One in four gay voters chose to re-elect President George W. Bush. The exit poll numbers “stunned and baffled many gay activists,” according to the gay New York Blade (Nov 12). But many rank-and-file gay people were not so stunned.
The Blade reported that gay voters say their backing of the President “has miffed some of their friends and acquaintances” and quotes Chris Taylor of Greenwich Village. He says: “I went to a Baptist junior college in the South. … As a gay person, I felt more at home there than I do now in New York City as a Republican.”
“Calm down, Chicken Littles: it was an election, not the Apocalypse.” This is gay journalist Mubarak Dahir’s advice in his New York Blade column (Nov 19). He says: “Yes, I, too, am greatly disappointed at the outcome of the elections. But we need to stop running around like a bunch of Chicken Littles, squawking our heads off about migrating to Canada. … Despite the drama-queen-like fit the gay community is collectively going through, the sky is not falling.” Dahir reminds his readers that President Bush supports civil unions for same-sex couples.
“President Bush has become a leading advocate for gay rights. In doing so and winning, he has made it a lot easier for others to recognize civil unions, especially political leaders in red states. If gays accept Bush’s support and find ways to work with him, the 2004 election will mark a turning point in America’s acceptance of gay relationships.” So says Bush-appointee Abner Mason, the African-American gay Republican who chairs the International Subcommittee for the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS. Commenting in the national gay magazine, The Advocate (December 21),
Mason notes: “People on the left, including most gay leaders, were so focused on helping Kerry that they could hardly afford to acknowledge that Bush had become a champion of sorts for gay rights – a politically risky move given his dependence on red-state America for support. At the same time, many social conservatives were angered by Bush’s support for ‘gay marriage with another name.’”
“Gay and lesbian leaders,” says Mason, “have yet to capitalize on Bush’s victory. Their unwillingness even now to aggressively highlight Bush’s support for civil unions has contributed to the portrayal of his reelection as an attack on gay and lesbian Americans, when in fact the opposite is true.” Mason concludes: “If our goal is to change minds and build support for our relationships where it is most lacking, we could hardly ask for a better partner than George W. Bush.”
Conservative columnist Robert Novak calls the President “defeatist” on a same-sex marriage ban. According to Novak: “It cannot be disputed that George W. Bush’s tone has changed since the election.” He writes: “The biggest inaugural week concern for the conservative movement was Bush’s Jan. 16 interview with the Washington Post, when he was asked whether he would expend his political capital to push the antigay marriage constitutional amendment. Bush replied: ‘The point is that senators have made it clear that so long as DOMA [former President Bill Clinton’s Defense of Marriage Act barring gay marriage] is deemed constitutional, nothing will happen. I’d take their admonition seriously.”
Billy Graham, who tends to steer clear of gay issues, is the “most trusted” spokesperson for Christian faith today, according to 58% of senior pastors. Antigay activist James Dobson comes in at a distant second (20%). The Barna Group polled 640 Protestant pastors.
James Dobson and other Religious Right activists are angry over President Bush’s inaction on a constitutional ban against same-sex marriage. Through a coalition called the Arlington Group, they are threatening to withhold their support for the Administration’s agenda – especially on Social Security reform – unless the President gets moving on their antigay interests. “The poor and needy are important,” says Dobson. But he sees the antigay marriage amendment as even more important. “You have to decide the things that matter most.”
“Not everyone feels western civilization is going to rise and fall on a marriage amendment. My fear is we’re bring on criticism that we’re modern-day ayatollahs.” So says Richard Cizik, lobbyist for the National Association of Evangelicals.
Among conservative college students, “traditional values did not extend to homosexuality.” This is the conclusion of Brian C. Anderson, reporting on his interviews in the conservative City Journal. He writes: “Though few support gay marriage, fewer still want the Constitution amended to ban it, and most are okay with state-sanctioned civil unions for gays.” He quotes “the strongly pro-life editor of the Vanderbilt Torch, the school’s conservative monthly,” as saying “I don’t buy the prevalent argument that recognizing gay unions would undermine the institution of marriage.” He quotes a Bucknell student’s saying: “I believe that homosexuality is a sin, because that’s what the Bible says, but I also believe that if two people of the same sex love each other … the propriety of that is none of the state’s business.” Anderson observes that these conservative students’ “support of homosexual civil unions may spring from their rejection of the world of casual hookups, broken marriages, and wounded children that liberalism has produced.”
