Gay writers want to tear down walls at churches

BILL REED
THE GAZETTE

Gay people and conservative Christians are typically pitted as enemies, but a group of local gay writers and leaders is hoping to tear down that wall and promote discussions about the intersection of faith and homosexuality.

The group's vehicle: "Colors of Courage," a compilation of personal poems and stories that reflect on everything from curious explorations on the playground to coming out to their children. The book - written by gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender authors - was released in October, and 3,000 copies have been handed out free in Colorado Springs.

"It's not about going in and telling people they need to agree with us, but real dialogue and listening to each other," said the Rev. Wes Mullins of the gay-friendly Pikes Peak Metropolitan Community Church. "We need to find the humanity in each other. Gays and lesbians often demonize church people, and churches often demonize gay and lesbian people."

But the book's creators also want to use the personal stories as a tool to launch discussions with church members who feel the gay lifestyle is sinful or destructive.

They're looking to provide copies of the book to interested churches along with speakers for informal conversations.

"We don't want to have debates. We want to share our stories and have discussions, trying to get past all the rhetoric and meet as individuals," said "Colors of Courage" editor Rebekah, who declined to provide her last name for fear that being known as a lesbian will hurt her career. "It's easy to sit in a church pew and talk about ‘those people,' but when you're having coffee with them, it grounds the discussion."

Her story is that she was married for 20 years, she said, and refused to admit she was lesbian because of her duties as a wife and mother. When she finally came out to her son, he told her he always knew.

Or there's Mullins, who grew up in a conservative Christian family in small-town Tennessee, he said, and spent several years in "reparative therapy" as he tried to go straight. He's found a way to reconcile his Christian faith with his homosexuality.

"There are people in my own family on the opposite side of this issue; they love me, but we disagree," Mullins said. "Most churches, when they're actually willing to have the dialogue, are gracious and willing to listen even if they disagree. And that's OK. I think people are hungry to have this conversation."
The group's mission has gained urgency in recent days with a report that Ted Haggard came on to a young male volunteer when he was still pastor of New Life Church, and allegations that he may have had other encounters with male church members.

The attention over the revelations has created further impetus to discuss the issues, Mullins said.

"It seems to be giving a bad image of what real gay and lesbian love is about. His is a perverted version because of all the repression," Mullins said. "Still, our hearts break for (Haggard) because many of us have been through similar things, though not in such a public way.

"You wonder, if they could have had healthy discussion about this issue before, would things have happened differently?"

Gay marriage still linchpin issue for evangelicals

James Kirchick / Politico.com

Last month, the National Association of Evangelicals fired the Rev. Richard Cizik as its vice president for governmental affairs. As one of the Christian right's top lobbyists in Washington, Cizik promoted the cultural conservative position on issues ranging from abortion to prayer in school. He's been one of the most prominent figures in the religious right since its ascendance as a national political force three decades ago, and the reason for his firing from the umbrella organization representing some 45,000 churches portends much about the "culture wars."

In a post-election interview with Terry Gross on National Public Radio's "Fresh Air," Cizik stated his support for gay civil unions. "I'm shifting, I have to admit," he said when asked about same-sex marriage. "In other words, I would willingly say I believe in civil unions. I don't officially support redefining marriage from its traditional definition, I don't think."

Cizik's couching of his support for civil unions -- a position shared by at least half of the American electorate, including an increasing number of evangelicals -- within his opposition to gay marriage was not a sufficient hedge to save his skin. "He no longer represents the view of evangelicalism," concluded Tom Minnery, a senior vice president of Focus on the Family. Try as Minnery might to make it sound as though evangelicals speak with one voice on a range of issues, serious fissures are beginning to emerge among this vital electoral constituency.

This was hardly the first time that Cizik publicly departed from the views espoused by the evangelical conservative leadership. He is a proponent of the sort of comprehensive sex education opposed by abstinence-only advocates. More significantly, he has for years supported government intervention to alleviate the effects of man-made global warming, putting a religious gloss on environmentalism that he calls "creation care." Cizik's shift in emphasis away from social issues was met with fierce resistance from other evangelical leaders. In 2006, Focus on the Family head James Dobson unsuccessfully tried to have Cizik fired because of his green advocacy.

As irritating as Cizik's heresy on global warming and sex education might have been to conservative-movement-oriented Christians, it was not enough of a deviation to persuade the NAE to fire him. Ultimately, it was Cizik's coming out in favor of gay civil unions that got him the boot.

