Watch out for grace!

April 30, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

The Daily KOS (thanks for the link, Sarah), has a whole list of wacky readers’ comments about the first days of gay marriages in Iowa. These three jumped out at me:

“straight people don’t want gays to be promiscuous but they don’t want them in a legal committed relationship either…”

Somebody else wrote: “That’s because they don’t want us to exist. Their ideal world doesn’t have gay people in it at all - we’ve all been exterminated. Fortunately, cooler heads are prevailing on this issue. Mostly. “

And somebody else replied: “For people who don’t want us to exist… they certainly think about us a lot.”

They certainly do! The reactionary movement coming from the (mostly Religious) Right seems obsessed with us! For example, the blog at Gay Christian Movement Watch (”Because God has called us to holiness”) is an extensive and persistent rant about homosexuality. The “About” page states that it is “a cutting edge Christian ministry whose mission is to monitor, analyze and publish (MAP) the activities, leaders and public theological positions of the ‘gay christian movement.’”

To me, it may be the cutting edge of a very dull knife.

The blog and other materials there seem to be the work of one man, an African-American in the Atlanta area who touts his escape from homosexuality. He markets his e-book this way: “a man who lived to tell, Touching A Dead Man traces the path of a young boy’s life through childhood rejection, growing up black and COGIC and the pain of his darkest secret: homosexuality. With courage, the book paints a moving portrait of life at its best and worst: sexual violence, longing for fatherly relationship and eventual self destructive living as a gay man.”

Acronym: Church of God in Christ, a Pentecostal holiness movement – pretty serious, no-wiggle-room, don’t-screw-up, guilt-rich theology. Yep, that would be a tough place to grow up gay.

Can somebody help DL Foster with the rest? It seems he is a self-made poster child for the ex-gay ministry crowd. I certainly empathize with the other pains and sorrows he may have experienced: childhood rejection, growing up black (in our racist society), sexual violence, longing for fatherly relationship and eventual self destructive living.

But, excuse me, Rev. Foster, none of that stuff is inextricably or directly linked to being gay or lesbian (or bisexual or transgender) and none of it is linked to being LGBT/Christian. I haven’t written my book, yet, but I can share here that I didn’t grow up with childhood rejection. I am of European not African extraction (but I am of parentage tainted enough that Hitler would have hunted me down). I have never been a victim or perpetrator of sexual violence. My relationship with my father was just fine, and with God even better. And I haven’t gone through any self-destructive living, probably because I didn’t have a moralizing, guilt-inducing church to teach me to hate myself, doubt my own good judgment, and obsess about whether I would burn in hell for having my mostly-vanilla flavored hopes and desires to love someone and be loved in return.

Instead of all Foster’s drama, I remained steadfast with Christ, in a church (Lutheran) that totally ignored all sexuality when I was a child, was terrified of it when I was a college student, and has been dancing around homosexuality ever since. I discerned that I was gay (did not choose to be) while in seminary, respectfully stayed in my closet for more than a dozen years, came out gradually, avoided drugs and promiscuity, and met my life partner with whom I am still closer than ever more than three decades later.

“Look! Oh my God, no!  There’s another gay Christian!! I can’t believe it!”

So the implied argument of this minister, who is obsessed with keeping a “watch” on the Gay Christian Movement, is that living the homosexual life is a disaster, which he characterizes as that of a “dead man.” I can’t speak for him, but I can speak for my homosexual life: I have grown emotionally and spiritually. I have found incredible strength, character, love and compassion from all kinds of LGBT people, both religious and not religious, which I believe to be the work of God’s spirit active in our world. I believe that my chance meeting the man with whom I have shared my life, home, and faith was truly a gift from God. And I know, as the Gospel clearly says over and over, that God’s love has been here for me, and for countless Lesbian/gay, bisexual and transgender Christians, all along even if we didn’t notice it. I know that we are justified, reconciled, or “saved” not by our good works or by painful or melodramatic episodes of repentance, nor by total sexual abstinence, nor by profound guilt or shame, nor by self-loathing, nor by trying to change our orientation, but only by the grace of God. I will stand by what I read in the New Testament:

“For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God— not because of works, lest anyone should boast. . . . But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near in the blood of Christ. For he is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing in his flesh the law of commandments and ordinance, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thus bringing the hostility to an end.” Ephesians 2:8–9, 13–16

Here’s the core of the “Gay Christian Movement” —and let me paraphrase that passage:

• We claim this grace as being given to us, too, as it is to all Christians and all other human beings.
• It is not our doing—not the accomplishment of any Christian— that we are loved by God for Christ’s sake. So there is no boasting about making the “right” moral choice of heterosexuality (because we know perfectly well that you can’t choose to be heterosexual any more than you can choose to be Lesbian/gay, bisexual or transgender; one can only choose to make peace with our sexuality as one of God’s gifts in our life).
• Heterosexual Christians, especially right-wing conservative ones, may think that we who are not heterosexual are “far off”—wandered, lost, estranged—but we, like they, have been brought near to God. Do you get that? We don’t approach God. God comes our direction in Christ, and brings us near.
• And this is accomplished not through our efforts or our self-denial or self-doubt or self-hatred, but through Christ.
• Many ultra-conservative voices, like Rev. Foster, insist there is a “culture war” ( a thinly veiled view of a religious war, an Armageddon) going on which they must win. But, hello!, Christ is our peace. It’s a done deal. Christ has already ended the culture/religious war for us, making all Christians one.
• He has broken down the dividing wall of hostility, so don’t even try to put up another one, okay?
• How did he do this? By abolishing this constant appeal to commandments and ordinances (they only appeal to the commandments and ordinances which they cherry-pick out of the Bible because they self-righteously think they are obeying all those things but we aren’t!).
• There is one new humanity now, folks, not just one new Christianity: there is one new humanity because God, in Christ, unilaterally decided to accept us, love us, and be reconciled with all of us, and bring all this stupid animosity and hostility to an end. The so-called culture war ended on the Cross!

In other words, Reverend, get over it. There are thousands, millions, countless LGBT Christians out there who keep faith with God even while you continue to “watch” what we’re up to! There are countless numbers of us out there who praise God, love Jesus, and do what he commands us to do:  love one another, show compassion and mercy, feed the hungry, visit the sick, welcome the homeless, and go to those in prison. While you are busy “watching” what we’re up to, we simply try to do what Jesus would do.

And when it comes to the Christian lifestyle (yes, that is a lifestyle! a choice!), it really doesn’t matter which gender someone happens to be capable of loving. There is no commandment to “get heterosexual,” Rev. Foster. And while you may think we are called to holiness, I know we are called to faithfulness. We are not justified by any feeble version of “holiness,” yours or ours. We live by grace alone!

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Doctrine, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Gay Catechism, "The Closet", Bible & Interpretation, Fundamentalism, Coming Out, Living by Grace, Faith, LGBT Christian, Ex-Gay | Print | No Comments »

Left, right and Spirit.

April 29, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

I am not the only Lutheran parish pastor to blog. (And yes, I admit that I am more of an essayist than a blogger. But when I get started on something, I have to give it a fair run in my mind.) But when I happen to run into blogs being written by other Lutheran clergy – and there are a lot – I am discouraged and annoyed at what I find.

They all seem to be on the religious right-wing. They tend to rant or wring their hands about what’s becoming of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, or the loosey-goosey thinking of the Left. I guess I should spend more time just searching for Lutheran blogs, because I can’t believe that I am the most Left-Leaning Liberal Lutheran bLogger out there. (There, the “L word” over and over, without mentioning Lesbian.)

I did come across a Lutheran blog a couple of years ago that had some valid points on other issues, but seemed to be “stuck” on sexuality issues. It was inviting other bloggers to identify themselves and get listed on a bigger blogroll. So I wrote in and asked to be listed as another Lutheran blogger. Never heard from those folks again, so I guess I was on their “lunatic fringe.”

It reminds me of a student at PLTS years ago who was from the (then LCA) Indiana Kentucky Synod. Why he picked Berkeley was beyond me, but we would tease with him a lot about his position on social issues. And back then the issues were drugs, free speech, the war (Vietnam not Iraq even though it seems as if the Iraq war has been going on for generations already), etc. He was courteous about those of us with more liberal attitudes, but was honestly afraid that if he leaned any further toward the center (from the Right) he would be perceived back home as a Commie Pinko (yes, if you are reading this, you might be a Commie Pinko!). And never get a call.

