I attended the movie “In-laws and Outlaws” and joined the candlelight march around the State Capitol on October 12th. It recalled to mind a similar march I made several years ago from the U.S. Capitol to the White House and wondered what the marches accomplished other than to make some people feel better about themselves and realize that they weren’t alone. Some of my friends have just become cynics and given up that some churches are ever really going to change and will never do more than just “tolerate” our community. I’ve already seen a lot of change in the attitudes of American society during my lifetime even though there is more work to be done, such as passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). The Methodist Church seems to be one of the last “holdouts” in acceptance of GLBT persons.

It was on the same week as the march when a political catfight broke out among the various national GLBT organizations over whether or not to include transgendered people in the proposed ENDA that has been languished in Congress for 14 years. A bill was voted out of a House committee and got stuck in a debate in trying to make passage to the Senate when the lead sponsor announced that in his political opinion a compromise was needed to assure passage. All hell broke out, and the name-calling and emotions ran high even though the whole thing was “put on hold” for a month. I’m not a political insider, but it seems to me that whatever happens later, the “other side” already has achieved its goal of fracturing the GLBT community into warring factions, which has been the history of the movement and why so little has been achieved in terms of legislation. The most significant advancement of GLBT rights in a century was the U.S. Supreme Court Decision in 2003 striking down state sodomy laws as unconstitutional, and that momentous event already seems to have been forgotten or at least ignored (by both sides).

At the same time, I’ve been reading “Homosexuality and God’s Household,” a Current Issues course that I downloaded from the Christianity Today web site. I did it mostly out of curiosity, but as I read it I realized that even with a subtler and less hostile approach to the issue, the fundamentalists are still espousing a very dangerous misinterpretation of the Bible that is being used to ruin lives. Their reasoning is that 1) assuming homosexuality is a sin (not open to discussion), 2) we’re all sinners but God gives us the grace and power to overcome our sin, 3) and through that grace GLBT people can repress their sinful behavior even if they never overcome their orientation, 4) we’re all called to “suffer” in some respect, and 5) we possibly can even learn to “assume” a heterosexual role and to marry and have families. Well, I’ve had too many friends who were “bi-sexual” and in “straight marriages” and they nearly all ended in tragedy. Unless one accepts himself or herself as he or she “is”, then their lives will be exhausted in fighting a losing and self-destructive battle that most often destroys them and their families. I resent being placed in the same category as alcoholics, drug addicts, and prostitutes who need to be reformed from their addictions.

I refuse to get into a psychological, sociological, or theological debate about the causes or “cures” for homosexuality and the discussion of nature versus nurture, genetic predisposition or personal experiences, and how that determines how one acts upon his or her orientation. I don’t care. To me it’s an academic debate that might have some impact in terms of rationale for possible legislation or court cases but has nothing with how the church should deal with the subject. We’ve already exhausted the debate about biblical exegesis in interpreting the proper moral stance on the issue.

As I see it, the church either is open and accepting of everyone as it claims to be, or it isn’t. It can’t be halfway. And it is wrong for pastors to try to serve as amateur psychologists and try to “change” people in a field where many are woefully ignorant. It is even more of a perversion of the Wesleyan tradition to formally state that a local pastor has the authority to determine whether or not a person is “fit” to become a member --- a position challenged by the Council of Bishops. If allowed to stand as church law, this ruling will be open to abuse and liable to arbitrary interpretation as often has been the case in secular laws regarding sexual behavior. They are interpreted one way for heterosexuals and another way for homosexuals, which are inherently discriminatory, which was the basis of the Supreme Court ruling.

As we once again approach General Conference, the GLBT community and their allies are being portrayed as divisive and threatening the unity of the church. We’ve been fighting the battle so long so why not just give up rather than “splitting the church” over the issue ---- as though it was all our fault --- and without the protests at the conferences of the church the issue would just “go away” and everything would be peaceful again. Well, the insistence of some within the church of maintaining the status quo in the face of the growing understanding and acceptance of GLBT people in society will only make the Methodist Church perceived as backward or irrelevant on social issues and failing in its mission of evangelism to all the world.