Posted on 05/08/2009 11:01:20 AM PDT by AlaskaErik
Two issues continue to cloud the American political scene. Gay rights and the protection of life. These two issues are seen as so important that many Americans are willing to ignore all other issues such as poverty, housing, foreign policy and health care to vote according to a candidate’s position on homosexuality and abortion.
The right to life, abortion, freedom of choice issue is much the tougher issue and a healthy debate should continue until some sort of understanding is reached and codified into laws that are firmly upheld by our courts. I suspect the most workable solution is not yet on the table for discussion. We Americans are good at prolonged debate. This willingness to discuss and debate is a basic reason we are a great nation.
The rights of gay people are a different matter. About 35 years ago when I first began facing the fact of the presence of gays in our churches, I became a very lonely advocate for their full acceptance and participation. The accepted opinion was that homosexuals were sick or woefully sinful or both. The majority of Americans have moved a long way from that damning evaluation. American opinion is moving us in the direction of full equal rights for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people.
Those who want to block full rights for gay people have consistently been losing in the courts of America. They have turned to ballot initiatives with significant success. However, those victories are limited in scope. These last-ditch efforts have been to reserve the word “marriage” for heterosexual couples. I suspect even those victories will have a short life. Gay rights activists have long known that they will eventually win by winning young. In other words, younger voters are voting overwhelmingly in favor of gay rights. Old voters die first.
I have tried to analyze what has happened to bring this shift of opinion in so short a time. I offer three reasons.
First, gay people slowly but surely have come out of their closets. Gay people have always been around us, in our families, in our communities, in our churches and in our institutions. Our gay family members and friends were invisible to us. The most highly developed skill of a gay person was to remain undetected. No one can point to a single event and say, “It started here,” but there are milestones in the opening of the closet door.
This year is the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall incident. New York City police raided a gay bar called the Stonewall Inn. A riot broke out. That single incident, more than any other, is the rallying point for gay activism. The celebration of the Stonewall riot is the base for all gay pride celebrations and parades.
The next milestone, especially for gay Christians, was the publishing of a book in 1972 titled, “The Lord Is My Shepherd, and He Knows I am Gay.” It was written by a Pentecostal minister named Troy Perry. Because of Perry’s efforts there is now a sizable denomination called Metropolitan Community Church that offers a safe church home to gay people who have been turned aside by their churches. Reading Perry’s book was pivotal in shaping my own understanding of the homosexual phenomenon.
The importance of Phil Donahue cannot be overstated. More than any other person he took the discussion of homosexuality into the public arena. He was a pioneer in the world of television talk shows. He took the discussion of the gay presence among us out of the closet. He took what had been a private concern into the public square.
At first gay people came out of their closets in a trickle. The trickle became a stream and today is a flood. Twenty years ago the typical gay person came out of the closet in college. Now kids in junior high are joining the ranks of the openly gay population. The closet is nearing extinction.
The second factor in establishing gay rights has been the battle over the Bible. Forty years ago, Churches of every stripe rejected gay people and especially sexual activities among gay people. The commonly held perspective was that the Bible rejected homosexuals and homosexual activities of all kinds. Then Biblical scholars began their homework. A few scholars starting in the mid-1980s looked more intently at the nine Bible passages that were commonly identified as rejecting homosexual activity. In the 1990s a flood of scholarly books hit the bookstores. I have them all in my personal library. The verdict: Not a single passage in the entire Bible speaks about a loving, committed, intimate relationship between two people of the same sex. The Bible neither endorses nor condemns same-sex relationships. The Bible cannot be used to reject gay people.
Primarily because of the influence of scholarship, opposition to full acceptance of gay people in mainline Christian churches is melting away. I suspect that 50 years from now, Christians will be as embarrassed about the rejection of gay people as they are now about the denial of equality for women and their support of the horror of black slavery.
The third influence may be the most important. As gay people moved out of their closets and into a more public presence, they have proven themselves to be good public citizens. Our communities are blessed by teachers, lawyers, business owners, legislators, carpenters, doctors and ministers who just happen to be gay. When we get to know our gay neighbors, denying them their full rights, including the right to marry legally becomes all the more absurd.
Full acceptance of gay people in our churches and in our American society needs to be affirmed and celebrated. We need to put this dark night of ignorance and discrimination behind us. The 40th anniversary observances of the Stonewall riot are a good time for thoughtful people of good will to walk hand-in-hand with our gay neighbors.
The Rev. Howard Bess is a retired American Baptist minister, who lives in Palmer. His email address is hdbss@mtaonline.net.
Anyone with any Biblical knowledge knows that Satan is the great deceiver.
The writer of the article has been deceived.
“Vice is a monster of such frightful mien, that to be hated needs but to be seen; but seen too oft, familiar with its face, we first endure, then pity, then embrace!” Alexander Pope
I agree. I learned that back in 4th grade...and this writer is a pastor? “Shakes head in disbelief”
Prayer’s are out for you and him!
Stay Strong and never give up on him but never give in
Kill him with kindness, let you light expose the darkness.
Stay strong!
> What rights did a gay person not have until recently?