Religion Facts:  A classmate of mine, actually.

(For those of you who are not genetically Lutheran, a Lutheran seminary graduate, no matter how qualified, likeable, intelligent or even straight, will never be ordained if s/he doesn’t receive an actual Letter of Call from a congregation. The Lutherans do not ordain candidates to ministry in general, or without portfolio, but ordain only candidates who are formally called to a real ministry. No play priests here.)

As a consequence of this particular ecclesiology, we tend to come down on the conservative side compared to some other Protestant denominations where you graduate, get ordained and can spout off from any bully pulpit or soap box you can find. Lutheran pastors serve, for the most part, Lutheran congregations. There is a comparatively tiny percentage in specialized ministries and even then typically only after having served in a parish setting for a minimum of three years.

Why I bring that up is because I myself am a pretty conservative Lutheran pastor, no matter how much I may seem to be on the Left Coast of the ELCA. In conscience I truly struggle with issues of public policy and pop culture and constantly try to fit them into my understanding of church tradition, biblical theology, and congregational community life.

There are hundreds, thousands, of subjects I just would never bring up in a sermon, for example. And I suppose this Indwelling Spirit blog is my one outlet otherwise (kind of a “safe harbor on the Left Coast”), even though members of the church are entirely welcome to read what I write.

If I haven’t mentioned this before, the name Indwelling Spirit came to me while in seminary as a name for a collection of liturgical renewal pieces which a group of students were drafting and collecting for daily chapel services. Ever since, it has stuck in me as a reflection on the Early Church’s process of reckoning what to do with controversy and change when individual apostles or deacons simply marched into uncharted territory. The final test was whether or not those who were drawn to the faith had received the gift of the Holy Spirit. (Acts 5:32, 10:44–48)

The premier text on this experience, which I claim in faith and make it my own is this from Acts 15:8–11, in a speech by the apostle Peter in the Church’s first general Council meeting:

“And God, who knows the human heart, testified to them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us; and in cleansing their hearts by faith he has made no distinction between them and us. Now therefore why are you putting God to the test by placing on the neck of the disciples a yoke that neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear? On the contrary, we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.”

My point is that, like my friend from Kentucky years ago, I am “fringy” only in contrast to reactionary clergy of the Religious Right, who rant about the presence of lesbian/gay people in the church of Christ (but seldom does bisexuality, transgenderism and other sexual minority issues even blip on their radar). To the people I meet in the community around me, and in the LGBT circles of Hollywood, I am orthodox to the point of boredom.

But when I read the scriptures from the fringes, rather than from a position of power and entitlement, I read them differently. The Scriptures are the word of God to me like they are for the conservative Christian, except that the Scriptures radicalize me because they speak to me on the fringe.

In the passage above, who are the “they” of whom Peter speaks? The Gentiles—the outsiders whom the insiders wagged their heads about and ranted that admitting them unconditionally was a slippery slope for the church! The insiders (the New Testament will identify them as “Judaizers”) believed that Gentiles were sinners and that the Law of God could not be relaxed just to accommodate outsiders. This seems amazingly parallel to our experience as [gay and lesbian people]:

“And God, who knows the human heart, testified to gays and lesbians by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us; and in cleansing their hearts by faith he has made no distinction between them and us. Now therefore why are you putting God to the test by placing on the neck of the disciples a yoke that neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear? On the contrary, we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.”

You Tube:  The shocking truth about the gay lifestyle.

My right-wing blogger friends would scoff at such a comparison, if not be entirely outraged. After all they would insist gay people choose that lifestyle. But in the great Jew/Gentile debates which wrenched the earliest Christian community, being a Gentile was a matter of “lifestyle.” They were thought to be sinners who should simply quit doing all the disgusting things that Gentiles do, and come under the Law and obey God and get circumcised. It always seems to come down to that particular male anatomical appendage, doesn’t it? And the right wing of the church today never learned what the New Testament teaches about this, so they continue to insist that we need to cut it off in order to please God.

Acts 15: The Brick Testament’s “Great Penis Debate”

And because I see the Scriptures from the margins, from the view of the marginalized, I am considered a lunatic of the left? The Spirit that dwells within me tells me not to trust their view, but to trust my own conscience and to keep reading the Scriptures … and to keep blogging.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Sex, Gay Catechism, Bible & Interpretation, LGBT Christian, Spirituality, Faith, ELCA | Print | No Comments »

Pacific Lutheran seminary approves RIC “Welcome.”

April 28, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

After a 5-month process, Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Berkeley, California appears poised to become the first Reconciling in Christ seminary in the Lutheran church in the United States.

On Sunday, April 26, the Board of Directors released notice of its vote (PLTS Reaffirms Welcoming Statement) to seek designation as an RIC Seminary and implement a “welcoming” resolution that includes sexual minorities. The Statement said in part:

We eagerly learn from and welcome one another’s diversity, including, but not limited to, theological perspective, race, ethnicity, nationality, gender identity, relationship status, age, physical ability, social and economic status and sexual orientation.The Board did its homework, gathering input from a variety of sources, including faculty and staff, student and alumni. And at its March 26 meeting the Executive Committee paced the April action by providing for discussion over two days.

The decision was not precipitous. The previous Board meeting last November heard reports of the Community Life and Academic Affairs Committee, which asked the board “to begin preliminary conversation” about PLTS becoming an RIC community.

More than 350 local Lutheran congregations have joined the RIC Program, which is sponsored by Lutherans Concerned/North America, by adopting an “affirmation of welcome” that specifically invites lesbian/gay, bisexual and transgender persons to participate fully in the life of the local church. The procedures and requirements are somewhat different for educational institutions of the church, and must include a non-discrimination policy for hiring employees and for degree requirements.

Apparently the PLTS Board has found a way to meet these requirements, even though acceptance into the Master of Divinity program includes approval by a separate synodical candidacy committee, indicating that the individual, in addition to being educated, is also psychologically and spiritually prepared to serve in the ordained ministry of the Lutheran church. In recent years, background checks have also become a standard part of this process.

This coming summer, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America biennial Assembly will again have opportunity to change its current ordination standard which precludes sexually-active gay and lesbian candidates from entering the ordained ministry. (A distinct action was taken by the ELCA’s Assembly in 2007 to allow individual bishops not to enforce that standard.)

But this gate-keeping function of the denomination need not prevent potential students who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender from enrolling in the M. Div. program, if PLTS is admitted to the Reconciling in Christ program.

Several individual regional jurisdictions or Synods of what is now the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America founded the seminary nearly 60 years ago and continue to fund it. At least two, the Sierra Pacific Synod and the Southwest California Synod, have also joined the Reconciling in Christ program, indicating their unqualified support for ministry with and on behalf of sexual minorities.

In 1996 the Council of Bishops of the ELCA declared that all persons, regardless of sexual orientation, are welcome in the national church, although that is not always a reality at the local level. The Bishops’ letter echoed earlier supportive and hospitable actions: 

We also call attention to the action of the 1991 Churchwide Assembly that declared “gay and lesbian people, as individuals created by God, are welcome to participate fully in the life of the congregations of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.” At the 1993 assembly, that declaration was extended to express “strong opposition to all forms of verbal or physical harassment or assault of persons because of their sexual orientation,” and support for the civil rights of all persons, regardless of their sexual orientation.”

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in LGBT Christian, Doctrine, History, Spirituality, Ministry, ELCA | Print | No Comments »

Congratulations, Shelley and Melissa!

April 27, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

The month of April is wrapping up with the same excitement with which it began. The first same-sex marriage licenses were issued a couple of hours ago in Iowa (see: An early Spring, April 4).

The first to marry were Shelley Wolfe and Melissa Keeton, who got their license in Des Moines at the Polk County Courthouse and exchanged vows right outside.

But Wolfe and Keeton were not the first legal same-sex marriage in Iowa. A male couple, Tim McQuillan and Sean Fritz, had pulled that off several years ago before a lower court put a stay on things to allow the Iowa high court to rule.

