Newsletter of EVANGELICALS CONCERNED, INC
SPRING 2001
Romans 8
Contrary to the
shrill lesbigayt anti-Bush propaganda (k. d. lang:
"I’m scared to the britches of George W.
Bush.") these and other signs of promise confirm an
increasingly welcoming Republican Party. When he picked
Dick Cheney as his running mate, Bush was not deterred by
Mary Cheney’s role as the Coors Brewing
Company’s openly lesbian liaison to the gay and
lesbian market. President Bush has said that he judges
people by their heart and their character and that sexual
orientation doesn’t matter to him. There were
openly-gay Republicans on his transition team. His
long-time friend, Charles Francis, put the gay and
lesbian breakfast together under sponsorship by Coors,
Microsoft, Pfizer and Verizon. While attending one of the
Inaugural Balls, the Bushes were invited to a party
hosted by a gay couple they’ve known for years. They
accepted and attended. The President plans to keep in
effect the executive order banning sexual
orientation-based discrimination in federal employment.
On February 22, Attorney General John Ashcroft, an
evangelical Christian, met at the Justice Department with
five representatives of the Log Cabin Republicans.
Ashcroft’s meeting with this gay group was his very
first meeting with any civil rights group since his
appointment was confirmed.
Gay conservative columnist Bruce Bawer comments: "Richard Nixon defied his core constituency by initiating détente with the Soviet Union and China. Might President Bush defy his supporters by adopting policies that recognize the single largest social change to happen on his predecessor’s watch?" According to PlanetOut News, there is a "shift in power among Washington-based GLBT groups. After pulling out all the stops to aid Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore, most of the mainstream organizations like the Human Rights Campaign and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force have little cache with the Bush administration." Credibility now lies with Log Cabin Republicans and gay/lesbian moderates such as the authors associated with the Independent Gay Forum www.indegayforum.org.
The response to gay pop star Elton John’s performing a duet with antigay rapper Eminem at the Grammy Awards was mixed. Unlike the solid wall of lesbigayt hostility against Dr. Laura’s antigay opinions, there has been relatively weak lesbigayt criticism and even some support when it comes to the antigay lyrics of Eminem (e.g. "my words are like a dagger with a jagged edge/ that’ll stab you in the head whether you’re a fag or a les. …Hate fags? The answer’s yes."). Black lesbian rapper Shante Smalls praises Eminem: "The boy is brilliant, the boy can rhyme." Says B-Boy Blues’ James Earl Hardy: "Caucasian queer America is scared – now there’s a face on black culture that looks just like them." At a rapper panel discussion, "Homie-Sexual Hip Hop," attended by some 50 New Yorkers on the night before the Awards show (at which Eminem won three awards and a standing ovation), the consensus, according to the gay New York Blade News, was that "ultimately, hip-hop artists – even Eminem …should not be held accountable for their words, songs, or albums." Says New York lesbian activist Ann Northrop: "I like Eminem. I think he’s too smart to be homophobic. What he’s doing is more of a cultural analysis." Madonna chimes in: "Thank God [Eminem’s] rebellious and not well-groomed. He gets my vote."Lynn Cheney, wife of the Vice President and mother of an openly lesbian daughter, told a CNN interviewer that she deplored Eminem’s hate-filled lyrics: "Eminem is certainly, I think, the most extreme example of rock lyrics used to demean women, advocate violence against women, violence against gay people." She added: "Elton John has been good in the past about speaking out on issues of equality for gay people, on issues of being against violent language against gay people. I am quite amazed and dismayed that he would choose to perform with Eminem."
Openly bisexual and Christian musician Moby told the Los Angeles Times: "I’m 33 and can see through it, but I can’t imagine that an 8-year-old in Idaho sees it as just a joke … and I find it deeply disturbing that people are lending him as much support as they do. You cannot say there’s no correlation between people’s actions and what is seen and heard in popular culture. You can’t put out homophobic and misogynist and racist stuff and say it’s all a joke. It’s not."
