Counting on both visibility and invisibility.

March 4, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

Diane Silver at 365Gay.com has a good perspective on the coming U.S. Census: “Get Counted! Why the Census is crucial to Gays.”

The article quotes Jaime Grant, the director of the Policy Institute of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.  “Without data, you have no community portrait, and without a portrait, you have no needs, you have no identity, you have no funding. The census has always had a civil rights component to it,” says Grant.

The LGBTQ community has its share of disagreements, and the Census is no exception. We know it can be to our advantage to be more visible. I remember paying attention ten years ago that our household could mark the form indicating we were unmarried partners, and still mark us both as being male.

Silver points out that the Census Bureau did not tabulate the data, beginning in 1990, which would have revealed a portrait of some of America’s lesbian/gay households. Outside entities, including the Policy Institute, dug out the story from the raw data.

Credo Action is pushing a campaign to “Queer the Census” and if you identify yourself to them, you get a free sticker (Wow!—bumper, or back-pack?). Their web site says they’ve given away 29,940 stickers so far.

So why doesn’t the Census Bureau gather more information about LGBTQ households? There are two obvious reasons. Silver only mentions one: Congress has control of the Census. Although it is mandated in the U.S. Constitution, what data are gathered every ten years is tightly controlled by law and therefore by politics. At present there is no plan to add questions to the 2020 form about gender identity, sexual orientation, etc.

But the other reason that data is not gathered nor processed is that LGBTQ people have an ambivalent attitude about being visible. We like being out and proud when it is cool or advantageous to be out and proud. But we also like to evade detection when that is advantageous. We are sometimes evasive about describing or naming our significant relationships, for example. We deflect questions or avoid situations where we might have to leave a paper trail (a legal trail) about our lives.

Much of this is closetedness, but it is not enough for all of us to prod each other to “come out” and be counted. As a community, we still have reason to be fearful to identify ourselves as lesbian/gay/etc., as individuals, if the present openness of our society could possibly turn more negative and punitive again.

And we’re aware that coming out is usually a multi-part process that has to go on for a long time: first to a few trusted friends, and maybe family, employer, neighbors. But in public records?

It is often said that none of us are free until we are all free, and so it can be argued that none of us can truly be “out” until we’re all “out.” But with the constant rants and manipulations of the Religious Reich and the well-funded social conservatives/reactionaries at all levels of politics, it could be dangerous if the social, legal and political reforms we’ve made since 1969 were reversed.

How do you go back into a closet, if there are documents in publicly records in which you’ve identified yourself as lesbian or gay or transgender?

Personally, I threw my hat in the ring for the liberalizing trend and permanent change decades ago, but it was not without misgivings. When I accepted the call (job offer) to serve my church as an openly gay/partnered Pastor, and the story hit the Associated Press and the internet, I knew there was no turning back.

But I am very aware that not everyone has moved in that same direction of being permanently and irrevocably out, at least at the same place. So the Census Bureau forms will probably not change to fully and completely include us and count us until the LGBTQ people in this nation are overwhelmingly ready to take all the risks in order to claim all the rights.

— Pastor Dan Hooper

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

Sudden acceleration.

February 24, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

I am reading and watching politics more often lately, and I am absorbed by the similarities between the Religious Reich and the political right wingnuts.

Yes, I know they are in bed together, or they are really the same people. We’ve known that since the days of the Moral Majority (Hmmm. They still have a website is up but it hasn’t been updated in 2½ years! See highlightd above.) and the politically opportune ascent of a B-rated actor named Ronald Reagan to become Governor of California as his first public elected office.

But what fascinates me is that religious, social and political conservatives use the exact same technique to promote their views, as if they are all reading the exact same playbook. Is there a modern-day Machiavellian book like The Prince that the entire right wing is circulating? (See this cynical reference; don’t bother to scroll down.)

What I refer to is this 24/7 streaming of public outrage, which seems to be rapidly accelerating in our society. We “get it” that outrage achieves results. People love to get over-excited, as if their dreary daily lives offer no rewards whatever, and it takes an interactive, 3-D action film to get them out of bed in the morning.

But the media, including blogs etc. also exaggerate the effectiveness of outrage. A few weeks ago, the election of Scott Brown as a darling conservative to replace the late Senator Ted Kennedy, the “Lion of the Senate” was supposed to prove that independent voters were outraged with the Obama administration. Now with less than three weeks in office Senator Brown has voted with the democrats on an Obama jobs bill and the right wing is outraged against their own darling.

