“Which issue is most important to you in this election?” Evangelical publisher, Christianity Today, polled its on-line readers at the end of October and this was the response to the question: Abortion (29%), Economy (23%), Foreign Policy (8%), Same-sex Marriage (7%), Terrorism (6%), Health Care (6%), Poverty (5%), Energy 2%), Environment (1%), Education (1%), Immigration (1%).
On November 4, most Californians voted “Yes” on Prop 8, banning marriage for same-sex couples. The vote was 52 percent to 48 percent. But that was a shift in a gay-positive direction. In 2000, the percentage spread was 61-39 against same-sex marriage.
Misty Irons, a self-defined “straight, married with three kids, homeschooling, evangelical Christian of the Reformed variety”, voted “No” on Prop 8. She blogs: “I myself voted for Prop 22 in 2000. I’m one of those voters who swung to the other side. … Despite the fear-mongering, lies, misinformation, prejudice, ignorance, and yes, sincerely held religious beliefs that homosexual unions go against the moral teaching of the Bible (which I myself hold to), 48 percent of Californians somehow waded through all that and saw a simple truth: when it is placed in your hands to vote on somebody else’s marriage, somebody else’s life, somebody else’s dreams, have the decency to let them be.” Irons’ observations are at moremusingson.blogspot.com.
“Maybe we need to reevaluate this and look at it a little differently.” Richard Cizik, chief lobbyist for the National Association of Evangelicals, was speaking of same-sex couples on NPR’s “Fresh Air” program in early December. He said: “I believe in civil unions [but] I don’t officially support redefining marriage”. Cizik added: “I’m always looking for ways to reframe issues. Give the biblical point of view a different slant.”
His comments drew the ire of the Religious Right and the NAE itself. Cizik has been severely criticized for endorsing a broader vision for social concerns – including environmental issues. His comments on the gay issues were the last straw. After over three decades of work on behalf of an evangelical voice in public affairs, he has been forced to resign from his post at the NAE. The Religious Right is cheering.
Homosexuality “incurs certain restrictions appropriate to its character, such as celibacy, just as the promiscuous must be chaste, the pedophiliac must avoid children, and the self-righteous must seek humility.” This is what John G. Stackhouse, Jr., Regent College professor of theology and culture, says in his book, Finally Feminist: A Pragmatic Christian Understanding of Gender.
But then, in a footnote, he states: “I acknowledge that in this deeply troubled world some people will find the first serious and genuine love of their lives in a homosexual relationship. I believe therefore that such relationships can be condoned, cautiously, for pastoral, therapeutic reasons as temporary accommodations to some people’s particular injuries and needs. The church nonetheless does not ‘bless’ such unions, let alone ‘normalize’ them, but upholds scriptural sexual and relational ethics as the ideal toward which we all strive. In the meanwhile, however, we can appreciate the sad truth that some people will have to take the long way home, and a caring homosexual relationship may be a necessary part of that journey. This is clearly a difficult area of pastoral ethics and requires deep theological, psychological, and spiritual wisdom”.
Emergent youth ministry leader Tony Jones says: “I now believe that GLBTQ can live lives in accord with biblical Christianity (at least as much as any of us can!) and that their monogamy can and should be sanctioned and blessed by church and state.” He made this statement, his first Beliefnet blog on the subject, on November 19.
MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann’s words on the Prop 8 vote have moved some who voted against same-sex marriage to change their minds. Some even report they’ve been brought to tears. His comments can be viewed at YouTube.
California exit polls revealed that, as the New York Times reported: “70 percent of black voters backed the ban” on same-sex marriage. Times’ columnist Charles M. Blow noted the figure was 75 percent among black women – whose views on moral issues are virtually indistinguishable from those of Republicans”. The Times reported: “Slightly more than half of Latino voters … favored the ban, while 53 percent of whites opposed it.” Exit polls indicated that same-sex marriage prospects were “hurt by the large turnouts among black and Hispanic voters drawn to Senator Barack Obama’s candidacy.” According to USC political analyst Dan Schnur: “You can make the argument that Barack Obama passed Proposition 8. Had turnout among African- American voters been along more traditional lines, Proposition 8 probably would have failed.” Obama opposes same-sex marriage.
