November 21, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

I’ve been reflecting a lot ever since November 4 about why the “Yes on Proposition 8″ side won, and the whole thing has gotten me upset enough to launch a web site, “NoOn8Church.”  There are many factors, which I examine there (see the Why Yes Won page), but here I am concentrating on the “liberal” churches–those that openly welcome LGBT people but who haven’t done much of anything to speak on behalf of marriage equality.

Unknown to many LGBT people who aren’t religious (or who used to be but were burned), the Christian churches are all over the spectrum on the issues regarding human sexuality. We see the headlines that one or another denomination is engaged in a big fight over gay ministers or gay marriage, etc. What we may not realize is that the struggles within churches means that churches are not uniformly hateful and rejecting.

For more than 30 years, many denominations have been actively working in Christian coalitions and congregations. What began as closeted support groups for lesbians and gay men who were deeply conflicted over being homosexual has grown into a movement to identify, educate, advocate and link thousands of congregations who are opening their doors, their arms and their minds to sexual minorities.

Among Lutherans, the Reconciling in Christ movement of Lutherans Concerned/North America dates back to the 1970s. Over four hundred Lutheran congregations have adopted an “Affirmation of Welcome” to explicitly and publicly say that LGBT people are entirely welcome. They have been joined by entire Synods and institutions of the national church. Our national Conference of Bishops and Church Council have said the same. There are Christian churches in most major cities which have not only invited us inside but have stood with us in the streets. Bishops have been arrested for demonstrating against their own church bodies’ negative policies, and it is only a matter of time before those policies are junked once and for all.

Religion is still a powerful force in America, but unfortunately it is the conservative, or “fundagelical,” reacitonary church which seems to be growing.  Right-wing leaders are only too happy to tell the media and the public that they speak for all Christians.  Hogwash!  It is time for LGBT people of faith to stand with the open, welcoming, affirming or reconciling churches to strengthen their witness to all Christians.  There is nothing inherently anti-sexual or anti-homosexual in the teachings of Christ, and all open and loving Christians need to keep preaching that message.

The Proposition 8 fight illustrated this all too well. Conservative churches openly lobbied their own members for Yes votes and threw their money generously in favor of homophobia and bigotry.  Liberal churches, with few exceptions, still weren’t so sure they could legally speak out at all.  Conservatives spread the blatant lies that churches could lose their tax exempt status and be forced to marry homosexuals, inviolation of their own beliefs.

Liberal churches did almost nothing. If this brutal campaign accomplishes nothing else, it has to jar liberal and open Christian churches to become involved in public policy issues, speak out on pending legislation, and encourage individual believers to put their money where their faith is. African American churches pushed the first civil rights agenda effectively, and the “moral majority” exploited conservative churches for their agenda. When are the rest of us going to wake up?

I am proud to serv a  congregation which said No on Proposition 8, and still has its signs up to prove it!

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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

November 7, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

I see first hand the results of the 12-Step ministry every time I meet someone in recovery from alcohol or drug addiction. As you probably know, Alcoholics Anonymous has been called the most important spiritual movement of the 20^th century. There is enormous transformative power in faith and solidarity to overcome addictions and its derivatives of loneliness, depression and powerlessness.

At the same time, I see first hand the power of addiction to keep addicts in its thrall. We have a man who has been visiting our church for months, who is semi-homeless and alcoholic. He admits he never met a beer he didn’t like, and he has been asking for money from members, and even taking coins out of our fountain, to save up for a quart. One Sunday afternoon he sat on the front porch directly in front of the church doors and got totally wasted.

I am still trying to reflect on the spiritual pain I feel after the passage of Proposition 8 in California, and make sense of why some people remain so rejecting, punitive and hateful toward gay and lesbian people. That’s when this analogy came to me.

Over the years, and especially in these most recent 5 months, I have seen first-hand the transformative power of honesty and love in and with the LGBT community. It begins with Step One: Coming Out to Self and Others. Sometimes, people who come out are summarily rejected, but as the years have gone by, more often I hear the stories of those whose lives took a decided turn for the better, with their families, friends, neighbors and even employers.

Two weeks ago I officiated for a wedding in which one of the grooms had come through a difficult period with his family after coming out. His aging parents at first rejected and disowned him. He is in recovery, by the way, and met his life partner—now husband—at an A.A. meeting.

