Evangelicals Concerned Inc.
“The Gay Embrace” by James M. Kushiner, Touchstone,
May 2003; “The Folly of Racism, Then; Of Sexual Liberation, Now” by
Russell D. Moore, SBC Life,
October 2003; “Biblical Marriage” by William G. Johnsson, Adventist
Review, October 2003.
by Dr. Ralph Blair
The median age of first marriage for American men is now
27, the oldest in our history. Why?
According to National Marriage Project findings, men don’t
want to give up having sex with many different women.
Meanwhile, The Greatest Weddings of All Time celebrates JFK and Jackie, Charles
and Diana, and Monica and Chandler!
Rates of divorce, spousal and child abuse and sexual harassment
are alarmingly high, both among those who go to church or those who
don’t. There are
300,000 Internet porn sites and the National Council on Sexual
Addiction says 2 million Americans are addicted – almost all are
heterosexual men, both single and married.
Forbes estimates the
porn industry revenue at $2.6 billion a year.
To be fair, of course, this is no more the full story on
heterosexuality than porn, promiscuity and non-monogamy among gay
people is the full story on homosexuality.
And yet, right-wing Christians say that an answer to the
marriage crisis lies in forbidding gay folk from marrying each other: they should be celibate or marry
someone of the other gender. And
thus contribute to more unworkable marriages and divorce, broken
homes, and broken hearts?
In
arguing against gay unions – Seventh-Day Adventist editor Johnsson
says he’s “not primarily concerned with what the state should or
should not do in recognizing these unions.”
He claims to “abhor attitudes and actions that single out
homosexuals for scorn, derision, or abuse,” though he’s
nonetheless against their enjoying the psychosexual intimacy he
reserves for his fellow heterosexuals.
Johnsson is sensitive enough to say: “I accept … that from
their earliest sexual awareness they found themselves to be ‘that
way’; that they have suffered – and still suffer – in trying to
deal with this identity; that this is not something they freely
choose. Although I find
their pain difficult to enter into, I accept its reality.” Perhaps not, for he adds: “But inclination does not have to
determine action” and he goes on to confuse deep-seated homosexual
orientation with temptations “to lie … to fornicate or become a
drunkard.” Would he
confuse domestic violence with heterosexual
“inclination?” (SDA’s
Ministry magazine notes
“that one woman in five in our American congregations is a victim of
domestic violence.” ) His
admission that homosexuality is “alien to my makeup and difficult
for me to grasp” is, indeed, the case.
No doubt a later SDA editor will know better – as presumably
Johnsson knows better than SDA pioneer Ellen G. White who,
notwithstanding her better insights otherwise, taught that spilling
“seed” outside heterosexual intercourse killed seed people.
Moore is a Southern Baptist Seminary
professor. His
denomination split from northern Baptist churches in order to
perpetuate “Bible”-based slavery in18th century America and
“Bible”-based racial segregation into the second half of 20th
century America. Long
after the slaves were dead and gone, Southern Baptists finally
reinterpreted the Bible and apologized for their bigotry.
Astonishingly, Moore now claims that “the gay liberation
movement in the mainline churches stands firmly in the tradition of
the segregationist churches of the Jim Crow-era South.”
Admitting that, during the 1950s and 1960s, “many [?] of our
churches were ignorant of just how captive they were to a culture of
racial oppression” he fails to see how that same “Bible”-based
cultural conservatism now drives the oppression of gay people.
Following his white supremacist forebears, he faults the
liberators of today’s oppressed (calling them, this time, “the
mainline churches” – cf. the northern churches of a bygone era).
Moore grants that “Baptist pastors once mistakenly thought
they could preach the gospel and still stand in the church-house door
blocking out people for whom Christ died from joining the
fellowship.” But then
he has the self-serving and illogical audacity to identify today’s
supporters of oppressed homosexuals with yesteryear’s oppressors of
black people! He says:
“As Southern Baptists, we’ve seen all of this before.” Indeed
they have!
Trading on a word association with C. S. Lewis, Touchstone calls itself
“A Journal of Mere Christianity.”
But the “mere” thing about this magazine is its neocon
narrow-mindedness. In
fact, Touchstone contradicts Lewis’ spot-on recognition that “the
real reason for all the pother [over homosexuality is] neither
Christian nor ethical” but simply because, to heterosexuals, it’s
taken to be “disreputable and unmentionable, and,” he adds wryly,
“happens also to be a crime.”
Executive
editor James M. Kushiner dishonors gay people (none of whom asked to
be gay) by placing quotation marks around “gay” and “gay
unions.” He makes fun
of their not “clamoring for more time in the confessional or for
access to vows of celibacy” while he enjoys marriage and six
children. So much for the
Lord’s law of concern for the needs of our neighbors based in what
we know to be our own needs. That
was Jesus’ interpretive touchstone.
It’s not Kushiner’s – at least with gay people.
When United Methodists observe that “faithful Christians can
disagree on the compatibility of homosexual practice with Christian
teaching” and Episcopalians note that “we are of different minds
[on issues of homosexuality but] we do not believe these should be
church-dividing issues,” Kushiner attacks them as though Paul had
never written Romans 14. Attacking
United Presbyterians who have ordained “practicing homosexuals and
bless[ed] homosexual unions,” contrary to the denomination’s
constitution, he seems to put more stock in a constitution than in the
canonical text of the Golden Rule.
Below Kushiner’s piece is an ad promoting Touchstone editors who are available for speaking engagements. It’s headlined: “Lend me your ears.” That’s what gay people want from those at Touchstone – ears that will hear them. As the cell phone commercials keep asking: “Can you hear me now?” Sadly, at Touchstone, as at SBC Life, Adventist Review and elsewhere, they can’t. Or, they won’t. And yet, as Bonhoeffer said, listening is the very first thing we owe the oppressed.