Elizabethan and Jacobean England, although ‘sodomy’ was considered as part of a wider debauchery to which all of humankind was prone, homosexual acts were widely tolerated.” His last work was a history of friendship. It will be published by the University of Chicago Press.
The Assembly of Christian Students in Africa has voted to commit the next four years to a comprehensive study of homosexuality in the life of the church. The 2005 Christian Students Assembly will receive the final report of the study “complete with action steps for full implementation [and a] specific plan and time-line toward a decision concerning a continental network of homosexual persons in Africa,” according to the study committee’s Ugandan chairman.
The Al-Fatiha Foundation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and questioning Muslims has announced its Third International Retreat, scheduled for Memorial Day weekend in Washington, DC. Speakers will include Sulayman X (founder of Queer Jihad), Surina Khan (director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission), and Muhsin Hendricks (founder of the first gay and lesbian Muslim group in South Africa) as well as Imams from the US and the UK. Al-Fatiha, which began with Gay-Muslims Listserv in 1997, “aims to support LGBTQ Muslims in reconciling their sexual orientation or gender identity with Islam.”
Egypt has sentenced 23 young men to hard labor for “sexual immorality,” a euphemism for homosexuality. The sentences cannot be appealed, due to emergency laws enacted after the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981. Though homosexuality is not prohibited by Egyptian law, a government official said: “In this society, homosexuality is a shameful act.”
“Trembling Before G-d” is a film by and about Orthodox and Hasidic Jews who are also gay or lesbian. This award-winning film is being acclaimed as “unforgettable and provocative” (The New York Times), “powerful” (Jewish Week), and “ground-breaking and intensely moving” (the gay/lesbian New York Blade). Directed by Sandi Simcha Dubowski, the film documents the suffering and struggling that gay men and lesbians go through in their attempts to come to terms with both their deeply-embraced religious ife and their undeniable same-gender psychosexual orientation. Dubowski interviews dozens of people, many with blurred faces or shot in silhouette. The film is being shown in art theaters, churches, theological seminaries and Hasidic homes.
The Liberty Education Forum, a gay/lesbian think tank in Washington, has launched a program “dedicated to new insights on gay and lesbian issues from a centrist perspective.” Its mission is “to work toward achieving individual freedom and fairness for gay Americans by applying the principles of individual rights, individual responsibilities, free market and limited government.” According to Rich Tafel, a Republican and head of the organization, “I’m an American, you’re an American, we have to stop the fighting between us. We’re Americans who happen to be gay.” He is urging fellow gay men and lesbians to get beyond the outworn identity politics of “virtual victimization” and perpetuates the notion that “everybody’s against us.” The LEF can be found at www.libertyeducationforum.org.
Although the majority of GLBTQ political organizations are on the Left and they were negative in their reaction to the LEF, the gay/lesbian New York Blade News executive editor Chris Crain commended the LEF’s critique of GLBTQ politics. Referring to Tafel as “chief of the gay heretics,” Crain said Tafel was right and he took note of “the predictable backlash” from the “perennial foes at the center-left of the movement.” He went on to say that “The struggle for fair treatment within religious faiths is arguably an even more important effort, and it’s surprising that Tafel, an ordained Baptist minister, makes little mention of it.”
An historian on Afrocentrism argues that contemporary obsession with race encourages homophobia. Clarence E. Walker of the University of California at Davis, in his new Oxford University Press book, We Can’t Go Home Again, critiques politically correct revisionists who exaggerate the role of Egypt and Africa in the development of Western civilization. He urges that, instead of rewriting the past for supposedly therapeutic purposes, we should attend to building a more responsible society.
Coors beer has been the target of a gay bar boycott for many years, mainly because the Coors family has been a strong supporter of conservative political causes. But more recent gay leaders, such as Tim Gill, chairman of the gay-friendly Gill Foundation, believes the boycott has outlasted its usefulness. In the 1990s, Mary Cheney, the openly-lesbian daughter of the vice-president, served as Coors liaison to gays and lesbians. According to a recent account in the GLBT newsmagazine, The Advocate, “The Coors company contributes as much as $1 million annually to a laundry list of gay causes, including the Gay& Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation and the Human Rights Campaign.” By contrast, The Advocate reports that the Coors family foundations contributions are only in the low hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Now Scott Coors, the son of Coors former head, has come out as openly gay and in a long-term relationship. He says he’s warmly accepted by his family – including his aunt (Holly Coors) and cousin (Jeffrey Coors) who both sit on the board of the family foundation that has been supporting the “ex-gay” movement.