It took time, but his entire family has come around. The accept him, and his loving relationship with his partner. And they all came from near and far to participate in their wedding ceremony, with his sisters and parents joyfully taking part in the final blessings.

People make enormous spiritual progress through honesty and love. It changes lives. This entire family, now united by marriage, has recaptured love and made enormous strides in spread understanding, goodwill and tolerance because of one son’s integrity and honesty. That is spiritual transformation.

Now we come to the political reality of LGBT people in a society which is wrenching back and forth between rights and no rights. The conservatives hotly and loudly call it a culture war. But I now see it from the positive side — the transformative power to change lives through love, honesty, integrity, patience and reconciliation. Some people — millions of them — “get it.” They have embraced the individuals they know among family, friends, neighbors or co-workers, they have ascended the learning curve about human sexuality, psychology, and civil rights, they have wrestled through the issues that made them uncomfortable, and they have grown spiritually.

But there are millions of others, led by religious power blocks, who think they are fighting a war. What they are fighting is their own addiction to hatred, to power and money, and to control. They are drunk on their own illusions of politics, race, money, marriage, and God. They would rather destroy relationships through estrangement and disowning those who are close them (every family in America is not that far away from someone who is lesbian or gay), than to grow spiritually through listening, patience, understanding, empathy, and love.

It is ironic that those on the reactionary side of things call this a culture war, when it is obviously a spiritual struggle they do not wish to face. I am betting my life on the ultimate triumph of love and reconciliation. And I apply my faith to this struggle, remembering the words of Jesus when people of power and bigotry crucified him: “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

But in the meantime we have to continue to struggle for rights and for understanding with those who as yet have no interest in the spiritual transformation that could be theirs. Drunk with homophobia, they will not even take the first steps to understand. It is sad when they bring their drunkenness right to the front doors of the church.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Homophobia, LGBT Christian, LGBT Rights, Recovery, Spirituality, Coming Out | Print | No Comments »

June 24, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

NATIONAL BRIEFING | NEW ENGLAND

Maine: Group Abandons Gay Law Campaign
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: June 20, 2008

A group has abandoned a campaign to overturn a state law protecting gay men and lesbians from discrimination. The group, the Christian
Civic League of Maine [emphasis added], said it had failed to gain the support needed to continue. The proposal would have repealed protections in employment, housing, public accommodation, credit and education. It would also have affirmed a state law restricting marriages to one man and one woman, ensured that only one unmarried person or one married couple jointly could adopt a person, prohibited clerks from issuing marriage licenses to persons of the same sex, and prohibited municipalities from licensing civil unions.  California and Massachusetts are the only states to legalize same-sex marriage; a handful of others allow civil unions or domestic partnerships among same-sex couples.

I certainly didn’t have to single out the Roman Catholic Church.  After all, it has gotten into bed, as it were, with the Religious Reich. 

But why is it that the Christian Church feels it must not only weigh in on matters deemed to have moral significance, but constantly attempt to play a controlling role in setting public policy?  It seems clear enough that behind many conservative views or even more ultra-conservative voices who back and fund the repeated incursions across the line which seaprates church and state.

I have long felt that the best witness to admirable ethical standards that any Christ can make is to live an ethical life oneself, and let one’s own actions speak louder than words.  This is why I am appalled at the behavior of the Roman Catholic Church in this country in its efforts to deny civil rights to gay people when its own actions have included flouting the law and ignoring the high moral standards in the law which protects children from sexual molestation. 

If you do not believe that abortion is morally acceptable, then don’t have an abortion.  If you feel that homosexuality is immoral, then don’t be homosexual (especially if you insist that homosexuality is a matter of “choice.”).  If same-sex marriage is morally wrong, then don’t marry someone of your gender. 

Every time one of these measures comes up (and thank God that one in Maine is going down again) it claims to be protecting something.  But the homophobia is unmistakable because it usually seeks to shame and punish someone else!  That would be like promoting high academic achievement in schools not by publishing an honor roll but by paddling those who got D’s and F’s on their report card.

Mayor John Baldacci and family.  Hmmm. The homophobia of the Christian Civic League of Maine is scarcely hard to document.  Their web site entry for March 5, 2005 loudly chastises Governor John Baldacci attempts to add [protection for] “sexual orientation” to Maine’s civil rights law, and virtually rants about the “gay agenda”:

Posted in Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Homophobia, Ecumenical Issues, LGBT Rights, Health, Public Affairs | Print | No Comments »

August 23, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

Jesus had words for those who sought to destroy him.

