Gay Liberation Confronts the Church

For a young movement, Gay Liberation has come a long way. The first Gay Liberation group was formed in 1969 after an incident in New York City’s Greenwich Village. Police closed a homosexual bar, and patrons of the bar decided to fight back. They battled police with fists and bricks, set fires, and destroyed property. Homosexual anti-war dissidents saw here an opportunity to radicalize the homosexual community, which previously had shunned publicity. Before long, Gay Liberation Fronts and Gay Activist groups were being organized across the country.

The Judeo-Christian heritage, on which this country’s civil and criminal codes are based, loomed large as a barrier to the success of Gay Liberation. As Christians spoke out against “equal rights” legislation before local government bodies, Gay Liberationists felt a need for anti-church programs. Now that many local governments have given legal protection to the homosexual, Liberationists have begun to campaign for recognition within the churches. Supporters of equal rights for homosexuals have been able to back Gay Liberation in its demands for civil legislation without church support. But they realize that support for change in the criminal codes will require church approval of homosexuality as a valid alternative life-style for its members.

Many denominations are being forced to face the issue of homosexuality within their membership and leadership. Ads for “gay caucuses” and “gay organizational meetings” within the Lutheran, Presbyterian, Nazarene, Southern Baptist, Episcopal and Roman Catholic churches are appearing in the leading national homophile newspaper, The Advocate. Such groups are being formed to obtain “equal rights” for homosexual men and women within these denominations. The United Methodist Church is already experiencing the pangs of possible schism as sides are being taken on the homosexual issues to be brought up at the General Conference next year. Some gay organizations are advertising in the secular and religious media. Dignity, a gay Catholic group, advertises in national and local Roman Catholic papers. It has taken ads in the Washington Post stating it is “serving the Gay Catholic Community.” Such ads appear in the religious-news section of the paper; they are as large as the notices printed by many of the major churches in the area.

But the Church as a whole has not recognized the attack that is coming from within. It has concentrated on defending itself against the attacks of Gay Liberation from without. Many clergymen, seminarians, and lay leaders in all denominations are covertly supporting the demands of these “gay caucuses” as a matter of social justice.

The Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches is a gay church group formed by Troy Perry, formerly an ordained Pentecostal minister. In less than six years it has come to have more than thirty-nine chartered congregations and forty-three missions and study groups with a combined membership of more than seventeen thousand.

Many homosexuals who formerly were interested in Christianity have turned away from God completely, or have joined other faiths where they are accepted as homosexuals. Many leaders in Gay Liberation have had seminary or Bible school and college training. Some have been ordained. These facts strongly suggest that the Church has failed to minister to the homosexual with an understanding of his problems. Its failure to do so has fostered the confrontation now taking place between the Church and homosexuals.

This lack of understanding is causing the churches to cater to the demands of a few Liberationists who are interested in selfishly achieving consent for their personal life-style. Gay Lib does not speak for the majority of the more than twenty million homosexuals in this country. It certainly does not speak for the many homosexuals who want to change their sexual habits. It should not be allowed to force the churches to accept its objective of sexual license. Gay Lib has validity as a movement when it deals with social, economic, legislative, and political problems of the homosexual. It has no validity in the areas of morality and theology.

Can the Christian Church emerge stronger from its confrontation with Gay Liberation? It can if it will stand upon the Word of God in full, not just those passages that condemn the sin of homosexuality but those that put forward the regenerative power of Jesus Christ. The truth of Scripture cannot be accepted one day and denied the next. Nor can it be applied to satisfy prejudice, or according to a personal interpretation based on acquired emotional reactions. We have much to learn from the account of how Christ ministered to the adulteress.

The churches can and should support legislation that would give the homosexual equal rights in employment, housing, and public accommodation. This support does not preclude a stand against changes in criminal or moral codes. When the churches give such support they thereby undermine one of the persuasive arguments of Gay Liberationists and clear the way for ministering to homosexuals in a positive way. When many of the discriminations of our civil laws fall, churches can then pursue in ministry the problem of the homosexual’s relation to God.

Scripture clearly shows that there can be no acceptance of homosexuality as a valid way of life. Yet Paul tells us in First Corinthians 6 that this problem appeared in the early Church and was overcome: “And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.” If it was overcome then, it can be overcome today.