I am one who is impatient with all those technicalities (although I try to digest them mentally and even read the briefs and decisions when possible). But today I just rejoice, and admit my amazement that in the great conservative corn belt of the nation, where many “decent people” still go to church, etc. etc., the native conservatism actually seems to have opened the door for same sex marriage. Of course, it depends on how you define “conservative.”

The Iowa state constitution is conservative. It doesn’t allow for quick knee-jerk amendments. The process is deliberately cumbersome, which is probably why no reactionary right-wing groups had forced through a “protection of marriage” amendment, as many other states. This left the opening for the Supreme Court to rule conservatively that there is no compelling state interest to forbid same gender couples from having the same civil marriage rights as anybody else.

Iowa is not an “anything goes” state. They haven’t elected actors, bodybuilders or wrestlers as governor. The Iowa state motto isn’t “Whatever!” Iowa is also not the epicenter of disasters, such as California’s constant brush fires, mudslides, earthquakes and mismanaged/imbalanced budgets, that leave us open to the argument that two women or two men who love one another enough to accept responsibility for one another will be The Next Big Disaster!

Iowans have probably shucked enough corn to see scare tactics as nonsense, and have plucked enough chickens to see that Chicken Little (”the sky is falling!) does not represent the whole flock.

Some conservative church voices are trying not to overreact. Dr. Gerald B. Kieschnick, president of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, in a Statement issued April 6, wrings his hands ever-so-conservatively: 

While members of the LCMS respect all people, we believe it is against the will of God and contrary to the moral fiber of our country to redefine marriage. Furthermore, society needs heterosexual marriages between men and women to thrive and succeed, as such unions remain the cornerstone in God’s design for the procreation and raising of children.It is not acceptable to experiment with this generation of children by trying to muster up weak alternatives to biological mothers and fathers.

Unfortunately, Kieschnick’s view is so conservative that he didn’t bother to give much original thought to the issue, but echoed the mentally-deficient views of reactionary groups. Gerald (may I address you by your baptismal name?): no one is saying that society doesn’t benefit from heterosexual marriages which “thrive and succeed.” To bring that up implies that having same-gender marriages somehow shuts down or impedes the ability of heterosexual couples to marry. 

And you wring your hands about “experimenting” with a generation of children.  Every generations of kids are an experiment, Gerald. And this isn’t the first generation when two people of the same gender have raised kids; it’s just that up to now those loving parents had no legal protections from the prejudices and interference of moralizers and hand-wringers.

And who says that every lesbian couple that marries are going to “experiment” with the lives of kids? When Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon married in San Francisco, reactionary Chicken Littles started running to “protect the children,” even though Del and Phyllis were in their 70s-80s. Not every same sex couple is having kids, or adopting kids, or even wants kids. And not every heterosexual couple who have kids bring them up well. And not every heterosexual couple is having kids, or adopting kids or even wants kids. Oh my God, Gerald, what will become of the kids if everyone isn’t heterosexual and cranking out kids?

And what exactly does a “biological” mother or father have on any loving mother or father? Let me cite a very conservative source for you, Gerald (one that many Iowans and all Christians read from every week!): Let me remind you that Jesus had two dads? Joseph wasn’t his biological father. And Jesus, upon the cross, was attended, not by his kids, but by women he wasn’t related to, and his biological mother, and by the Beloved Disciple, but he said to the two of them: “Behold your son. Behold your mother,” and so commended two biological strangers to one another as family. The Christian Church has never been anti-biological family, but from the first day of its existence has been able to get past the idolatry of biology and reproduction.

Of course, other religious leaders reacted early in April. Iowa’s Catholic Bishops, for example, said that the Supreme Court ruling “threatens families” (like, my family’s existence threatens your family’s existence? Like sweet corn threatens the existence of feed corn or broom corn?), and they called for an Iowa constitutional amendment to stop it.

Each has its place, but it’s all corn.

But, by conservative estimates, it would take until 2012 to amend Iowa’s constitution to stop gay/lesbian marriages. By then, same-gender marriage may have become as passe as last week’s corn husks.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Catholic matters, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, LGBT Rights, Public Affairs | Print | 1 Comment »

From fear to hope.

April 26, 2009 by Dan Hooper.

 

Rest in peace, Angie Zapata

I was amazed and gladdened to learn that a court in Colorado (usually a hotbed of anti-LGBT prejudice) returned a conviction in the case of the brutal murder of Angie Zapata, above, a transgender woman. It might be interesting to analyze what the jury said in the case, but the following testimony is more helpful than anything I would say. Thank you, Nicole, for your courage in writing this:

I lived in fear most of my life. I feared that someone would discover the man I appeared to be was only a façade. After I came out as a transgender woman, I lived with the fear that someone would lash out at me because of their fear and ignorance. Over the last six years, I have transitioned into a strong, confident, transgender Latina.

Angie Zapata was also a strong confident transgender Latina and at eighteen years old, she was brutally murdered at the hands of Allen Andrade. Her family was devastated. They knew and loved Angie as a fearless transgender woman. They turned their loss into hope by courageously speaking out for Angie and all transgender people.

I believe that their bravery, and the bravery of all those who are speaking out, helped citizens of the State of Colorado to have the courage to stand up and say that violence against any person because they are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender is a hate crime.

Andrade was the first person in Colorado to be convicted of a hate crime murder of a transgender person. The jury in Greeley Colorado finally said the “trans-panic” strategy, used so successfully in other cases of violence against the transgender community, is no longer valid. Andrade faces life in prison, without the possibility of parole.

All of us must step up and speak out. This week, the House Judiciary Committee passed the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act known as the Matthew Shepard Act by a vote of 15-12. The entire House of Representatives may vote on it in the next few days. We must speak out.

On April 28, 2009, as the transgender representative to the board of directors of Lutherans Concerned/North America, I will climb the steps of the Capital in Washington DC. I will be accompanied by members of the transgender community who will be attending the Transgender Religious Leaders Summit. We will talk to members of Congress, asking them to remember Angie’s death. We will ask Congress to recognize the fact that our lives matter. Violence against a person, because of their gender identity, is wrong. Congress must declare hate and the ensuing violence will not be tolerated. We, the members of the transgender religious community, will not let Angie Zapata’s death be in vain.

I don’t live in fear anymore. I live with hope. I live to educate and help people realize that we are all human beings with feelings, family and faith. We all matter. I pray that Angie’s family finds some peace and consolation in the guilty verdict. I pray for Allen Andrade. His life will now be a series of prison cells for years to come. I hope he finds peace as well.

Finally, I pray for you. I pray that you and every person who reads this commentary will contact their congress persons to urge them to vote for hate crimes legislation. Pick up the phone, write a letter–fax it and send a copy. Your voice makes all the difference. Turn fear into hope.

Nicole Garcia, Louisville, Colorado

Transgender Representative, Lutherans Concerned/North America

Posted in Homophobia, LGBT Rights, Public Affairs, Coming Out | Print | No Comments »

Catholic and evangelical comfort and bull.

April 25, 2009 by Dan Hooper.

I’ve had some more private e-talk with my friend Sarah. She is/is not a rarity: a faithful Catholic lesbian.

(How does anyone know that all the lesbians and gay men are fleeing the church? Just because we meet a lot who have fled? There might be tens of thousands more who have not fled. there’s no way to take a census, after all.)

A couple of weeks ago Sarah responded to my thoughts in Evangelical Catholic? Here is more of what she wrote: 

I’m Catholic. Roman Catholic. To the core, beyond anything I can deny - tried to get away from it for awhile, and that didn’t work out too well. And yes - it is because of the nuns - the ones who taught me about civil disobedience in 2nd grade, the ones who I called several years ago when I returned to the Church, telling them about the horrors that had shoved me away from any faith in God, being condemned to hell for being who I am, and who said “Honey, you should’ve just called us right away. We’d have told you that what that man said was bullshit.”

First lesson: the Church is not monolithic, and many LGBT people find room within it where they don’t feel crushed. My local friend and ordained deacon Roberta says as much. Make space for yourself where the hypocrisy or authoritarianism of the hierarchy isn’t so oppressive. Shrug them off. Press on with your own sense of calling and ministry and service to Christ.