For the men who physically took his life by nailing him to the cross, Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” The centurions were simply carrying out orders from a secular government.

But for those who were deeply religious yet constantly sought to silence his teachings, who frequently opposed him or belittled his insights, he had harsher words. “You blind guides, hypocrites.”

The spiritual reading of the texts leads me not to apply harsh words to our opponents in the struggle for understanding and acceptance of LGBT Christians and our place in God’s house, even though Jesus looked upon religious mis-guidance as much more serious. When I reflect, several weeks after the ELCA Churchwide Assembly in Chicago, on the bitter and cranky statements coming from Lutheran “CORE” and Word Alone factions, I must only pray this prayer which our Lord has also given us: “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.”

I do not fear conservative Lutherans.  I grew up with them. I knew no pejorative terms then because, in the old Norwegian mission church in which I grew up, it seemed everybody was pretty conservative.

When I made the first forays into self-discovery as a late teenager, I only began to sense dissonance between the strictly conservative views of church people and my own innate sexuality and gender identity. There was no dissonance between the self I was discovering – bringing to light – and my faith in Jesus Christ as Lord. The gradual sense of dissonance was between myself and other Christians whom I came to realize could not understand the inner discoveries I was making.

Somehow I came through that entire period (probably ages 16 through 26) relatively unscathed. I suffered no terrible period of self-doubt or self-hatred. I was never suicidal. I didn’t internalize society’s homophobia. For a time, perhaps, I must have partitioned my mind to keep the “gay self” and the “Christian self” from harming one another while both were maturing.  Looking back, I credit much of my survival to the fact that, growing up in a Lutheran household and attending Sunday school and worship virtually every week, I did not ever hear a message of bigotry, misunderstanding or hatred about human sexuality or homosexuality.

Part of this was, no doubt, the times. People didn’t talk about such things in the 1960s. But the more important factor was that the pastors and teachers in our church preached the Gospel and led us in faith. They did not use the Bible as a weapon to terrorize anyone. They did not, for whatever reason, latch on to controversial social issues and use them as catapults to launch their own campaign of power and intimidation or money and prosperity. These good men (pastors were only men in those days) didn’t even dream of a radio or TV ministry. But they built a community of spiritual growth, mutual care, and faithful discipleship in the local church where we all gathered weekly. What a gift that was not to have suffered spiritual abuse or religious bigotry in my emerging years.

But what now? After coming out during my seminary years I could no longer partition my mind to protect the gay self from the Christian self. I had to re-integrate what had become segmented. And as I faced this (mostly alone at first) I still held— with deep respect— my memories for the “conservative” Christians who taught me the faith I still hold.

One thing I have learned is that there ought to be no division or dissent between us in matters of faith. We all worship the same God, we all are followers of the same Lord Jesus. We all heed the same call to discipleship, to forgiveness, to stewardship. There is nothing in the ancient Creeds or the Lutheran Confessions (The Book of Concord, 1580) in which LGBT Christians or heterosexual Christians need to argue. We are not spiritual enemies. Our disagreements are disagreements in faith about matters which we face and burdens which we bear. But our disagreements are not in the content of our faith nor in our commitments to remain faithful.

Yet our opponents do not agree with those simple statements. Are they using catapults or weapons? Or are they just “going postal” with their fears and prejudices? I don’t know for sure. “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

But what they seem to be making an article of faith —and I say this with misgiving and caution, since one cannot make a new article of faith — is that we who are LGBT Christians are either disregarding the Word of God (as fundamentalists would say, we are “Bible doubters”), that we are deluding ourselves, or clinging to a caricature of true Christian faith.

These and other mis-characterizations have been discussed elsewhere thoroughly. But my concern now is that these splintering groups of Lutherans are trying to elevate their concerns (fears, prejudices) to a level of theological disagreement which the disagreements do not merit.

But am I being arrogant and condescending to suggest that our opponents have done something which needs forgiveness? Do I have a right to say not only that I felt stepped on (”Excuse me!), but sinned against?

Jesus anticipated there would be times like this. He suggested that even brothers and sisters in the community would at times commit wrongs against their siblings. We are instructed to forgive one another as we have been forgiven, to do it 70 x 7 times, and to give pause when we are coming into God’s presence if we realize that our brother or sister has something against us.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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