In December, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation scrambled to spin figures and point fingers in another direction, urging that the press use raw numbers rather than within-group percentage figures, asserting: “larger numbers of ‘Yes’ voters [were] white Republicans and voters over the age of 65”.
It was “the moral stance of black voters” in California, says a black megachurch preacher, that “reversed the decision of a vigilante court”. In his column at ChurchReport.com, Bishop Harry R. Jackson, Jr. applauds the fact that: “In both Florida and California the black vote largely determined the outcome of the contests”. He blasts the “vitriolic anti-black rhetoric [of] gay opinion leaders [e.g., Rosanne Barr and Wayne Beson] who accused blacks of betrayal, ignorance, and hate mongering” and he approves Los Angeles Times black lesbian writer Jasmyne Cannick’s saying: “I don’t see why the right to marry should be a priority for me or other black people. Gay marriage? Please.” Cannick says she’s in favor of gay marriage but the political strategy of GLBT activists shows they don’t “get it”, they fail to understand that most black people see no comparison between black civil rights and gay civil rights. Says Jackson: “This election demonstrates the final defeat of the inane argument that gay marriage is an extension of the civil rights movement”.
Elton John: “What’s wrong with Proposition 8 is that they went for ‘marriage’. ‘Marriage’ is going to put a lot of people off, the word. … I don’t want to be married. I’m very happy with a civil partnership.
Passage of an antigay “marriage amendment is associated with higher levels of psychological stress for lesbian, gay and bisexual citizens.” This is a finding of research psychologists at the University of Kentucky and published in the Journal of Counseling Psychology (January).
Gays are already free to marry in every state in America! This is the argument against extending marriage to same-sex couples as offered by Hoover Institution economist and columnist Thomas Sowell. Writing in the Jewish World Review, he says: “The question is not whether gays should be permitted to marry. Many gays have already married people of the opposite sex.” His reasoning has been dubbed a “masterpiece” by some antigay bloggers and has left other people asking, “Huh?”
Orthodox Jews, Muslims, Roman Catholics, Mormons, Fundamentalists, Hindus and Sikhs campaigned and contributed money in favor of Proposition 8 while other religious groups, e.g., the United Church of Christ, the Episcopal Church, the Unitarian-Universalist Association and the Metropolitan Community Churches campaigned and contributed money against it.
After most Californians voted to ban same-sex marriage, protests have been staged around the country, demanding the rescinding of tax exemption for the religious groups that supported the ban. There has been no demand for the rescinding of tax exemption for the religious groups that opposed the ban.
“Extremely loud and wildly offensive” is how self-defined “queer and trans anarchists” described their invasion of Lansing, Michigan’s Mount Hope Church on November 9. The website of “Bash Back!” states: “Let it be known: So long as bigots kill us in the streets, this pack of wolves will continue to BASH BACK!” During their disruption of the worship service, the “wolves” stormed the pulpit and vandalized the building while shouting obscenities, beating on buckets, unfurling a huge rainbow banner and yelling through a megaphone: “Jesus was a homo”. There were no arrests.
At other conservative churches around the country there have been anti-Christian protests and vandalizing of church property and churchgoers cars.
Meanwhile, out in the blogosphere, self-styled activists register rage with messages such as: “Burn their f—ing churches to the ground and then tax the charred timbers” and “Can someone in CA please go burn down the Mormon temples there, PLEASE, I mean seriously. DO IT!”
U. S. Rep. Barney Frank (D) responds to massed angry protests after Prop 8’s victory. In an interview in the GLBT magazine, The Advocate, the openly gay Congressman asks rhetorically: “Do you really think a rally on the Boston Common does one thing to change anything?” He observes: “Notice that the NRA never marches. This is my continual debate with people in the gay community, many of whom want to hold rallies instead of doing political lobbying. … They have this notion that Martin Luther King and the rest of the gang just let it all hang out, that the civil rights movement was just a series of spontaneous outbursts. But,” says this veteran gay rights advocate, “it was in fact a series of strategic decisions. …I care deeply about [marriage equality], but the more deeply I care, the more sensible I have to be in achieving it”.
Harry Smith asked Lynn Cheney on CBS’s Early Show (Sept 15) if she’d wish a legal marriage for her lesbian daughter. She replied: “I would wish my daughter to have happiness and freedom to make her own choices. The Vice-President said in the debate with Joe Lieberman ever so long ago in 2000 that freedom in this country ought to mean freedom for everyone.”