And herein lies the ominous lesson about Richard Cizik: The Christian right is not going to give up on the issue of homosexuality anytime soon, as much for strategic electoral considerations as sincerely felt religious ones. "(Cizik) seemed to be abandoning the one thing where evangelical activists felt they had actually made a difference this time around," David Neff, editor of Christianity Today magazine and a member of the NAE's Executive Board, told the Associated Press. In a country that has rejected much of its agenda, the Christian right sees the battle over gay marriage as the last issue where it can play a politically significant role.

The views of the American people are increasingly moving away from those of the Christian right on an array of policy issues. On abortion, which inspired the formation of the Moral Majority in the 1970s with the Roe v. Wade ruling and continues to inform evangelical voting patterns today, most Americans support keeping the practice legal with reasonable restrictions. Most Americans oppose mandatory school prayer and support the teaching of evolution. Most Americans believe in the separation of church and state. Even on homosexuality, the Christian right has lost. Americans overwhelmingly support allowing gays to serve openly in the military and laws that prevent gay people from getting fired because of their sexual orientation.

Gay marriage, however, remains the issue where the views of Christian conservatives are most in line with those of the rest of the country. More than 30 states have passed statutes or constitutional amendments preventing gay marriage. Last November's passage of Proposition 8 in liberal California, which revoked a state Supreme Court ruling permitting gay marriage, as well as a ban on gay adoption in Arkansas, has convinced Christian conservatives of not only the moral justness of their cause but its political salience as well.

Attitudes about homosexuality have changed dramatically over the past 40 years, however, and if history is any guide, the widespread legal equalization of gay relationships is inevitable. This means that the position of the most prominent evangelical Christian groups on homosexuality will not be politically tenable for much longer, even among self-described conservatives. A majority of the delegates at the Republican National Convention supported some form of legal status for gay couples, whether that be civil unions or marriage, as do a majority of young evangelicals.

Cizik, then, is hardly a renegade among evangelicals on the issue of gay rights; he's more a prophet, a representative of what will become the emerging consensus. But with its prompt dismissal of Cizik, the NAE telegraphed its plans to entrench on the losing side of the proposition. Evangelical leaders may be right in thinking that their anti-gay rhetoric makes good politics now, but it's poor strategy for the long term.

Most people in politics, however, are concerned with the next election, not the one 15 years from now. For those eager to see a rapprochement in the cultural battle over homosexuality, the firing of Richard Cizik does not augur well.

James Kirchick is an assistant editor of The New Republic and a columnist for The Advocate. The Detroit News is a member of the Politico Network, http://www.politico.com/

THE TRIALS OF TED HAGGARD takes an intimate look at the life and hard times of the ex-minister.

Once upon a time, Ted Haggard had it all: prosperity, a doting wife, five kids and a ministry that reached 30 million followers. The larger-than-life founder and pastor of Colorado's New Life Church and president of the National Association of Evangelicals, Haggard was one of the most formidable forces in America's Christian evangelical movement. But in 2006, it all fell apart. Pastor Ted admitted to "sexual immorality" and buying methamphetamines from a male prostitute, which abruptly ended his career, sending him and his family into free-fall. The bombshell not only rocked the ministry, but everyone who knew him - especially his wife and five children. A film by Alexandra Pelosi (HBO's Emmy®-winning "Journeys with George"), THE TRIALS OF TED HAGGARD takes an intimate look at the life and hard times of the ex-minister.

Gay Teen Suicide Subject of Lifetime Movie This Week

Did you watch the movie? Tell us about it by posting your Comments here.

Be sure to tune in to "Prayers for Bobby"
on January 24 at 9 pm, January 25 at 8 pm
and January 27 at 9 pm et/pt

Academy Award nominee and Golden Globe winner Sigourney Weaver stars in this emotional true story about a 1970s religious suburban housewife and mother who struggles to accept her young son Bobby being gay. What happens to Bobby is tragic and causes Mary to question her faith; ultimately this mom changes her views in ways that she never could have imagined. Also starring: Ryan Kelley ("Mean Creek"), Henry Czerny ("The Tudors"), Dan Butler ("Frasier"), Susan Ruttan ("L.A. Law"), Austin Nichols ("John From Cincinnati"), Carly Schroeder ("Mean Creek"), Scott Bailey ("Guiding Light"), and newcomers Shannon Eagen and Rebecca Louise Miller. Based on the book "Prayers for Bobby" by Leroy Aarons. Premieres January 24 at 9 pm et/pt

Before you watch "Prayers for Bobby," take a look at the real people behind the story of the Griffiths, the family behind the story.