The daughter of Right-wing pundit Alan Keyes says she’s a lesbian. Maya Marcel-Keyes, 19, acknowledged her orientation at a pro-gay rally in Maryland on St. Valentine’s Day. In August, Keyes called the Vice President’s lesbian daughter a “selfish hedonist.” Keyes’ daughter says her father knew of her own lesbian identity when he made his remarks against Mary Cheney. She says he refuses to speak to her and has cut off money for her college tuition. In November, running for the Senate as an antigay Right-wing Republican, Keyes was roundly defeated by Democrat Barack Obama.
The American Association of Christian Counselors has launched a National Task Force on Homosexuality. According to the announcement in the AACC’s Christian Counseling Connection (2004/Issue 2): “Reparative therapy – which assists someone with changing or controlling [italics added] their homosexual proclivities and desires – has been discredited and abandoned by virtually every key mental health association in the United States – except for the AACC.” The Task Force’s goal is to “recommend to the AACC what it believes are preferred policies for understanding homosexuality” – preferred over those of the rest of the mental health community. AACC plans to have the report ready by the fall of this year.
Dr. Ralph Blair, a founding member of the AACC, points out that the announcement (worded by a lawyer and by AACC’s president) contains two words that give wiggle room to the usual “reparative therapy” claims. Those two words, “or controlling,” (see above) release RT advocates from having to prove that “ex-gays” actually change their sexual orientation from homosexual to heterosexual. The Task Force is co-led by Mark Yarhouse and Warren Throckmorton (see Reviews for Spring 2001, Summer 2001, and Winter 2003 at www.ecinc.org for critique of the views of Yarhouse and Throckmorton).
“Putting the civil rights of one group to a vote takes an enormous psychological toll on members of that group, as well as on communities and on families.” This is the observation of a report following the passage of anti-gay initiatives in 11 states. The report was issued by the Institute for Gay and Lesbian Strategic Studies at Amherst, Massachusetts.
“Evangelicalism holds up a traditional ideal of the family and yet has more non-traditional families, whereas mainline Protestantism holds up a more liberal ideal and yet has more traditional families in its pews.” W. Bradley Wilcox notes these data in an interview in Christianity Today’s Books and Culture (September/October 2004). This University of Virginia sociologist offers an explanation: “[T]he kind of intensive experience and community [evangelical congregations] offer is attractive to people who are in a different family situation and are looking for a community that will help them get through their life.”
Church historian Martin Marty, in Context, his periodic snippets on religion and culture, culls material on “biblical marriage” from Bible Review for October 2004.
He quotes Ronald S. Hendel, professor of Hebrew Bible and Jewish studies at the University of California: “Why not make marriage fully biblical?” He reminds readers that “Lots of biblical marriages were polygamous” and that “adultery [was] punishable by death.” But Hendel observes that “adultery is defined differently in the Bible than we might think: it applies only to a man having sex with a woman who is married or engaged (Lev. 20:10; Deut. 22:22-29). If a man has sex with an unmarried woman, he must marry her … . So Bill Clinton would not have to be stoned to death, but Hillary would have to put up with Monica for a long time.” Hendel also notes that “Divorce is prohibited” when Jesus states: “What God has joined together, let no man put asunder.” (Mark 10:9 and parallels)
Homosexuality as experienced today was unknown in antiquity. Historians repeatedly make this point, underscoring antigay preachers’ anachronistic fallacy in reading contemporary issues of homosexuality back into the Bible. An essay in the conservative National Review (December 27, 2004), makes the point. Responding to Oliver Stone’s movie about Alexander the Great, classicist and military historian Victor Davis Hanson of the conservative Hoover Institution argues that neither Alexander nor anyone else in the ancient world was “gay” as we understand that term these days.