Homosexuals are likely to be well aware of the biblical passages referring to Sodom and the sin of homosexuality. What they are waiting to hear is the regenerative message of Jesus Christ and his love for them. For most of them, love is a missing element. The homosexual has been written off as sick, perverse, unsalvageable. Active homosexual behavior occurs through an act of the will provoked by circumstance. It reflects a need to love and be loved. The behavior then becomes habitual. The only way to break this habit is to find something greater as a replacement.

For the homosexual to redirect his sexual attitudes, four steps are necessary: acceptance of Jesus Christ as Saviour; confession of all prior sin, not specifically the homosexual habit; commitment to God; acceptance into the Christian community and Church for fellowship and growth in continued study of the Word of God. The first three steps are a matter of individual will. The last is likely to be more difficult, because it may require Christians to set aside their previous attitudes toward homosexuals.

Christians need to practice the love spoken of throughout the New Testament, specifically in John 13:34—“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another even as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.” With such love they can stop the rising tide of homosexuality. More than any other kind of sinner, the homosexual needs such love. He needs to know this pure emotion, not the physical act that man has superimposed as a definition of love.

Where there is love there is no fear. Gay Liberationists contend that the condemnation of Christians has created the atmosphere of fear in which homosexuals live. This may be true in situations where one’s relationship to the community, one’s life-style, is an open book for everyone to know and read. But the radicalism of Gay Liberationists disappears when the fear they preach disappears. It is important that the Church begin to teach its members to show the homosexual the love that is Jesus Christ.

A Roman Catholic sociologist and priest recently suggested the formation of non-sectarian groups within the Church in which homosexuals could discuss their problems. The suggestion is misguided. It makes the common mistake of attempting to find the solutions in man rather than in God. A group of homosexuals coming together to discuss their problems must necessarily talk about their sexuality. Such a discussion would be erotic rather than therapeutic for some of the participants. Small groups have been a very useful tool in the treatment of alcoholics and drug addicts. But the physical and mental conditions found in drug addiction and alcoholism are completely different from the sexual fantasy and relationships that are a part of the problems of the homosexual.

We do not need to set the homosexual apart for ministry and help, any more than we would any other type of sinner. What we need to do is stop considering homosexual behavior a greater sin than all others.

Homosexual behavior is a sin, and God punishes sin. But God also forgives sin. The practicing homosexual who confesses his sin to God, repents of it, and commits himself to Jesus Christ can find in Christ the power to turn from his sin and be healed. This is the stand the churches should take in their confrontation with Gay Liberation.

THREE RONDEAUX FOR JOHN THE BAPTIST

1.

Be silent John. Keep your head.

Herodias, I admit, was quick to bed.

But she is quicker to anger and slow

To forgive. She’ll not grow

Soft nor come through guilt to dread

Your word. The lust that we once fed

Is love. Go easy. Let it be said

Your mercy was great, your anger slow.

Be silent John.

Mercy suits me, not anger. I dread

This word I speak and fear I will not shed

My prophet’s role without the swift flow

Of blood. Herodias, your grace, will know

Me dead for I will keep God’s head.

Be silent John.

2.

As Salome danced, John stooped in prayer.

He felt his matted hair

And faced the facts: his bell

Strong voice was finished. It would not tell

Christ again. Christ would bare

His kingdom and he would bear

The stench and wear

The onus of his cell,

as Salome danced.

She whirled and weaved and let her hair

Fall softly down, a snare

To catch a fox and quell

The anger of her mother’s guilty Hell.

John raged for air whirling in prayer,

as Salome danced.

3.

Bent in that prayer, he heard the jailer’s keys

Rattle in the dark. On his knees,

He heard the jailer stop before his door.

Hope, once more,

Pierced his gloom. He felt the breeze

That cooled him in the desert; he saw the trees

By the Jordan, and heard the bees

Sing the sweetness of their store.

Bent in that prayer,

He did not feel the cold hand seize

His hair and jerk him from his knees

Nor the quick knife pour

His blood onto the floor.

He felt God’s mercy like the desert breeze,

Bent in that prayer.

JOHN LEAX

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