The infamous antigay Chick tracks have been revised to bear slightly less false witness against homosexuals. In the 1991 version of this fundamentalist publisher’s antigay cartoon strips, gay pickets carried signs reading "Kill the Bigots!," "Civil Rights or Civil War!," and "Accept us or Die!" In the revision, available on Chick’s Web site, the signs now read: "Hate is not a family value," "God is Love!," and "Stop the Religious Right!" These are more like the actual signs carried by gay pickets. Nonetheless, the so-called homosexuals of Sodom are still depicted as ugly, fat, hairy, scary and effeminate cross-dressers who abuse frightened little boys.
D. James Kennedy’s Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale has continued its assault on gay men and lesbians by hosting an antigay rally to repeal the Human Rights Ordinance of Broward County. Homosexuals were repeatedly reviled as "the enemy that must be stopped." These antigay forces want to dismantle the law that now protects citizens from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
The Religious Right’s Focus on the Family is suing a Florida transit authority for rejecting to post its "ex-gay" ads on Tampa-area bus shelters. The Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority pulled the ads because of their baseless claims for "preventing homosexuality." The advertising contract with the authority allowed for rejection of ads deemed to be "false, misleading, or deceptive."
Jeremy Marks, for 14 years the leader of the "ex-gay" movement in Britain, now says: "I no longer believe in the ex-gay message." According to Marks: "the assumptions underlying the ex-gay approach simply don’t stand up in the long term." Exodus International is giving him and his organization a two-year leave of absence as he shifts his focus from sexual orientation "change" to realistic support for gay men and lesbians. He testifies that his own sexual orientation has never changed and he’s never seen anyone else change either. Says Marks: "We have to ask ourselves the question, Have we been praying the kind of prayer God wants to answer?"
"He drove differently, he stopped controlling where I went, he quit hiding where he spent his money. He literally looked and acted like a new person." This is the Exodus Update front-page "ex-gay" witness of a woman married to a man who "confessed he had committed adultery with numerous other men since our wedding day." [February 2001] Though he’d told her of his homosexuality on their second date, they went ahead and got married anyway. Now, she reports, "three of our family members [are infected] with Hepatitis B, a disease commonly found in the homosexual community." She and her "ex-gay" husband direct an "ex-gay" program in Spokane.
ORU-OUT or "Oh! Are you out?" is a group for gay and lesbian alumni of Oral Roberts University. Formed in November of 1999 by alumnus Jeff McKissack, the organization now has over 150 members. Some of the members openly attended the ORU Homecoming in February. Romans 8:38-39 emblazons the home page of the group’s Web site, www.oru-out.com. The site features some moving stories of alumni who have been through the isolation of the ORU closet, the dashed hopes of "ex-gay" efforts, and even failed marriage before coming back to a child-like confidence in God’s unconditional love in Jesus Christ. It appears that, on campus, the Web site has been blocked from within the University’s computer system.
Lesbian novelist Carole Maso’s new book, The Room Lit by Roses, is non-fiction – a journal of her pregnancy and the birth of the baby her partner of 20 years had prayed for. Maso writes: "The cells multiply, the code is passed, and she is made. When the four-day-old cluster arrives in the womb, it is made up of three dozen cells. Closely packed together they are known as morula – from the Latin for mulberry. My beautiful mulberry girl."
Steve Cook, the San Jose contact for the Pro-Life Alliance of Gays and Lesbians has been offered the temporary chair of the San Jose Pro-Life Council (affiliated with National Right to Life). He seems to be the first openly glbt member to hold the position. The gay and lesbian alliance can be reached at www.plagal.org.
The Atlanta Baptist Association has voted to keep two gay-friendly congregations in its membership. The Oakhurst Baptist Church and the Virginia-Highland Baptist Church had already been "disfellowshipped" by the national Southern Baptist Convention and the Georgia Baptist Association for "affirming and approving and endorsing homosexual behavior" by ordaining gays and lesbians and by blessing their relationships. In reaction against the local association’s vote, an antigay preacher is threatening to found an alternative local network.
The United Methodist Church in Virginia has stopped financing a Christian student organization at Mary Washington College because it deems it too gay-friendly. This move comes at a time when the interdenominational group was beginning to be seen as less friendly to gays and lesbians since the departure of its previous chaplain.