According to Hanson: “among an urban sophisticated elite of both Greece and Rome, … older men’s interest in feminine companionship and sexuality was not delineated by gender alone, but more along the lines of youth and appearance. …feminine-looking boys often were openly seen as desirable sex partners – as long as such idealized relationships reflected the pretense of imparting education and remained one-sided. Free older men did not properly engage in reciprocal acts in a passive manner that suggested a female role, much less shack up with those of the same age in permanent sexual unions.” Hanson says that “what is unmistakable is that in the ancient Mediterranean occasional sex with feminine-looking men or adolescents did not earn the reproach of ‘acting queer’ as it still does in the modern world. In most cases, acts per se did not equate to either a lifestyle or an orientation.” (See also The Bible is an Empty Closet by Ralph Blair at www.ecinc.org)
“The experience of AIDS is the reason why marriage is the particular form that gay rights is taking now.” So says Christopher Caldwell, a senior editor of The Weekly Standard (May 21, 2004), a magazine of neoconservative opinion, in the aftermath of the same-sex marriage ruling by the Supreme Court of Massachusetts. Caldwell writes: “The special damage visited on gays at the height of the AIDS era … came from the interaction of sudden death with a probate law designed for heterosexuals. There is an entire oral literature of men dying in hospital denied the company of their lovers of several decades; couples thrown into penury because American-style health benefits, designed to protect spouses, do not transfer to partners; successful challenges to wills by vindictive relatives of men who had bequeathed their life’s savings to otherwise destitute boyfriends (who themselves needed expensive experimental drugs); and so on.”
According to Caldwell: “It was only natural that the gay community, once it had become a political reality, would seek the remedy of marriage. As it happened, AIDS left heterosexual society in a weak position to deny that remedy, because it recast public attitudes. … Suddenly, a misfit homosexual suppressing his natural inclinations in order to ‘pass’ as a married bourgeois was not just a ridiculous eccentric, but a mortal threat to a heterosexual woman.” He concludes by stating: “Acknowledging that gay marriage had its beginnings in the AIDS crisis, if gay advocates are capable of doing so, will strengthen the endurance of the institution they have just won.”
The gay-supportive Harvest Glory Charismatic Conference 2005 featured Pentecostal leaders including D. E. Paulk, Bishop David Huskins, Roberts Liardon and Tammy Faye Messner. It was held in southern California at the end of January under the auspices of Glory Tabernacle Christian Center and GTCC Pastor Sandra Turnbull.
MSNBC called it “the book that’s too hot for Rolling Stone.” It’s still too hot for the Religious Right. The book that’s “too hot” is the Bible – “Today’s New International Version” (TNIV) from Zondervan, a leading evangelical publisher. Though Rolling Stone at first rejected an ad for the TNIV, the music magazine finally agreed to run the ad. But anti-TNIV efforts continue under James Dobson’s Focus on the Family and World magazine. They object to what they claim is an agenda to wipe out gender distinctions by means of “gender neutral” translating.
The British government has barred a Ugandan gay man from entering the UK to speak at an Anglican conference. The reason? Ugandan officials have an arrest warrant for him, based on his homosexuality – a crime in Uganda, punishable by life imprisonment. The man, Chris Stentaza, a former head teacher in a religious school in Uganda, spoke at a conference in Manchester in 2003.
Anglican archbishops from Africa, Asia and Latin America have rejected an apology from the Episcopal Church. The apology concerned the consecration of openly gay New Hampshire bishop, Gene Robinson, without the full consultation of Anglican leadership worldwide. According to Nigerian archbishop Peter Akinola, an apology without active repentance is meaningless.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu is quoted in Newsweek online as saying: “I’m glad that I believe very fervently that Jesus would not be on the side of gay bashers. To think that people say, as they used to say, that AIDS was God’s punishment for homosexuality. Abominable. Abominable.”