Sarah is raising a son, who is in Catholic school, and will remain in one. Yet she walks closely with a dear gay friend (partnered, married), a Catholic priest who is in the process of exploring the Lutheran ministry, and now worships in a Lutheran church.

[It] is overwhelmingly filled with people who are part of the “Catholic diaspora” - and it sounds like Hollywood Lutheran is as well. There’s one guy there who sat down over coffee with me . . . saying he finally felt at home there, because he finally felt there was someone with proper Petrine succession. He thinks the Holy Mother Church is idiotic for refusing to ordain women and married people (regardless of the gender of the one to whom they’re married) - but is Roman to the core otherwise.

When I wrote about Roberta’s ordination a year ago, I ventured to remind myself that the Lutheran church is the original “Old Catholic” movement. Or as I quoted a few weeks ago (from Wikipedia of all places), “[the Lutheran reformers] saw the continuity of Catholicism in Lutheranism, which they understood not as a re-formation of the Church, but rather a renewal movement within and for the Catholic Church, from which they had been involuntarily and only temporarily separated.

Top Lutheran meets top Catholic.  More on this later.

Ironically, I don’t think that either the Roman Catholic Church or the Lutheran Church acknowledges the fact of this diaspora. When I search the ELCA’s official publications or its web site, I find absolutely nothing helpful about what Lutherans say to Catholics in the diaspora, or what we should be teaching about grace, scripture, the sacraments, church order, Blessed Mary or the saints.

Sarah says that while she attends her priest friend’s new Lutheran eucharists, “I simply can’t imagine ever being Lutheran. 

I can sit with that liminality just fine. It’s something that you’re encountering from a different perspective, and I’m really enjoying reading about how you work with it, hearing how the Catholics [in Lutheran parishes] handle it, how Chuck reconciles it all… it’s not easy for any of us. I’m so happy that places like [these] exist to welcome my Roman brothers and sisters. I’m still pondering what it takes to make that “home away from Rome” a place that will speak to and soothe our souls in ways that will heal the wounds caused by the HMC’s own sins.

That’s Holy Mother Church for those of us who didn’t grow up with a Catholic “abbreviary” in our school book bag. (I was once shocked when visiting a beautiful little Catholic church in the mountains of Arizona to find the bronze plaque affixed on the outside which read “Church of the B.V.M.” I know they saved a lot of money by not having to pay to spell out “Blessed Virgin Mary”, but I couldn’t help wondering how reverent that really is when it makes outsiders think of an underpants company.) (Sorry, Sarah!)

My friend Roberta just doesn’t use the word “Roman” when she speaks of herself as Catholic and reminds me that I am Catholic. In conversations like these, I realize there is a lot of fluidity within the larger “small c” catholic church, and that all of us are trying to live out our discipleship appropriately.  This is the current reality 500 years after the “Reformation.”  There is some convergence of what we as the people of God understand about our Christian faith, regardless of what the hierarchies of church institutions may publicly state.

But, we (LGBT Christians and our straight allies) also have to struggle with an ongoing divergence: that these institutional churches are taking far different courses in dealing with this other reality: the faithful presence of lesbian/gay, bisexual and transgender people who are seeking to find their place and live out their discipleship without condemnation, without the bullshit.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Ecumenical Issues, Catholic matters, LGBT Christian, Faith, History, Ministry | Print | No Comments »

Amazing grace, not cheap grace.

April 24, 2009 by Dan Hooper.

In my (frequent) moments of self-doubt, I wonder about whether my stress on grace and unconditional love are swinging the pendulum too far to the other side.  But then, which way should the pendulum swing, anyway? Haven’t we—in both church and society—had too much of pendulum-swinging, of one reformer or strong leader or personality cult person trying to jerk the wheel of the big ship out of the hands of the Holy Spirit and re-chart a course?

Personally I am fed up with pollsters asking their little select sample (subject to error plus or minus 3.0% points) whether this country is going in the right direction or the wrong direction. Why do we have to keep trying to change course when none of us can speak with certainty or authority? And especially in the Christian church, I am put off by such when I think others perceive me as being naive or overly pious when I insist: Jesus Christ has set the course for this church for all time; who are we to think we must constantly wrestle for control or go at each other for taking us “off-course”? If we are following Jesus, how can we get lost?

But I’m also mindful of powerful witnesses like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who cautioned the church about “cheap grace“– pronouncing the love of God and consolation of religion without also calling us to discipleship, without warning believers that there are costs involved in following Jesus. In Bonhoeffer’s case, there was enormous cost—the cost of his life in fighting the greatest evil of the 20^th century.

In my ministry, I am reaching out constantly to people who have not really ever heard grace pronounced at all. Wherever their Christian roots, it seems, all were fertilized with the same burning mixture of fire and brimstone, of dire warnings pointed at them like a shotgun. Where was any “consolation of religion”? They have felt beaten up, criticized, warned, preached at, condemned and completely rejected for failing, or “backsliding, or not measuring up in one way or another, to the high moral standards that some other human being thinks they must reach in order to be loved/saved/accepted/welcomed.

And I have met so many of these people in recent years that maybe I’m overcompensating — confidently announcing the unconditional love of God in Christ for all people.

How can I do that? Didn’t even Jesus put conditions on his own disciples? “If anyone would come after me, let them take up their cross and follow.” How can we pretend to be disciples if we do not take up (carry) a cross just as he did? Even in this Easter season, there is still a cross awaiting all true Christians. And to pretend to belong to Christ otherwise is the ultimate hypocrisy. Right?

The theological problem here is one of directionality. I cannot teach that we must achieve certain prerequisites or conditions before God loves us enough to assure us of our forgiveness. Then discipleship becomes a lifelong qualifying exam, which after all we might fail. But in truth that is more of a description of Islam’s view of the Judgment Day than of the Christian view. The Gospel teaches that

“God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because he first loved us.” (1 John 4:16–19)

Is that “cheap grace”? Is that liberal pablum? No, it is the Gospel according to the First Letter of John, which is keenly aware of the struggles and conflicts that ride along with discipleship and acceptance of the Lordship of Jesus.

But if we worry or obsess that we can only approach God through our suffering and the personal cost of discipleship before we have any assurance of love and grace, that is backward.

In fact true discipleship results from our assurance that we have already received grace without qualifying for it—with no inherent right to it, no merit, not even a down-payment. It is God who is willing to risk giving us the grace before discipleship rather than as a reward.

Of course, I am most mindful of this when it comes to the struggle of lesbian and gay people—and more recently bisexual, transgender, queer and every other kind of sexual minority as we may define ourselves—to be heard and to be offered a taste of God’s grace, without first promising to and submitting to personal and emotional and psycho-sexual castration in order to somehow please God. Christians who demand this of other Christians have their theology twisted and they themselves need to be born again again.

In the Gospel I know –and the only one I know is written in the Scriptures that all Christians read, and I especially rely on the writings of the Apostle Paul— there are costs of discipleship, but circumcision is not a requirement in advance. We do not need to cut off our true selves, our sexual or gender identity, our orientation, our very being. We do not need to deny ourselves the very thing that makes us human and in fact that Christ calls us to utilize in proclaiming our discipleship: our ability to love.

In the Gay Catechism I will come back to this, and other matters of sexual ethics, because I know that the early church’s conflict over the requirement of circumcision is probably the best analogy we have today with which to evaluate the anti-gay and anti-sexual requirements which some Christians insist must be imposed on us, or we cannot be saved. But Paul says emphatically,

“Listen! I, Paul, am telling you that if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no benefit to you. Once again I testify to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obliged to obey the entire law. You who want to be justified by the law have cut yourselves off from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. For through the Spirit, by faith, we eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything; the only thing that counts is faith working through love.” (Galatians 5:2–6)

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Doctrine, Sex, Gay Catechism, Bible & Interpretation, Fundamentalism, History, Living by Grace, LGBT Christian, Ministry | Print | No Comments »

Not clear on the concept.

April 23, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

I almost missed the April 11 Los Angeles Times story that the son of the Mayor of Vernon was convicted of sex crimes and given an 8 year sentence.