Shirley Guthrie, a former professor at Columbia Theological Seminary, lamented the internal divisions over homosexuality in the Presbyterian Church (USA) as he addressed the denomination’s General Assembly Council in February. "You’ve got self-righteous people on all sides arguing with other self-righteous people. … Sometimes both sides are wrong." He called the debates "trivial" in light of the fact that "hundreds of thousands of people are starving to death."
The Presbyterian Church (USA) has turned down an antigay amendment to forbid the blessing of same-sex unions. By March 6, 87 of the denomination’s 173 presbyteries had voted against the amendment, effectively defeating it.
Martin Marty, the dean of American church historians, imagines questions Jesus might be asked at a confirmation hearing for attorney general. The interview is in a recent installment of his column in Christian Century. Noting that "What would Jesus do?" [WWJD] "has become a tired slogan," Marty poses the question: "What about homosexual acts?" Jesus responds: "Ditto." That references Jesus’ previous response to a question about abortion: "I don’t think you’ll find anything in the record. Reread the Gospels." Jesus is then asked about pornography, adultery, lust, and obscenity. His response: "It’s all there in Matthew 5." Affirmative action? "My father and I have worked that out in what you call the Beatitudes. We turn things topsy-turvy and don’t base things on merit."
"Getting All Spiritual" is the cover story of a recent issue of POZ, a magazine that bills itself: "We’re all over AIDS." According to POZ, "The newest trend in treatment is a heaping dose of religion" or, as this special section puts it: "the other F word." As six HIV-positive people share their faith, they inadvertently illustrate the failure of traditional Christian communities in addressing issues of sexuality and AIDS. The six people are a former Baptist who joined the Nation of Islam while in prison, a former Roman Catholic who is now into Buddhism, Hinduism and Jung, another former Roman Catholic who is now into "Queer Christianity" in the Metropolitan Community Church, a woman who still holds on to the Catholicism of her Guatemalan youth – her santo is the crucifix on her front lawn, a woman who has found her roots in Judaism, and a woman who was reared by her mother, a Pentecostal evangelist, but who says "My experience is my belief now." There is today’s usual pantheism ("I believe that God is man, woman animal, child, bug, tree, flower"), the usual syncretism ("Jesus Christ is my savior, but I also believe that there are guardian angels, African saints, Buddha. I believe in Reiki. All this allows me to be open."), and the ubiquitous "I define myself as spiritual rather than religious."
The American Civil Liberties Union calls it "outrageously unconstitutional" that "public, taxpayer funds" were used in the District of Columbia to distribute a booklet that encourages readers to follow the example of Jesus in being compassionate to people with AIDS. ACT UP’s D.C. chapter complained loudly. Consequently, the D.C. Health Administration has ceased distributing the literature containing the references to Jesus. Meanwhile, the ACLU finds nothing wrong with the use of public, taxpayer funds to depict Jesus as a frontal-nude female or as the beloved disciple’s gay boyfriend.
"Celebrating the spirit of being Muslim and LGBTQ-identified," the 2nd North American Conference for LGBTQ Muslims & Friends will be held in San Francisco in June. Keynoters include Mel White (Soulforce founder), Troy Perry (founder of the Metropolitan Community Churches), Sulayman X (Moderator of Queer Jihad), Christian De La Huerta, (head of Q-Spirit), Stephen Murray (co-editor of Islamic Homosexualities) and Daayiee Abdullah of the board of Al-Fatiha, the sponsoring organization.
AND FINALLY:
Tim LaHaye has written and spoken out against gay people for years, always using the dubious "homosexual" interpretation of I Corinthians 6. Lately, he’s made millions on his (and co-author Jerry Jenkins’) best-selling fiction series, Left Behind. Now he’s ignoring the main point of the Corinthians passage – that Christians should not haul other Christians into the secular law courts. He is suing Christians who produced Left Behind: The Movie. Among other things, LaHaye’s lawsuit involves disputed ownership of rights of spin-off products such as T-shirts and jewelry. According to World magazine: "All expressed regret at the spectacle of Christians fighting other Christians in court. But LaHaye lawyer Christopher Rudd said his client is ‘determined to have his day in court, and he deserves it.’" Meanwhile, Charisma News Service reports that Jenkins is seeking to be excused from becoming a plaintiff for "religious reasons."
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