The preacher-daughter of Martin Luther King, Jr. joined thousands of demonstrators against same-sex marriage in a march from her father’s grave this winter. Though she had just turned 5 a few days before her father was assassinated, she says: “I know deep down in my sanctified soul that he did not take a bullet for same-sex unions.” Her mother, Coretta Scott King, is a strong supporter of same-sex marriage and the King Center did not endorse the antigay march.
Conservative black preacher Eugene Rivers has lashed out at gay activists’ use of the language of civil rights. He blasts it as “playing the race card” and “an exercise in marketing and merchandising.” He claims “same-sex couples wanting to marry are white lesbians who seek the accouterments of family life.” But the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force responds by noting that, based on the 2000 Census, “black same-sex households make up 14% of the same-sex households in the United States, greater than the 13% of the general population that is African-American. Black lesbian couple households are almost as likely as Black married opposite-sex couple households to include a child of one or both of the adults (69%). Nearly half of Black male same-sex couple households (46%) include a child of one or both of the partners.”
“Down-low brothers live in a crypt intended for dead things. Wherever there are dead things, there is a foul odor – and a foul spirit!” Kimberly Daniels, who, with her husband, runs a “deliverance” ministry, was commenting about a book on the “down-low” phenomenon – black men who have sex with other men but claim not to be gay. Writing in Charisma magazine, and responding to reports that “black churches are prime spots for down-low brothers to pick up dates,” she says “these foul spirits have no place in the house of God. …It is time to clean the house.”
Philip Johnson, openly gay architect of the Crystal Cathedral and Cathedral of Hope, America’s largest gay-inclusive church, has died at 98. The Cathedral of Hope, in Dallas, will be completed this summer. Johnson described the project as “the crowning jewel of my lifetime of work.” His award-winning buildings include the Museum of Modern Art, the AT&T Building, and Lever House – all in New York City.
NFL star Reggie White has died at 43. Football fans remember him as a great defensive end for the Philadelphia Eagles and the Green Bay Packers. Others recall this athlete-turned-preacher’s open hostility to homosexuals, calling homosexuality “one of the biggest sins in the Bible.” He said his playing professional football on the Lord’s Day was no problem for a Bible-believer and claimed “football’s not a violent game. Football is an aggressive game.”
In Repenting of Religion, evangelical pastor Gregory A. Boyd’s new volume from Baker Books, he laments that, in too many churches, “the sins we declare ourselves to be against are invariably selected to not target ourselves.” Christianity Today’s John Wilson has written a snide review of the book, lashing out that Boyd “caricatures the evangelical response to homosexuality, quite sure in his judgment that what motivates evangelicals on this issue is simply a sinful desire to feel morally superior.”
New Brunswick Theological Seminary’s Board of Trustees (Reformed Church in America) is “transitioning” the school’s president, Norman Kansfield, for officiated at his daughter’s wedding. She married another woman in Massachusetts this past summer. In 2001 she left a career on Wall Street to study for the ministry at NBTS. Kansfield will now retire in June. The Board also voted to endow a “Kansfield Chair” in Old Testament to honor his “significant accomplishments in the [seminary’s] ministry.”
Kansfield says he knows his daughter “struggled with this for years” and that homosexuals live in “a daily hell [with] no way out … constantly being defined by others’ angry reactions to them.”
An Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Task Force recommends that the 5.1-million-member denomination allow church authorities to “refrain from disciplining those who in good conscience, and for the sake of outreach, ministry and the commitment to further dialogue, call or approve partnered gay or lesbian candidates” as deacons or pastors. Task Force chair Margaret Payne, bishop of New England, called the report’s tone “pastoral” rather than “legal.” The report noted that “human experience and knowledge can change [and has] with respect to our understanding of sexual orientation.” WordAlone, the church’s antigay lobby, says the report is “an attempt to hoodwink.” WordAlone’s Mark Chavez: “How stupid do they think we are?” Pro-gay Lutherans, too, were not satisfied. Said Emily Eastwood, a “non-enforcement” approach would “institutionalize an existing pattern of selective discrimination.” The matter will be taken up in August at the ELCA convention in Orlando.