This is John Malburg, 40 year-old son of Mayor Leonis Malburg. For those of you outside of Southern California, Vernon is a small, heavily industrial suburb of Los Angeles, with a mixed record of being run like a banana republic or fiefdom.

Malburg was convicted of molesting boys, including coercing at least one boy into pornographic videos. But here is where it gets scary and tragic: Malburg was Dean of Students at the now-closed Daniel Murphy High School in the Fairfax district of Los Angeles. The all-boys school, the original location of a Catholic seminary until it was moved to the San Fernando Valley, was shuttered by the Archdiocese of Los Angeles in 2008.

The school connection tells us once again that here is another individual who is not clear on the Christian concept. You don’t molest kids. According to Deputy District Attorney Richard Taklender, Malburg had been a therapist for the boy when the abuse began, when he was under age 15.

Malburg apparently isn’t clear on the gay concept either. If you’re gay, there are plenty of opportunities to have an emotionally, sexually and relationally fulfilling gay life without messing with kids 15 and under. Or, for that matter, without resorting to coercion, unless your partner playfully begs “coerce me.”

But there is another issue here where the public itself is usually not clear on the concept, either. It is quite possible that the younger Malburg doesn’t consider himself gay and isn’t gay as most of us would understand that. It is possible he is simply a pedophile. And according to a lot of research, pedophiles can’t be easily classified as attracted to their own or the opposite gender. They are, as a group, attracted to children.

According to statistics I pulled from the Protect Our Kidz’ web site in 2001, here are some characteristics of child molesters:

• Can have adult sex partners, but children are primary sex object.
• Have lifestyles which give them easy access to children.
• Use threats to manipulate and control victims - or bribe them with gifts, love or promises to lure victims into their confidence before victimization takes place.
• May commit first offense when in teens.
• Continue behavior even after conviction and treatment.
• Are mostly males, but females also molest.
• May video or photograph sexual activity with children to exchange with other molesters and/or shame child into not telling anyone of the abuse.

Many of us are all too aware that gay men are accused of being pedophiles, although the majority of criminal incidents of pedophilia occurs within families.  Most often it is a father or uncle molesting a daughter.  Gay men who are interested in young boys are a small minority within a minority, and there is almost universal public repudiation by the gay community of male pedophiles.

The point is that some men who have a gay sexual orientation are pedophiles and can be molesters just as some men who are heterosexual are pedophiles and can be molesters. The problem for public safety and for families is not gay or straight; it’s child molesters. We must be clear on the concept. It would be ridiculous and unjust to go after gay people for being molesters because there is some overlap of those categories, just as it would be ridiculous and unjust to lock up or deny rights to all males because males are nine times more likely to engage in violent behavior than females.

We need to keep clarifying the concept, most of all, because we are an easy target for televangelists, radio preachers and politicians who in 2009 still take every opportunity to defame LGBT people and do everything they can to derail our civil rights. Calling all of us pedophiles is an easy way to stir up general hatred and homophobia.

That is beyond merely ignorant and misinformed. It’s even beyond “not clear on the concept”—because the real concept among the opportunists who prey, not on children, but on the public’s fear and disgust, is to manipulate public ignorance about us in order to perpetuate false information, stereotypes, hatred, anti-gay violence and denial of basic justice.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Catholic matters, Homophobia, Sex, LGBT Rights, Public Affairs | Print | No Comments »

Hate the sin, hate almost everything?

April 22, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

In another situation of accompaniment, I am mindful of yet another sad alienation. After casually checking a reference to disfellowshipped Jehovah’s Witnesses, I was reminded that I blogged a while ago about excommunication. (”Kick them out: voted off the island.“)

Luther appears before Emperor Charles V in 1521.

Ex-communication is the term I know, from Catholic history. Martin Luther was ex-communicated, for example, by Pope Leo X on January 3, 1521. (About eleven years from now we need to schedule a party.) So was the Army of God. To be kicked out maybe puts you in good company.

In a major study on disfellowshipping among the Witnesses a sidebar mentions others, including Mormons, Scientology and the Amish community, who can also be ruthless and thorough in cleaning house.

The hand of Jehovah, wiping practically everybody off the island and out of the Kingdom.

But part of my accompaniment is with a disfellowshipped Jehovah Witness, who after being shunned by his local Los Angeles “Kingdom Hall” has discovered an entire international community of disfellowshipped Witnesses. He’s still not sure of the official reason he was voted off their island:  either for being gay, or for “False Worship,” meaning:  attending another church (the one where I am pastor) — and either reason is more than a stretch of Christian principles.

This article is an exhaustive and detailed analysis (over 11,000 words) of the Witnesses’ practice and why it is unscriptural and brutal and wrong.  In reading through it, I found myself wondering over and over, why don’t people just walk away?

But I am reminded of a conversation I had three decades ago with Howard Erickson, one of the founders of Lutherans Concerned/North America, when I asked him why he didn’t just leave the Lutheran Church for, say, the Metropolitan Community Church? “Because it’s my church!” he said.  He is Lutheran to this day, and has always refused to be rejected.

Why?  Well, for one thing, people are deeply invested in the religious community from which they eventually may be expelled.  One’s identity is deeply rooted.  It’s a horrible state of the soul to have loved a community enough to spend a lifetime or significant portion of one’s life in a community and, for any reason, to be expelled from that community. It can lead to despair, self-destructive behaviors, apathy, anger, rebellion, or spiritual death.

Martin Luther lived out the anger and rebellion. Although ex-communicated, he did not go away, let alone go away quietly, and the Roman Church still must face the music on what their forebears did to him nearly 500 years ago.

Not going away quietly, Luther set fire to the Papal bull excommunicating him from the Catholic Church.

Luther, of course, had incredible nerve and resolve. How many tens of thousands of individuals do not have that nerve or resolve, but are deeply hurt or permanently damaged by the rejection of the whole community?

In the case of the Witnesses, it still amazes me that what started as a Bible study and tract society so quickly became a cult which, in order to protect its flanks will ruthlessly mistreat anyone for almost any reason. In the above article, “Disfellowshipping and Shunning,” there is an incredibly thorough list of no-no’s which can earn you permanent expulsion, so that any other members is forbidden to ever speak to you again.

Before you look at the summary list, bear in mind the words of St. Paul, who by comparison seems to be a bleeding-heart liberal about human behavior: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” Romans 3:23.

But the Jehovah Witnesses have no such “everybody does it” attitude. You may qualify for disfellowshipping if you are found guilty of any of the following: adultery; apostasy; associating with disfellowshipped people; blood and blood transfusions; drug use; drunkenness; dishonest business practices; employment violating Christian principles; false worship; fornication; fraud; gambling or related employment; gluttony; greediness; homosexuality; idolatry; loose conduct; lying; non neutral activities (involvement in politics and the military); military service; obscene speech; parents condoning immorality; political involvement; porneia (a Greek word which would take some lengthy explaining); slander; smoking or selling tobacco; spiritism (including yoga); stealing; subversive activity; uncleanness; violation of secular law [with a] flagrant attitude; violence, including physical abuse, fits of anger; willful non support of family, including endangerment of mate’s spirituality; and worldly celebrations such as Christmas.

Gee, being gay or lesbian seems almost trivial when we see that in the middle of such an exhaustively rejective and punitive list. If eating too much, having a cigarette, voting, or celebrating Christmas are equally damnable, then, well, go ahead!

Clearly these standards are not mere ethical errors which everyone in the community is strongly encouraged to avoid. They are control factors which clearly flag the Witnesses as a genuine cult, using psychological pressure and abuse, brainwashing or mind control, etc.

I know, use of the word “cult” is itself pretty loose and maybe meaningless, but when palpable harm comes to individuals in such a group who cannot freely come or go without vicious reprisal, something is amiss. Frankly, I’ll stand with those sinners who are voted off their island, and I do it in Jesus’ name — the man of God who had no such list, and who said, “I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd.”(John 10:16). I think if our parish ever gets voted off the denominational island, maybe we should just rename ourselves “Other Sheep Lutheran Church.”