Silly conservative, “rights” are all about the public acceptance deviant and dangerous sex practices, putting every person in the globe on welfare, and the recreational use of narcotics. At least that’s the way it seems from the MSM.
Even if it was genetic, we all have temptations that we are subject too. For instance, I am extremely fond of women, but that doesn’t give me the right to run around on my wife. I’m fond of Bushmill’s, too, but that doesn’t mean that God is OK with me being drunk.
I guess as far as interpreting the Bible, or the Constitution for that matter, as long as you are willing to ignore both the context and the plain sense of the words, you can make them mean anything.
"..That is what scares the Rev. Howard Bess. A retired American Baptist minister who pastors a small congregation in nearby Palmer, Wasilla's twin town in Alaska's Matanuska Valley, Bess has been tangling with Palin and her fellow evangelical activists ever since she was a Wasilla City Council member in the 1990s. Recently, Bess again found himself in the spotlight with Palin, when it was reported that his 1995 book, "Pastor, I Am Gay," was among those Palin tried to have removed from the Wasilla Public Library when she was mayor.[SNIP]
[SNIP]The retired minister moved to the Mat-Su Valley with his wife, Darlene, in 1987, after his outspoken defense of gay rights at Baptist churches in the Santa Barbara, Calif., area and Anchorage landed him in trouble with church officials..."
There IS an organization ot there called the Prolife Association of Gays and lesbians (PLAGAL) that uses exactly that argument: if there IS a genetic cause for homosexuality, and it comes to- the point where it can be detected prenatally, abortion could wipe out the gay community in a generation. Therefore they're pro-life.
(And for other reasons as well.)
The argument is not over, however, I agree that the gays will someday prevail. They have become too big a voting block not to. I don’t look forward to this.
All I want to say is keep the heart-connection with him, the face, the smile, the voice, the words, the actions that mean love. Thank God for giving you this son, this particular son --- because it was no accident. (Hard to believe during the hard times, but true.)
"God's ways are above our ways as the heavens are above the earth, and so are God's thoughts above our thoughts."
Thank you for sharing that. Don't ever lose faith though.
God bless you and that is the very best day to day description of the plight ever written. God like honest.
The comparison is totally specious because Christianity has nothing to apologize for with the slavery issue. The abolition movement grew out of evangelical Christianity and was an almost entirely Christian movment.
I’ve read a number of these “reinterpretations” of scripture.
It’s pretty much what you would expect. They claim the passages have been mistranslated and/or taken out of context by evil Christians. Sometimes they get into true Da Vinci Code territory by claiming the texts were altered to insert anti-gay propaganda.
Their arguments all require pretzelizing the plain meaning of the texts.
“India has the right idea. It’s illegal, but rarely prosecuted, which simply means “keep it out if society’s face: if you start rubbing it in society’s face, we’re going to stop you. if we don’t have to know, and we don’t have to tell our children what it is, then we don’t really care.”
That’s why a lot of parents are upset over this. They don’t want the schools that they pay for with their tax money foisting this on their kids. They probably couldn’t care less what these people did in private, they just don’t want their kids indoctrinated with it.
The Bible condemns homosexual acts. It doesn't matter if those acts are committed within a so-called "loving, committed, intimate relationship" or if committed while bowing to an idol. A man lying with a man is an abomination. Women with women and men with men are described as "vile", "unseemly", "against nature" and "given over to a reprobate (rejected) mind". With descriptions like that, no one in their right mind would ever arrive at the conclusion this apostate does.
I disagree. Many Christian leaders supported and promoted slavery, justifying it for specific Christian reasons.
IOW, it was not Christian opponents vs. non-Christian supporters of slavery. Christians were found in both camps. In fact, up to at the earliest the end of the 18th century, more Christians were apologists for slavery than opponents.
Itinerant preachers used to travel around the South, hired by planters to use the Bible to teach the slaves why they should be good, loyal, obedient slaves. And, to be honest, those texts are in the Bible, which accepts slavery as just another fact of life.
The big difference, of course, is that slavery in the ancient world was not intertwined with racism and master race ideology.
One of the most heartrending things is for parents to watch their child or children continue down a path of self-destruction (regardless of the means) after they have exhausted everything they know to do to help them. Unfortunately, many people in this country have seen it happen all too often, if not in our own families, in the lives of someone we know and love.
Evil is glamorized and promoted from every aspect in our world today, while good is condemned for being judgmental and intolerant.
God bless you and your son to hold on to that good and special connection of love and home between parent and child despite all the bad that has come between you.
Prayers for you and your family. The Prodigal Son came home (Luke 15:11-32). May your son’s eyes and heart be opened before it’s too late.
Thanks for posting that quote...much wisdom there.
No credible scientist will state gays are born with their same-sex attraction. None. Not a single credible scientist will make that claim. Yet people continue to be duped.
Simon LeVay is a scientist who also happens to be gay. Here is what he said in 1996:
People who think gays and lesbians are born that way are also more likely to support gay rights.I agree with LeVay, and this is precisely why educating the nation is so important because science is quite hostile to the born that way theory.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.