A Salvation Army captain in Wisconsin will be losing his job when he marries a woman not affiliated with the Salvation Army. According to the rules of the Salvation Army, all officers’ marriages must be within the confines of the Salvation Army.
Rapper Trick Trick has unleashed more hatred for gays in his latest album, The Villain. He boasts he’s lashing out at “faggots” because “that sissy s—-t is wrong. I address it hard as hell.” Most of his hateful lyrics are unprintable. His new album also features Ice Cube, Kid Rock, Proof, Esham, Guilty Simpson, Royce D 5’9 and Eminem.
Pop star gender bender Prince has joined the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Michael Jackson has left them for Islam. According to The New Yorker, his purple-ness made antigay comments that his reps now deny while the gloved one remains Queer Theory’s poster boy. Islam and Jehovah’s Witnesses are both antigay while Jehovah’s Witnesses are persecuted and violently oppressed under Islamic rule.
Ruth Bell Graham, Billy Graham’s wife, was the subject of #1 New York Times bestselling author Patricia Cornwell’s very first book back in 1983. It was republished in 1997 as Ruth: A Portrait.
Cornwell, the heralded creator of the Kay Scarpetta forensic thrillers, is in a committed lesbian relationship with Staci Gruber of the Harvard Medical School’s department of psychiatry.
In June, Cornwell was interviewed in the GLBT magazine, The Advocate. She said: “Ruth [Graham] knew about me and didn’t care. … And she loved Staci.” The Grahams befriended her when she was a child in foster care near the Graham home in Montreat, North Carolina. She remains a good friend of the Graham family
“How Luis Palau, thousands of volunteers, and a gay mayor are trying to transform Portland.” This was Christianity Today’s subtitle to its report on “Servant Evangelism” in its November issue.
In August, Evangelist Luis Palau led a Season of Service and CityFest event for what CT called “one of America’s most liberal and least-churched cities”. Openly gay Mayor-elect Sam Adams “offered warm greetings from the platform,” saying: “Regardless of our differences, we have come together. … Here’s to odd combinations. May they continue perennially.” Some 180,000 people attended the Rose City’s two-day festival where Palau preached and 2,000 talked with counselors afterward. The event assembled 25,000 volunteers to work in social services for the city.
David M. Scholer, New Testament Professor at Fuller Theological Seminary, died in August at age 70. He had continued to teach throughout his six-year battle with cancer. Scholer’s course, “Women, the Bible, and the Church”, was the seminary’s most popular elective. In a Los Angeles Times interview in 2007, this highly-respected evangelical Baptist said: “People who think they have all the answers to all of life’s questions are fake.” He added, for example: “You have no right to make a statement about homosexuality until you have made friends with a Christian homosexual person. The conclusion you draw is another matter.”
Scholer’s 2005 inspiring sermon on “Living with Cancer” can be heard by going to Google and typing in: “Internet Archive Search” “Living with Cancer” “Scholer”.
“Testimony Time: A Positive Perspective on Homosexuality” is the witness of Lowell O. Erdahl, Bishop Emeritus of the St. Paul (MN) Area Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church. As this veteran pastor and former professor at Luther Seminary explains it, he spent many years in ignorance before coming to his present perspective on gay issues. A DVD of his remarks is available from hbh@resourcesentinel.org.
Ray Boltz, award-winning contemporary Christian singer/songwriter, has accepted his homosexuality after struggling against it all his life. In an interview in The Washington Blade, Boltz says he’s tired of hiding. In 2004, he confided his long held secret to his wife and their four adult children. His wife is now active in the gay supportive movement. Though he had retired from the music business, since coming out he has performed at several predominantly gay Christian venues. “Thank You”, “What Was I Supposed To Be?” and “Shepherd Boy” are among his songs that have sold in the millions. Some can be seen on YouTube.
An Alabaman wrote to Charisma magazine: “When I heard that [Boltz] had come out of the closet to embrace homosexuality, my reaction was shock and sadness. … I cannot believe Boltz could write and sing those songs without really believing what he sang.”
In early January, Boltz sang a concert at the annual conference of GayChristian.net.