Antigay preacher Tim LaHaye has become a multimillionaire as sales of his bestseller, Left Behind, soar. He’s continuing his lawsuit against the Christian producers of the film based on the book. Many evangelicals see his action as contrary to the Apostle Paul’s horror over Christians suing Christians, addressed clearly in the same Bible passage LaHaye uses against homosexuals (I Corinthians 6). According to the Pentecostal magazine, Charisma, the lawsuit “has grown vicious.” Charisma reports that LaHaye’s co-author Jerry Jenkins is under pressure to join the lawshit but he “refuses to become a part of the suit for biblical reasons.”
Meanwhile, The Evangelical Studies Bulletin of the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals at Wheaton College named LaHaye the most influencial evangelical leader in the United States of the last quarter century. LaHaye was credited with popularizing creationism, “therapeutic ideas,” and “set[ting] the stage for the rise of the Moral Majority.”
Britain’s Radio Authority has warned the nation’s only Christian radio station against denigrating Christians who support gays and lesbians. On the basis of the U.K.’s Broadcasting Act, the government office issued a “Yellow Card” to Premier Radio, an interdenominational station. This followed complaints about on-air comments made by U.S.-based preacher Michael Yusef: “Now I don’t understand this crazy idea that is dished out in the liberal church tghat a person can be a good Christian and a practicing homosexual.” Mike Apichella, a Roman Catholic broadcaster and former host on the station responded. He said: “I think it is ironic that the liberal secular mindset usually argues that if you are offended by something on the TV you can always switch it off, yet a different set of standards has been applied to Premier Radio.”
The mayor of Miami-Dade asked a Religious Right coalition to drop its effort to overturn the county’s ordinance that prohibits discrimination against homosexuals. Mayor Alex Penelas says he’s “appealing to their conscience.” But the antigay group, Take Back Dade, responded: “Mayor Penelas’ statement is an embarrassment and an insult to the intelligence of the citizens of Miami-Dade” and vows to continue its assault.
The Walt Disney media empire has bought the Fox Family Channel for $5.3 billion. Originally, that channel was Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network. He sold it to Fox in 1997 with the condition that his “700 Club” and other CBN programs be carried. Disney has inherited that obligation. But Disney has been the focus of a Religious Right boycott protesting Disney’s health benefits for partners of gay employees, its production of “Ellen” and its theme parks’ “Gay Days.” Now, according to Disney head Michael Eisner, Robertson “believes that … what we stand for is not inconsistent with what he stands for.”
Meanwhile, the December issue of Charisma magazine carries a feature entitled “Quiet Faith Inside Disney.” According to the article, there is much “creative evangelism” going on within the Magic Kingdom. Besides concerts by Christian artists and personal witness, the senior pastor of a near-by church says: “When I walk into the Magic Kingdom, the standards they have there reflect more of what a part of the [book of] Revelation describes as the environment of heaven than many churches, where there is trash everywhere and the bathrooms stink.”
Pat Robertson has resigned from his Christian Coalition. According to The New York Times, “the coalition is broke and is widely believed to have fewer than two million members.” Robertson, who just returned from a business trip to China, says he wants to concentrate on his interests in international broadcasting. Meanwhile, Jerry Falwell has sent out a fundraising letter to two million people, asking for money to fight the forces he blames for the plight of the American family – among the foes: gays and lesbians. Claiming to be “longtime friends” with President Bush, Falwell writes: “He was very excited when I told him about the $1,200,000 ‘Christian Call to Action’ I’m describing to you now.” However, White House spokesman Scott McClellan disputed Falwell’s claim: “We’re not aware of any conversation he had with the president on this.”
AND FINALLY:
After accusing gays, lesbians and the ACLU of sharing in the blame for God’s removal of protection over America that resulted in the horrors of September 11, Jerry Falwell is now being supported by the ACLU in his lawsuit against Virginia and the city of Lynchburg. Falwell wants to construct a new church building on more land but there is a legal limit on how many acres a church is permitted to own. Falwell says he’s filing the lawsuit “for every church in Virginia.”