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Doctrine, Catholic matters, Bible & Interpretation, Fundamentalism, History, LGBT Christian, Ministry | Print | No Comments »

New York: Paterson, Smith and lightweight Giuliani all weigh in.

April 21, 2009 by Dan Hooper.

It looks now as if New York state will be the next battleground over legalizing same-sex marriage through legislative action rather than courts. It may be just as well. There have been a stream of court decisions beginning with Hawaii years ago and as recently as Iowa’s Supreme Court earlier this month, where Justices declared that, when it comes to standards of justice under the constitution, two persons of the same gender should not be denied the right to marry. Or more accurately, the state has no compelling reason to deny that right.

We all know the ensuing history in which state after state then decided to ink prejudice into their constitutions, and make bigotry the compelling reason, thus closing “loopholes” which “activist judges” had found to legalize same-sex marriage.

New York’s Governor David Paterson seems to be reflecting the will of the citizens of the state in pressing to introduce legislation to legalize “gay marriage,” announced April 16.

According to a NewsDay.com story this evening,

Fifty-three percent [53%] of voters surveyed by the Siena Research Institute said the Senate should pass Paterson’s bill. The Senate has been the stumbling block; the Assembly passed a similar measure in 2007.

Thirty-nine percent [39%] were opposed to same-sex marriage, including a majority of Republicans, men, older voters, blacks and Protestants. Eight percent [8%] didn’t express an opinion.

It looks as if the immediate disagreement is only one of strategy, between Paterson and Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith, who doesn’t want a bill used as a trial balloon. He argues that the votes need to be put together outside of the Senate before the legislation is proposed.

I know from experience that floating new or controversial ideas without doing the homework is dangerous. A negative vote, even as a “straw vote” sets a bad precedent. But how much “homework” do we need? Paterson says he’s not doing this in response to polls, and apparently Smith is not resisting it in principle. From the same NewsDay.com story:

Smith spokesman Austin Shafran said, “these new poll numbers further validate our support for marriage equality legislation. Senator Smith is fully committed to continuing the process of securing the 32 votes necessary for passage and ensuring that all New Yorkers can enjoy the fundamental right of marriage equality.”

So where is Rudy Giuliani coming from with his civil unions, no gay marriage line? Vermont is dumping civil unions when their new gay marriage law takes effect. Is he just marking his conservative territory for the next Governor’s race? Or is he just making a fool of himself.

After one of his divorces (Giuliani has been married three times), Rudy actually lived with a couple of gay friends of his —a couple—for six months in 2001. I remember reading a wonderful feature story on this in the Los Angeles Times several years back, when Giuliani was still sort of a hero after the September 11 tragedy.

Tonight on MSNBC, that same gay couple have stated that Rudy Giuliani, while still Mayor, had told them that if gay marriage ever became legal he would do their wedding. The rest and the friendship, I guess, must be history. According to a Post story tonight, Mark and Howard are going to Connecticut next month to get marriage—without quisling Rudy.

But here’s the curiosity, as quoted in the Post: 

They see no contradiction in the ex-mayor’s opposition to gay marriage and the fact he roomed with them for six months in 2001.”Rudy doesn’t discriminate. I should know. I lived with him for six months,” Koeppel, 68, a car dealer, said yesterday outside his West Side apartment. 

Koeppel, a Republican, said he believes that Giuliani’s opposition to gay marriage stems from his religious and political beliefs, not his personal ones. [emphasis added]

Hypocrisy and integrity are hard enough to measure in a person.  If I don’t personally live up to the values I espouse, my integrity is toast and I am rightly seen by others as a hypocrite.  But Rudy, which set of values are you using at any one moment? You have personal values that prompt you to like and support your gay friends, but those values can be shelved by the demands of running for office as a Republican? Isn’t that political opportunism? If you have values, shouldn’t you have one set of values that informs your personal life, your political positions and your religious beliefs?And excuse me for asking, Rudy, but if you are a “traditional Catholic,” did you convert to those values after getting married the first time or the second time or the third time? Pam Spaulding says it square and fair. She calls him “serial adulterer Rudy Giuliani.”My personal guess is that, in contemporary America, in the scissors/paper/rock game of values, one’s political positions always trump personal and religious views. Giuliani is apparently hoping for a backlash against bleeding-heart Paterson. Says Spaulding, “The former mayor, in an extended interview with The Post, also predicted that Gov. Paterson’s high-profile effort to legalize gay marriage would anger many New Yorkers and spark a revolt that could help sweep Republicans into office in 2010.”

And my prediction is that with four, or maybe five, or even six, states where gay or lesbian couples can get married by November 2010, it will be just plain too late to anger voters over this issue. But we have our own hands full in California, right up to November 2010, so we’ll just have to watch New York from afar.

— Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Catholic matters, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, LGBT Rights, Public Affairs | Print | No Comments »

Walking alongside, walking wounded.

April 20, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

A few days ago I began thinking more seriously about how to walk alongside those who are either wounded, disaffected, or keeping their distance from the faith in which they once made a home. In my ministry, most often this is the Catholic church. Will they ever again find a home in which Christian discipleship can be lived out.

This is especially true for LGBT people who are often brutally harmed by the Christian church. But they are not the only ones. I meet a large number of other people, for a variety of issues and reasons— divorce and remarriage, abortion, abuse of church authority, refusal to ordain women, or too many questions with condescending or absolutist answers— have felt estranged from the church. Later, some feel drawn to find a faith expression, a spiritual home, but are at a loss. Complex social studies and entire books deal with this. But as a pastor in a local church, “book learning” about the disaffected usually is not really helpful to me.

I have learned simply to listen— and hopefully to listen well, so that what I have to offer neither offends or frightens those who are drawn by the spirit of God. And most often, people need to be heard, more than to be told the perfect word or ideal teaching or doctrine or even word of welcome. They have life experiences which have shaped both their spirituality and their sense of alienation or estrangement, but traditional religious structures have not always made room, or opened up, or offered to listen. Because I care, when I hear these stories, I try to walk with or walk alongside those who are at a distance, or outside of the faith community which I serve.

Servant of God Archbishop Oscar Romero, “San Romero” to the people of El Salvador.  The process of beatification was begun for him in 1997.

Lately I have found a word from another church context— “accompaniment,” which probably dates back to Archbishop Oscar Romero in El Salvador. (See, for example, this article by Jim Barnett, O.P.) In accompanying, especially disaffected Catholics (or other Christians— fundamentalist or Missouri Synod Lutheran or Jehovah’s Witnesses or whatever) I learned quickly that I cannot erase the pain or dissolve the hypocrisy, straighten the contorted view, or re-work the hierarchical logic that has been imposed on people’s real lives and contributed to their alienation. I cannot make the Catholic church whole and well anymore than I can fix what is wrong with the Lutheran Church. And in my own heart I too hurt because these Christian communities, in particular, are not one church community, but many. When it comes to Lutheran and Catholic— although progress has been made, these two world communions have “dinked around” almost my entire adult life trying to find delicate and respectful ways to talk to each other. They have affixed important signatures to well-written and carefully nuanced documents.

But in Jesus’ high priestly prayer of John 17, he prays that his followers will be one. He didn’t say “Take a thousand years to get pissed with one another, and the next thousand years to consider kissing and making up.” What part of be one don’t we get?

So my accompaniment is to walk alongside those who express to me that they are wounded by their experiences, and if appropriate, to welcome them into the temporary sanctuary of an evangelical catholic community which believes itself to be “involuntarily and only temporarily separated” from the one universal church (“Evangelical Catholic?” April 14).

Regardless of the snail’s progress of Lutheran-Catholic Dialogue, or Lutheran-Anything Dialogue, the truth of one’s spiritual system comes down to how we accompany one another at the community and personal level, not at scholarly international conferences. I make no claim to be an ecumenical expert or an important theologian, but I think that the contribution of my ministry is every bit as important as that of the greater minds appointed by councils or a church magisterium to represent formal positions and historic points of view.