Clay Aiken confirms he’s gay. Coming out on the cover of People, the “American Idol” singing sensation confirmed what many had assumed. He was pictured with his newborn baby boy. “It was the first decision I made as a father. I cannot raise a child to lie or to hide things. I wasn’t raised that way, and I’m not going to raise a child to do that.”
Asked if he ever felt “at odds with [his] faith” because of his being gay, Aiken replied: “Of course. I have to respect the people who disagree with me. I don’t struggle with it anymore, but there have been times that I have. And I still consider myself a born-again Christian, and I am absolutely comfortable with that and comfortable with my salvation.”
Rumors had circulated and antigay Christians wrote nasty blogs against him. Some sued his label, RCA, for “misrepresentation”. Concert appearances have been cancelled. Of one cancellation, Pure Fashion’s national director Brenda Sharman said her group had decided to “err on the side of caution”.
Lonnie Frisbee was the young “hippie preacher” of the Jesus People movement of the ‘60s and ‘70s. And he was gay. But many who were influenced by his ministry have covered up this fact. He died of AIDS in 1993. In its October 29th posting, Christianity Today’s ChristianHistory.net website takes note of Frisbee and the Jesus People movement’s influence on what it calls “arguably the single biggest alteration in the life of the average evangelical congregation within the last 30 years”, i.e., “the sweeping change in the music that is played on Sunday morning” – the move from organs, choirs and hymns to electronic keyboards, “worship teams” and “praise choruses”. To watch the trailer of David Di Sabatino’s Emmy-nominated documentary on Frisbee, go to lonniefrisbee.com.
“Young evangelicals – and the public – have become more liberal on issues like gay marriage”, says Anna Greenberg of the Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Poll. But, she adds: “We do not see the same movement towards a liberal position on abortion.” Surveys find that evangelicals under 30 are both more pro-life and more pro-gay than their parents’ generation.
This spring, eHarmony, the online matchmaking service, will expand its services to people looking for a same-sex partner. Neil Clark Warren, a clinical psychologist, a former dean at Fuller Theological Seminary, and formerly associated with Focus on the Family, founded eHarmony in 2000.
“Adolf Hitler convinced himself and his subjects that Jews and homosexuals were other than human beings … and this despite the fact that Hitler and his subjects had seen both Jews and homosexuals with their own eyes.” New York Archbishop Edward Cardinal Egan made these observations on LifeSiteNews.com (October 27). He made the same point about Stalin’s perception of Cossacks and Russian aristocrats and said: “Happily, there are few today who would hesitate to condemn in the roundest terms the self-deceit of Hitler, Stalin or even their subjects.
Egan asked the website’s viewers to examine a photo of “a being that has been within its mother for 20 weeks”: “Have you any doubt that it is a human being?” He suggested they view National Geographic Society DVDs to see the active lives of pre-born babies – including the interactions of twins – and ask if they could maintain that these beings are “mere clusters of tissues”. He states: “It is high time to stop pretending that we do not know what this nation of ours is allowing – and approving – with the killing each year of more than 1,600,000 innocent human beings within their mothers.”
Though the sponsors of LifeSiteNews.com can be assumed to have seen homosexuals, their daily emails usually contain items that demonize homosexuals.
The Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians has started a blog to replace its newsletter. The organization was founded in 1990 and now has chapters around the country. The new PLAGAL blog is at prolifegays.blogspot.com. In November, PLAGAL president Cecilia Brown spoke at Drew University on “Lesbian, Liberal and Pro-Life”.
“The Old Testament is rife with palace intrigues, polygamy, divorce, violence and the like, and godly people are very often part of the problem. Although the New Testament is decidedly improved, it still seems to fall far short of that which twenty-first century human rights would expect. There are no women among the twelve disciples of Jesus and Christian masters do have slaves working for them.” These are observations by L. T. Jeyachandran, executive director of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries in Singapore. His essay is titled, “Does the Bible Condone Slavery?”.
Noting that “the first statement on human rights” is in Exodus 23:9, where God’s people are told that the alien is to be “loved as one of their own”, Jeyachandran states: The Bible “lays the foundation for progressing far beyond what was possible [even] in New Testament times, [but, that] lamentably, it must be admitted that the Church has taken many centuries to live out what Scripture taught long ago, and no doubt we continue to drag our feet.” He concludes: “Those of us who say that we believe the Bible to be the Word of God have to raise our level of awareness and involvement regarding social issues. Having failed to do so, we have let these issues pass into the hands of those who may not be Christians, but are better informed about social injustice and concerned enough to fight wrong practices through legal means.”