Request a Personal Contact

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Opinion: On homosexuality, can we at least talk about it?

Opinion: On homosexuality, can we at least talk about it?

By David Gushee

Thursday, 27 March 2008

David Gushee is a Baptist Ethicist at Mercer University and an editorial writer with the Baptist Associated Press. (ABP) -- I'm one of the few leaders in Baptist life with the freedom to talk openly and honestly about the complex theological, moral, pastoral, and public policy issues raised by homosexuality without destroying myself professionally. Because I hold a tenured professorship in Christian ethics at Mercer University, I am one of those rare souls who can talk candidly about this hot-button issue. And these days I'm finding it hard to avoid the nagging and unsought conviction that this freedom now demands responsible exercise. Methodology is everything. Starting points are everything. Glen Stassen and I wrote a widely read book in which we argued that truly Christian ethics focuses relentlessly on Jesus Christ. It starts there, it dwells there, it ends there. All statements about Christian morality -- all statements about anything -- must fit with the Jesus we meet in the Gospels. Jesus is where God meets the world, and thus where any who bear his name must meet the world as well. Jesus taught us to love our neighbors as ourselves. He defined neighbors to include everyone. Absolutely everyone. He sharpened that definition by calling us to attend to those regarded as the last, the least and the lost. The most rejected, the most hated, the most abandoned, the most feared, the most loathed, the most despised, the most mocked -- these are the people to whom Jesus most directs us to offer our love. I go to press conferences sometimes and talk about what Christians ought to stand for in society. Two times in recent months I have finished one of these press conferences and been approached quietly afterwards. Both times a young man has handed me a business card and gently said something like this to me: “Please do not forget about me and people like me.” They were homosexuals. They were seeking Christian love. They were asking for some help. In my doctoral dissertation I studied Christians who rescued Jews during the Holocaust. I discovered that in that horrible drama there were essentially four categories of behavior: victim, perpetrator, rescuer and bystander. Most instances of mass evil involve a small number of direct perpetrators killing a large number of hated victims in the presence of a much larger group of acquiescent bystanders, and resisted by a tiny number of rescuers. Scalded by that research, I have vowed with God's help to be a rescuer kind of Christian. In light of the hatred, mockery, loathing, fear and rejection directed at homosexuals in our society -- and in our churches -- I hope to God that I am not and never have been a perpetrator. But I fear I have indeed been a bystander. I am trying to figure out what it might mean to be a rescuer. There are always very, very compelling reasons to be a bystander. Mainly these revolve around self-interest. You live longer when you are a bystander. People like you more. And even if you entertain nagging questions of conscience about your inaction, in the end it is easier to stay out of it. And so the hated group keeps getting thrown under the bus. There are dozens of such particular flashpoints related to the issue of homosexuality. Christians, their churches, their denominations and their institutions are arguing about everything from homosexuality's causes to whether active gays can be church members or leaders to even whether gay couples can appear alongside other families in church pictorial directories. I want to begin a dialogue in this column by simply calling for the rudiments of Christian love of neighbor to extend to the homosexual. And the place to begin is in the church -- that community of faith in which we have (reportedly) affirmed that Jesus Christ is Lord. I call for the following Christian commitments: -- The complete rejection of still-common forms of speech in which anti-homosexual slurs (“queer,” “fag”) are employed either in jest or in all seriousness -- The complete rejection of a heart attitude of hatred, loathing, and fear toward homosexuals -- The complete rejection of any form of bullying directed against homosexuals or those thought to be homosexuals -- The complete rejection of political demagoguery in which homosexuals are scapegoated for our nation's social ills and used as tools for partisan politics -- The complete rejection of casual, imprecise and erroneous factual claims about homosexuality in preaching, teaching or private speech, such as, “All homosexuals choose to be that way.” -- The complete recognition of the full dignity and humanity of the homosexual as a person made in God's image and sacred in God's sight -- The complete recognition that in any faith community of any size one will find persons wrestling with homosexuality, either in their own lives or the lives of people that they love -- The complete recognition that when Jesus calls us to love our neighbors, that includes especially our homosexual neighbors, because the more a group is hated, the more they need Christ's love through us There is more to be said. But this is at least a place to start. -30- -- David Gushee is distinguished university professor of Christian ethics at Mercer University. www.davidpgushee.com