What comes to mind is the Gospel reading for the Third Sunday of Easter, April 26, taken from Luke 24:

^{13 Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, 14 and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. 15 While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, 16 but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. 17 And he said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad. . . . [The appointed passage continues through v.35.]}

Classic scene of the road to Emmaus by Robert Zund

This text amazes me. It is beautifully composed to help the reader see Jesus in the Eucharist – that sign of oneness in Christ and in one another that is really only a reality at the local community level. But I also find something quite personal in this passage which scholars don’t tend to notice: One of these two disciples is named Cleopas. He and his companion invited Jesus to stay with them for the night in the village of Emmaus to which they were walking, and he agreed.

Emmaus by Velasquez

The scriptures give us no other information about the identity of Cleopas (he was not one of The Twelve). Since it appears that Cleopas and the other man shared a home, to which they were returning when they met Jesus on the way, and where they shared a common table and would both spend the night, I cannot help wondering if, well, … you know. Were they “a couple”?

 

Another interpretation of the Emmaus moment.

But would the Apostles back in Jerusalem have approved of this? Did they even know? Would the presence of Cleopas and his friend in the community of disciples have caused a huge controversy, a “split”? Would the Apostles have called an entire collegial assembly to decide whether it was okay for two disciples to share a home, or spend a night together under one roof?

Luke’s treatment here, and throughout the Acts of the Apostles, seems to indicate that the earliest church did not hold its members back until an official council could vote on things. Individual believers just moved forward (like “street prophets“?), and after the fact, the Apostles and the church as a whole didn’t vote these movements up or down. What they did was recognize the presence and power of the Holy Spirit as active in the situation, and on that basis gave their blessing and assent.

Why must we be so constrained by the magisterium, the structure and institution (can it ever really be “infallible”?), that individual Christians feel they must move out of one household and into another to be prophetic or just nurtured or to live out discipleship? Or feel they must leave all faith behind for good? Why must any of us suffer the spiritual catastrophe of being a “recovering” Christian of any label? Or ex-Christians for life?

It is a cliché that “the Church is the only army that shoots its own wounded.” But who is walking with the wounded?

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Ecumenical Issues, Doctrine, Catholic matters, LGBT Christian, Faith, Spirituality, Living by Grace, Ministry | Print | No Comments »

A day of reckoning.

April 19, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

I have been dialoguing off-blog with my new Catholic friend Sarah about this “evangelical catholic” thing and the dynamics of Lutherans and Catholics finding a home somewhere. She is wonderfully respectful of her Lutheran friends, and especially of a dear gay friend, who is exploring what it means to leave the Roman priesthood behind and enter the Lutheran ministry as a member of the Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries roster.

Sarah writes for other blogs and web sites with insight and power. This entry, for example, is from Street Prophets “A C/catholic Response to Prop 8″ (but her article actually tackles questions far beyond that):

“In the Catholic tradition, the priest . . . is acting not as the person of Christ, but as the representative of the community itself. We are an intensely communal people. We are Catholic - universal. Or, in the words of James Joyce, ‘Here comes everybody!’

“Except, it seems, for the queers. [Emphasis added] The Church has never been able to figure out quite what to do with us, other than to engage in more and more contorted explanations that defy logic or common sense about who we ‘homosexuals’ are, and what pastoral responses are appropriate if one might show up in your Church. ‘Please join us, but don’t tell anyone you are here!’ is the current party line. It makes sense to no one, of course.”

It made no sense either to Father Geoff Farrow, who outed himself and resigned his pastorate in Fresno last September over the Catholic Church’s support of Proposition 8. And I think this is where my “un-met” new Catholic friend was coming from in the phone call the other day. He is pained enough by the “don’t tell anyone you are here” contorted view of his life, his existence, his faith-reality, that he feels he cannot go home to the church in which he was raised unless he buys into the pretense.

Clearly, I feel like I am nudging up against questions too big for me to resolve. For a very long time, I have agonized about how best to be pastorally open to, and walk with, wounded Christians from non-Lutheran traditions who even now are wakening to their longing for something deeply spiritual, deeply experiential, deeply personal, yet because of life circumstances have felt (or actually are) cut off from their roots.

Do we remember Steven Fales, author and protagonist of “Confessions of a Mormon Boy” who was excommunicated? And “recovering” Catholics, Baptists-in-exile, and disfellowshipped Jehovah’s Witnesses?

Or, for that matter, poor Ted Haggard, who seems to have turned denial into a new career path?

 

There is undeniable evidence that the rigidity of our spiritual systems continues to wound, harm, and abuse sisters and brothers in Christ who as a result may never return to any “fold” but bitterly denounce all spiritual insight. Yet even with a body of such evidence, the fix, the solution, the way out, the path to walk with them in their pain, often remains clouded and unclear. “Absolutism means never having to say you’re sorry” was the tag line of Rosa Brooks’ article “The Dark Side of Faith” (Zion’s Herald in 2006).

Yet reckoning will come, and I don’t mean the final Day of Judgment. I mean the day when a critical mass of people decide they must move on from the wounded condition of their faithfulness and badly-eroded integrity, and search for a spirituality which genuinely nourishes them. Hopefully, I will be invited to walk with some of them.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Gay Catechism, Catholic matters, Ecumenical Issues, Fundamentalism, Spirituality, LGBT Christian, Coming Out | Print | No Comments »

Torture is evil, regardless of when and where.

April 18, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

It has been awhile since we gave thought to the torture issue—beyond my pay grade, to quote President Obama.

Yet the thought of torture is never far from my mind. Eleven and a half years ago, a slight, innocent gay college kid named Matthew Shepard died after being tortured and left, tied to a fence in Wyoming, to bleed or freeze to death. His brutal torture and murder is different than the waterboarding and other brutalities of the late Bush administration, of course. Shepard’s torturers did it for the sport of it, many people might think, even if they believed that he represented some kind of a threat to them.

(The “homosexual panic” defense of course did not originate with the trial of his murderers Russell Arthur Henderson and Aaron James McKinney, who are serving life sentences. But Wikipedia has an article which discusses this at length and explains the attempted use of this defense at their trial. Later Henderson and McKinney tried to recant this defense by saying it was a robbery gone awry.)

I think there is an evil parallel with what American troops, under color of authority, have done to prisoners from the Iraq/Afghanistan wars. In reverse order, we are told that these prisoners represent some kind of threat to American security which, presumably, justifies torture. And secondly, many people may privately believe, the soldiers did it for the sport of it. Stripping a man naked and turning dogs loose on his genitals, clearly seen in Abu Ghraib photos originally published by the Washington Post in May 2006, would seem to be the kind of thing you have to have the sick mind, not just a sick legal brief, to think up.

“And the LORD said, ‘What have you done? Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground!’”— Genesis 4:10

I applaud President Obama’s decision to release the Justice Department memos which now appear to have been written as (ludicrous and erroneous) legal rationalization for torture for the late Bush administration. Whether high officials —who justified the torture or who gave the orders or consent to carry it out— are ever investigated or charged with criminal behavior is anybody’s guess.

We know the new President wants to put the excesses and evils of BushCo. behind America. But when something is so heinous and disgusting as torture, murder, holocaust, etc., it cannot simply be removed with a wave of the political wrist. We will never forget My Lai in Vietnam, for example, or the heinous murder of James Byrd Jr.

To its credit, the American Civil Liberties Union is calling for that same Justice Department to appoint an independent prosecutor with the authority to investigate the Bush Torture matter. And the Obama administration needs to halt any torture methodology, regardless of when and where conducted.

Many have tried to excuse or forget the behavior of the Church’s atrocities committed against “faggots,” or dispense with it as irrelevant to contemporary issues about sexuality and homosexuality. But what was the capital punishment of suspected homosexuals in the Dark Ages but torture?—burning someone alive for a sin against religious doctrine?

If you have the stomach for it, a thorough description and brief history of such burnings from 1222 to the late 18^th century can be found at capitalpunishmentuk.org. And Colbert Nation has an instructive little article as well (which relies on this Wikipedia article)! Rictor Norton has an article I assume is fairly accurate tracing this atrocity as far back as a.d. 390. Apparently some in the Church favored capital punishment by burning because it did not involved shedding blood, (see Genesis 4:10!!). I wonder who penned that legal brief!