The outrage I see is more than Rush Limbaugh’s putrid opinions calculated to “stoke indignation” as MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow observed. But probably the easy access to media, the explosion of blogs and Twitter, etc., have all aided and abetted noisy anger over everything. The new American paradigm is one continuous, relentless confrontation which continues to accelerate with no responsible “recall” in sight. 

• Road rage on public streets, highways and freewaysguy slams his Toyota vehicle directly into a Toyota dealership, claiming the vehicle had an episode of sudden acceleration which Toyota should have fixed.
• “Light up the Border” outrage (not outage) over illegals coming into America.
• Outrage over the fact that McCain lost and Barrack Hussein Obama is president of the United States.
• Fred Phelps & co.
• Neighborhood gangs who take offense at the slightest slight.
• Making everything into a culture war. (incidentally, www.culturewar.com is probably for sale if you want to trivialize, market, and profit from it. And www.publicoutrage.com is definitely for sale.

• Making people’s private lives (right to marry, adoption of and caring for children) into a a public fury, Armageddon-moment.soggy-brained tea-party Republicanswhite supremacists, neo-Nazis, NRA, and hothead/ red-faced rednecks
• The noisy derision and resistance of the 2010 Census because, after all, it is being done by The Government.

(I don’t count Dick (”heart attack”) Cheney among the professional stokers of indignation. He seems to be more proficient at sneering than stoking anything.)What I find especially ironic, of course, is that the vast majority of this outrage and indignation in American society is coming from what social and religious conservatives still insist on labeling as a “Christian nation.” Is there something about being Christian, or about Christian doctrine, which is inherently angry, indignant and outraged? Did I miss something when I got the message that God is love, and that we are to love one another as a sign of following Jesus? Help me out here, folks.

—Pastor Dan

Posted in Go figure!, wingnuts, Violence, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Public Affairs, LGBT Rights, Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »

Opposition 8.

February 23, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

It was encouraging to read an intelligently-framed and almost-timely presented Op-Ed piece in this morning’s Los Angeles Times. Dean Hamer, a molecular biologist, and Michael Rosbach, a medical investigator, wrote an article entitled “Genetics and Proposition 8.”

They present the case that there is constantly-increasing evidence supporting a biological basis for sexual orientation. There is no single “gay gene” that makes us gay, but neither is a single gene that dictates our height, the color of our skin or predisposition to many diseases. Whether we are left– or right–handed also has a genetic basis but there is no one gene that controls this.

Genetics, of course, plays a huge role in the discussion of whether gay or lesbian people choose to be sexually oriented to a member of the same sex rather than the opposite sex. And as we all know, choice constantly hovers in the background in the discussion of religion and of civil rights.

Civil rights are particularly singled out where there is the possibility of discrimination because of things we cannot choose, for example, having a particular ethnicity and skin color. Some things are protected from possible discrimination which are a matter of choice, however, such as religion. But in the current so-called Culture War, our opponents (dare we say “enemies”?) insist that being lesbian or gay is a choice and so try to make the argument that lesbians and gay men are not entitled to special rights.

Hamer and Rosbach’s pointed connection with Proposition 8 is that genetics was an “elephant in the courtroom” in the U.S. District case Perry v. Schwarzenegger when testimony was heard last month. (See a case profile here; we await further proceedings and Judge Walker’s verdict.)

One point made by the writers is worth singling out here, especially as we are still caught up in the passionate arguments about only one item on the so-called Gay Agenda: the right to enter into a civil marriage. Another major element of the Religious Reich’s agenda, you will remember, is to block any and all efforts to “teach homosexuality” in the schools.

The school angle has been part of their war chant ever since California State Senator John Briggs tried to ram through an initiative that would have prevented homosexuals from teaching in California schools. Such a move seems almost quaint now, except it was extremely real 30 years ago that drove thousands of lesbian/gay teachers deeper into their closets. One public opinion poll during the campaign showed the Briggs initiative leading 61% to 31%. Fortunately, the measure was defeated, in part because former governor Ronald Reagan reassured votes that the measure wasn’t needed to protect children. “We have the legal protection now,” he said, allowing voter bigotry to rest in the arms of complacency. (A sympathetic assessment of Reagan and gay people by Dale Carpenter can be found at the Independent Gay Forum.)

But ever since “protect our children” has been an anti-gay chant. It was used again quite openly in the arguments in favor of Proposition 8 in 2008. For example, the anti-gay ProtectMarriage.com site lists three bullet points on “Why Did Proposition 8 Win?”

