We’ve been warned about the perils of generalizations --- so how do we get a handle on understanding the LGBT community in the Carolinas? First, a little history: For 25 years (before the World Wide Web), the primary means of communications was a LGBT newspaper published in Raleigh called THE FRONT PAGE that was distributed in the bars (the primary social center) and supported by their advertising. It was followed by a competitor published in Charlotte called Q-NOTES that took the lead when THE FRONT PAGE ceased publication in 2006. THE FRONT PAGE survived by being co-housed with the Raleigh LGBT bookstore The White Rabbit that also had stores in Wilmington and Charlotte.

Although the major cities have sizable LGBT populations, most people would be surprised to learn that towns such as Wilmington, Hickory and Hendersonville also have a lot of queers hidden in the woodwork. Greensboro, Raleigh, and Charlotte, as the largest metropolitan areas, had professional organizations sometimes called the gay chamber of commerce. The Triangle Business & Professional Guild survived for 10 years before folding in 2006. At its peak, the Guild had 400 members, an average monthly attendance at the RTP Holiday Inn of 125 and built a Habitat for Humanity house in Durham. The organizations in the other cities are thriving. A LGBT web site called GayTriangle.com appeared for about six months in 2000 to be followed by OutTriangle.Com in 2005 that still maintains a calendar. The national web sites/magazines The Advocate and Planet Out have large participation in the Carolinas. In 2004 the Raleigh Convention & Visitors Bureau hired a staff member to promote LGBT business. New York, San Francisco, DC, and LA get most of the media attention as LGBT centers, but cities such as Palm Springs, Philadelphia, and Miami also are courting gay tourism and business.

The national advocacy organization The Human Rights Campaign has grown significantly in the past decade with major funding and bought the Jewish Anti-Defamation League building in DC and has gotten into lobbying big-time. They have recovered from the debacle of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” initiative in 1993. Last year they formed a coalition of religious leaders who are actively promoting gay marriage. In North Carolina, with the support of some major grants, Equality NC has managed to keep an anti-gay marriage amendment off the books in comparison with a lot of other southern states that have passed such amendments within the past five years. The Massachusetts court decision pushed gay marriage into the forefront of media attention, and the LGBT community really wasn’t prepared to deal with it effectively. The backlash from the conservatives about the marriage debate killed any chance of the long-pending legislation in Congress formalizing national non-discrimination policies called ENDA (The Employment Non-Discrimination Act). It is still legal to fire someone just for being suspected of being gay. The Supreme Court decision in 2003 decriminalizing homosexuality in one stroke eliminated the legal basis for all state sodomy statues, even though many still remain on the books. Equality NC has lobbied for repeal of the NC Crimes Against Nature law without success. Such laws have largely been un-enforced and applied arbitrarily by local authorities either to harass or blackmail LGBT people.

For more than 20 years major employers have had diversity programs that included recruiting and retention of LGBT employees. Some of the big employers in the Triangle such as Glaxo-Smith-Kline (GSK), IBM, SAS, Cisco, and the EPA have employee support/social programs as part of their employee assistance programs. So why have corporations been so far out in front of the churches? They saw early on the competitive advantage of having open employment policies and the market advantage of appealing to an affluent niche market. But churches are supposed to uphold moral standards, and businesses only seek a profit and ignore social responsibility, right? Although social justice probably didn’t rank high in their policies of openness, they didn’t flinch when it came to making the tough decisions and standing up to the radical right when they were attacked for those policies.

Although the Episcopal church has been getting most of the media coverage on this issue (both nationally and locally) since the Methodist Judicial Council flap ceased, it may be surprising to learn that the Baptists are into the fray also. Of course, the Southern Baptist Convention is well known for its homophobic pronouncements. The American Baptist Convention is perhaps not as well know, and particularly for the fact the Welcoming and Affirming Baptists Program (comparable to the Reconciling Methodist Program) now has 65 affiliated congregations, including five here in North Carolina. So even the Baptists are ahead of us on this issue.

So aside from the quadrennial debate over the wording of the Discipline, where and how do Methodists get involved? Quite frankly, re-interpreting the Biblical Scriptures is a pointless activity that accomplishes very little. Jack Rogers’ “Jesus, The Bible, and Homosexuality: Explode the Myths, Heal the Church” Westminster John Knox Press, 2006, is perhaps the most technical book on the subject. He is the former moderator of the Presbyterian Church, USA and spoke at 1^st Presbyterian Church in Durham on the issue last fall under the sponsorship of Equality NC who was promoting him across the state. After Jimmy Creech lost his credentials, he kept saying that he was writing a book, but then he became involved with Mel White and Soulforce. Mel White’s latest book “Religion Gone Bad: The Hidden Dangers of the Christian Right” Penguin Books, 2006, takes a much broader brush that goes more into denominational politics than biblical exegesis.

For friends and allies, I hope this brief history lesson has helped provide some understanding of the struggle of the LGBT community to obtain equal rights in the United States comparable to those provided in most other developed countries and to achieve equal access in the Methodist Church.