The entire essay can be found under “Archives” (9/11/08) at sliceofinfinity.org.
In commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the New International Version of the Bible, the publisher, Zondervan, is sponsoring a 5-month tour to 90 cities in 44 states, collecting some 31,000 handwritten portions of Scripture. The publisher will create two original editions, one to be offered to the Smithsonian Institution and the other to be auctioned off to benefit the International Bible Society.
Says Zondervan CEO Moe Girkins: “Because of its accuracy, clarity and literary style, the NIV has become the most successful Bible translation of all time.” It is the most-used Bible in the English language, with 300 million copies in print worldwide.
Marten Woudstra, Calvin Seminary professor of Hebrew and Old Testament, past president of the Evangelical Theological Society, author of a “penetrating analysis” of the book of Joshua (Allan A. MacRae) and scholar with an “excellent biblical-theological sense” (Tremper Longman III), chaired the NIV’s Old Testament translation committee and befriended Evangelicals Concerned from the beginning. Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, Milton scholar, Christian feminist and co-author of Is the Homosexual My Neighbor?, served as English literary style advisor to the NIV and keynoted EC’s first summer retreat in 1980.
Episcopal bishops’ longstanding denials of the Trinity and the Resurrection never prompted schism. But the ordination of one gay bishop has done that. Fort Worth’s Episcopal Diocese followed the lead of Episcopalians in Pittsburgh, Fresno and Quincy, Illinois and left the Episcopal Church. In December, they and other Episcopalians started a rival denomination of 30 bishops, 800 clergy and 656 congregations.
Milk “is a solid biographical drama” and “scrupulously accurate” portrayal of the political career of San Francisco supervisor and gay rights activist Harvey Milk, assassinated in 1978 “by deranged fellow supervisor Dan White”. Josh Brolin is “scarily intense as the Catholic White”. These are words from Harry Forbes, head film reviewer for the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Though Forbes does caution that the film contains “brief scenes [of] male kissing and nongraphic encounters [and] rear male nudity” along with “murder, suicide, and some rough language, crude expressions and profanity” and so Milk is rated a “film whose problematic content many adults would find troubling”, antigay Catholics find Forbes’ review, itself, troubling and are calling for his removal.
On World AIDS Day, President George W. Bush received Saddleback Church’s first annual International Medal of Peace. Saddleback’s pastor, Rick Warren, said the award honored the President’s directing billions of dollars through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief to the world’s poorest countries. Both men said their wives prompted their attention to global health concerns.
Around the world, some 33.2 million people are living with HIV/AIDS and 2.5 million of them are children.
Seven Passages: The Stories of Gay Christians, a play directed by Calvin College theater professor Stephanie Sandberg, is now a film. The script is comprised of the testimonies of West Michigan Christians who are gay or lesbian. In addition to performances in Michigan, the cast performed the play at the 2008 Lambeth Conference in Canterbury. The $30 DVD can be bought at actorstheatregrandrapids.com.
Sandberg will be one of the keynoters at EC’s 2009 eastern connection.
LGBTQ America Today, is a three-volume encyclopedia of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer issues. Greenwood Press published the work in November. John C. Hawley, chair of the English Department at Santa Clara University, is the editor. EC founder Ralph Blair wrote two of the entries: one on reparative therapy and the Exodus Ministries and the other one on Evangelical Protestantism. The encyclopedia’s articles range from Liberace to Melissa Etheridge to Hip Hop, from parenting to economics to Tennessee Williams, sissiphobia, Latino Issues, Queer Theory, and Native American spiritualities. The set costs $349.95. Details are at greenwood.com
AND FINALLY
Mr. Clean is in hot water with the European Parliament. It seems that his image violates the parliament’s position against “sexual stereotyping” in advertising. The New York Times reports the vote was 504 to 110. Mr. Clean’s offense? His “muscular physique might imply that only a strong man is powerful enough to tackle dirt.” Eva-Britt Svensson of Sweden’s Left Party and vice-chair of the European Parliament’s Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality says consumers can “start boycotting products” that push such “stereotyping.”