Lutheran Church in America officials have removed their support for a mission to the homeless in southern California. That’s because one of the ministers in charge is in a lesbian relationship. The LCA allows gay clergy only if they are celibate. Mission leaders intend to continue their work as an independent Lutheran ministry.
Two Roman Catholic priests in Minnesota have resigned their pastorates in the wake of their controversial support for gay rights. The priests are George Wertin of St. Joan of Arc parish and Stephen O’Gara of St. Thomas parish, both in the Twin Cities.
Pope John Paul II says a candidate priest’s “emotional and sexual maturity” for a life of celibacy must be “carefully verified” before ordination. According to the Pope’s statement to the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education: “In light of present-day social and cultural changes, it can be at times useful that educators turn to the work of competent specialists” in mental health.
As reported by the National Catholic Register, this Congregation, for five years, has been preparing a document on homosexuality, “expected to spell out whether candidates with homosexual inclinations should be admitted into the priesthood,”
The Archdiocese of Detroit canceled a reception to honor a longtime gay-supportive nun, Sister Jeanine Gramick. Said Gramick: “There’s a real sadness and embarrassment for my church when leaders of my church exercise this kind of authority. It puts our church in real bad light.”
Working with Canadian Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Orthodox, Jews and some Protestants, Roman Catholics in Canada are combating efforts to legalize same-sex marriage there.
The Muslim Canadian Congress supports same-sex marriage. The group’s president, Rizwana Jafri, said that Muslim experience as a marginalized minority in Canada prompts sensitivity to discrimination against other minorities. He said: “It is incumbent upon us, as a minority, to stand in solidarity with Canada’s gays and lesbians despite the fact that many in our community believe our religion does not condone homosexuality.”
Two burly bouncers stop two gay men and a Latino man and girl from entering a church while permitting a white family of four to enter. It’s in a television ad and the message is: “Jesus didn’t turn people away. Neither do we.” “We” are the United Church of Christ, America’s most liberal Protestant denomination. And CBS and NBC are among the outlets refusing to air the ad. While gay activists and church leaders are upset that the ad has been rejected, other observers say the ad is a publicity stunt and that it erroneously implies that the UCC is the only church that welcomes gays and Latinos. UCC president John Thomas: “I was bewildered [that] a gracious ad expressing hospitality and welcome is controversial.”
Conservative Judaism’s rabbinical association is permitting one of its rabbis, Ayelet S. Cohen, to continue to serve a gay/lesbian synagogue in New York City. The association, however, has censored her for disregarding its placement procedures.
Wal-Mart, America’s largest employer and the world’s biggest retailer, now includes same-sex partners of employees as “immediate family.” A gay lobby, Human Rights Campaign, applauds the move.
Meanwhile, HRC salutes a number of companies for their non-discriminatory employment and benefits policies, giving scores of100% on its Corporate Equality Index to Aetna, American Express, AT&T, Chubb, Citigroup, IBM, MetLife, Pepsico, Pfizer, Xerox and others.
AND FINALLY:
What’s with SpongeBob SquarePants and James Dobson? Some say the head of Focus on the Family called SpongeBob “gay,” much as Jerry Falwell once did with Tinky Winky. But Dobson has sent out an email, “Dr. Dobson Sets the Record Straight” (Jan 29). He says he never called SpongeBob gay. But, he warns, tolerance education material that features SpongeBob is “designed to encourage young children to celebrate homosexual behavior.” He decries “hijacking those childhood symbols [such as SpongeBob] to blatantly promote the teaching of homosexuality to children in elementary school.” The motto: “Now, more than ever, we must be vigilant,” frames his signed clarification.
Meanwhile, a poignant Brady’s Corner cartoon (Jan 27) shows a repentant SpongeBob confessing (ala Pastor Martin Niemoller’s well-known World War II confession of complicity with the Nazis): “First they came for Bert and Ernie. And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Muppet. Then they came for Tinky Winky. And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a TellyTubby. Then they came for
me ….”