I rely on the work of Dr. John Boswell (Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality), who carefully explained that gay people were not burned for homosexual conduct per se but for heresy when they refused to repent. In other words, this method of torture and murder was used to exterminate those who held different views of religious doctrine. Boswell once commented, in a lecture here in west Hollywood, about the enormous doctrinal squabbles of the ancient church, such as the fight against Arianism which was finally settled by an ecumenical council, that “before the vote is taken, there is a majority and a minority.  After the vote, the minority is dead wrong.”

It is so emblematic of American cultural arrogance that the word “fag” or “faggot” has become universal as a pejorative slang word used against homosexuals, males in particular. Maybe the ACLU should call for the appointment of an independent prosecutor to investigate the Phelps machine for advocating torture and violence against homosexuals, because that is what the word “faggot” has come to represent.

Third generation hate monger Benjamin Phelps.  But what is this Romans 9:13 citation?  Do they even read the Bible, or just make this stuff up?

But why would I spend time reading and writing about such stuff, let alone exhibiting graphic photos? Do LGBT people today take the threat of violence against us seriously? Do we report hate crimes and attempted hate crimes to the police? Do we think that a few civil rights victories will somehow erase torture, violence, atrocity and homophobia from the American lexicon of behavior? It is always time to wake up and be prepared to defend not only our alienable rights but our very humanity against anyone who dehumanizes us or anyone else.

— Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Violence, Homophobia, Doctrine, History, Public Affairs | Print | No Comments »

Homophobic panic and the marriage “Tipping Point.”

April 17, 2009 by Dan Hooper.

I guess I am not through with Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point. I may even have to buy the book and read it.  For on his own site, Gladwell mentions something that probably agitates homophobes and political conservatives.  Summarizing one chapter which covers a mysterious copy-cat behavior of teen suicide in Micronesia 30-40 years ago, Gladwell says,

“I assure you that after you read about what happened in Micronesia you’ll be convinced that behavior can be transmitted from one person to another as easily a the flue or the measles can.”

Those who think homosexuals are horrible role models, shouldn’t be foster or adoptive parents, ought to be denied employment equality, and cannot possibly be Christian pastors, would be on this same page, wouldn’t they?  Homosexuality is not innate, not inborn, they argue, but is a learned behavior, a matter of choice, and therefore of making the wrong choice.  And if enough foolish individuals make that wrong choice, society will reach a homosexual tipping point and there won’t be any next generation and the human race will have gone to hell in a handbasket.

As I mentioned yesterday, Brian Montopoli thinks we may be at a “tipping point,” even though the poll numbers in America suggest that a majority of Americans are opposed to same-gender marriage. But then he goes on:  

“Those numbers, however, have been moving, and not in the direction gay marriage opponents might like. In 2004, just 22 percent supported gay marriage – which means that there has been a nine-point increase in five years. And even the most optimistic gay marriage advocate would have been hard pressed, 15 years ago, to predict that 33 percent of Americans would be backing gay marriage by 2009.  

“In fact, the demographics suggest that support for gay marriage will only increase: Opposition comes largely from those 65 and older, just 18 percent of whom support gay marriage. Younger people – those 18 to 45 – are far more supportive, with 41 percent backing allowing same sex couples to marry. 

“Which brings us back to our original question: Have we reached a tipping point in the debate over gay marriage?”

But roughly half the states in America have laws or constitutional amendments to make same-sex marriage an impossibility.  As to the connection between “tipping point” thinking and homophobic fears, I went to Google to check it out.  I found 49,500 hits on gay marriage + tipping point.  It would take a month of Mondays to comb through them. Many of them are found on pro-LGBT sites.  Then this:  

“Bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell to address the ‘tipping point’ of marriage equality at Creating Change, the nation’s premier lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender organizing conference. Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, will speak at the Oakland-based conference on Nov. 9.”

Well, where’ve I been? That was posted in November 2005! Gladwell is looking for non-medical signs of tipping points in social change. That’s the core of his research. No wonder!

It is hard to be objective, because either you’re in favor of, or you are terrified that the homosexual activists are trying to tip things right now. Because behavior can be tipped.

But the real issue, of course, is whether homosexuality can suddenly be “caught” like a medical epidemic. What is beginning to tip in America is tolerance, not homosexuality. There is no evidence that more than 5-10% of the population (any population, any nation, any era) is homosexual.

 

Homophobic panic, that young children are being “taught” homosexuality, is highly manipulative, and reminds me of the so-called Dopeler Effect:  that stupid ideas fired at you rapidly seem more intelligent than they really are.

— Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Fundamentalism, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, LGBT Christian, LGBT Rights, History, Public Affairs | Print | No Comments »

Another week, another state of mind on gay marriage.

April 16, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

I am not a reader of Malcolm Gladwell’s 2000 book “The Tipping Point,” but I think I get it anyway (booksellers must hate people like me!). In every social change, there comes a point when widely-held attitudes suddenly reach a point when the minority becomes the majority.

Maybe we are heading toward this point on same-sex marriage.  Brian Montopoli thought so as well, in “Hot Topic: A Gay Marriage Tipping Point?”

“And even as courts move to invalidate gay marriage bans on legal grounds, it’s important to remember that no legislature has yet moved to legalize same-sex marriage – though that could happen this year in states like Vermont and New York.  

“Indeed, most Americans do not support gay marriage: According to the latest CBS News poll on the topic, just one in three back full marriage rights for same-sex couples. Another 27 percent support civil unions, while 35 percent want no legal recognition at all.”

Montopoli’s remarks on April 6 are already out of date.  Following Iowa and Vermont in the last few weeks, New York may ace out other states for fifth place in the marriage movement, if Gov. David Paterson has his way.  And the CBS Political Hotsheet footnoted his comments with the reminder that the California Legislature did pass legislation to legalized same-sex marriage, twice, even though Governor Hummer vetoed it, twice.

Today Governor Paterson introduces legislation to legalize same-sex marriage in New York, according to the New York Times City Room Blog. It may however be a test shot to see where legislators stand on the issue, not a genuine attempt to get a bill into law in this legislative session. 

“Mr. Paterson has said in recent days that the State Legislature should move ahead now with the legislation regardless of whether it can muster enough votes. His reasoning, which some gay rights advocates have challenged, is that New York should make a statement that it is committed to treating same-sex couples the same way it treats opposite-sex couples.”

So, a tipping punt?  At least it will begin to shift the weight of the argument away from criticism of “activist judges.” Would the criticism of “activist legislators” carry any weight on the scale of social tipping points?

But those of us who remember the horrors of blackmail, criminal charges, careers destroyed, abject shame and the suicide of lesbians and gay men in the not-too-distant past, are reluctant to rejoice any time soon. Can a tipping point tip backwards again if it teeters too long at the tipping point?

When the late Dr. John Boswell published his blockbuster book in 1980, Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality, he revealed two things in our LGBT history. The first was that there was an ancient and medieval history of tolerance of same-sex relationships which had never been laid out so completely, and which had plenty of standing in the Christian church as well. After the book came out, he received further leads to historical evidence that same-sex marriage ceremonies had been performed in the Christian church from as early as the 4^th century to as late as the 14^th century, and over a broad geographical area from Paris to Jerusalem.  This resulted in Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe.

But the second thing which Boswell’s extensive research showed was that as general intolerance deepened, with the darkening of the Dark Ages, prejudice against a number of groups, such as homosexuals and gypsies, reached a “tipping point” when all of Europe shifted form relative tolerance to complete intolerance in less than 100 years, from “gay marriage” to the death penalty.

It seems clear that homophobic conservatives in our society are aware of Tipping Point theory, and they are afraid that point could be reached with one more state, or one more gay rights rally, or one more liberal church. They fight virtually every skirmish of openness, and are not likely to let Paterson’s good deed go unpunished either.

Our concern is that if we are reaching a tipping point in America in favor of marriage equality for all people, that it stays tipped, not just for four months as in California last year, or for four years until another Presidential campaign puts our rights and our value on the political auction block, but for good.

Gladwell’s thesis, apparently, is that little changes add up, and the power of individual action in the aggregate contributes to a tipping point. Every one of us who comes out, votes, gets active, blogs, contributes, and prays for positive change, helps bring us to that permanent tipping point.

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Homophobia, LGBT Rights, History, Public Affairs, Coming Out | Print | No Comments »