“In the campaign, voters were told clearly that voting YES on Proposition 8 would do 3 simple things:  

• It would restore the definition of marriage to what the vast majority of California voters already approved and what Californians agree should be supported, not undermined. 
• It would overturn the outrageous decision of four activist Supreme Court judges who ignored the will of the people.
• It would protect our children from being taught in public schools that “same-sex marriage” is the same as traditional marriage, and would prevent other consequences to Californians who will be forced to not just be tolerant of gay lifestyles, but face mandatory compliance regardless of their personal beliefs.”

If homosexuals can marry each other, they argued, schools will be teaching homosexuality in our schools.On January 12, in Attorney Ted Olson’s opening statement in Perry in support of the lesbian and gay plaintiffs seeking to overturn Proposition 8, he drew attention to this gay marriage–schools connection:

“When voters in California were urged to enact Proposition 8, they were encouraged to believe that unless Proposition 8 were enacted, anti-gay religious institutions would be closed, gay activists would overwhelm the will of the heterosexual majority, and that children would be taught that it was `acceptable’ for gay men and lesbians to marry. Parents were urged to `protect our children’ from that presumably pernicious viewpoint.”

In the summer and fall of 2008, we thought the voters’ natural b.s. detectors would flag all that as a fraudulent argument. But we underestimated the power of a stupid idea to gain momentum through voter complacency corrupted by evil intent.What Hamer and Rosbach do is to pinpoint an aspect of the education issue and the gay agenda which many of us have not made clear to reasonable and intelligent minds.

“Recent studies in college classrooms show that exposure of students to information on the causes of homosexuality has a direct influence on opinions about gay rights. This fits with polling data showing that people who believe that gays are `born that way’ are generally supportive of full equality, whereas those who believe it is “a choice” are opposed.”

Here is where it gets really scary. Hamer and Rosbach go on to say:  

“One national survey found that 70% of those who think being gay is a choice favored the reinstitution of sodomy laws. This would turn some 15 million Americans into common criminals for simply being who they are.”

The point is this: it is not merely the (horror of horrors!) idea that if lesbian/gay people have any “special rights” and win the Culture War, little children will learn all about homosexuality and then decide to become queer (it is a choice you know!). It is the deeper homophobic fear that if students of any age learn all about homosexuality, they will simply be more tolerant and accepting of the reality of sexual variance and be disinclined to try to stamp it out through draconian legal measures.

The drum beat of homophobic fear has not relented–not after defeats such as the failure of the Briggs initiative, nor after victories such as Proposition 8. Our enemies continue to hammer away that the Gay Agenda must be stopped everywhere, because otherwise we will insidiously normalize everything about homosexuality. As I have argued elsewhere, the fabrication of  “choice” of sexual orientation is the linch-pin of the anti-gay wagon, and education (not same-sex marriage) is the slipperier slope, because an educated populace (not just children) will be measurably less bigoted.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Homophobia, "The Closet", Lesbian/Gay Marriage, LGBT Rights, History, Public Affairs | Print | No Comments »

Ignorance is death.

February 18, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

When did the gay rights movement run out of gas? Yes, it did run out of gas. I’m only asking when did it happen to us. Last week I passed my 40-year mark as a gay/Christian activist. Didn’t get a pin or a T-shirt, though.

When did the gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender rights movement run out of gas? One answer is that it was when we had buried about half of our activists who died of AIDS.

Or is that we ran out of energy when we got half a loaf? When people were able to have some quality of life in some of our larger cities, and when we could use Damron’s guide to clubs worldwide or take gay or lesbian cruises and sail the seas under our own flag?

Clearly, we need a source of renewable energy to replace the gas we used to have. And that really means recruiting. Not recruiting straights to become queer. If you’ve ever tried that, with a “bi boy” or “straight-but-curious type” you probably had your heart broken within a few weeks. Recruiting no more works than praying-away-the-gay or getting reparative therapy.

No, we need to recruit the young who are already out and LGBTQ. What they need to be recruited to is to get off the couch, unplug the latest iPleasure, and zoom in from outer cyberspace. We need fresh recruits for many things, including the gathering of signatures to repeal Prop 8. But, even more basic, we need recruits to pay attention to what our right-wingnut enemies are doing out there.

American society may appear to be relatively tolerant right now (if you live in the coastal zones or in a city bigger than, say, a quarter million people). The 20-something generation, in most bigger communities, do not have homophobic issues with “the gay thing.” Everybody under 30 seems to know somebody who is gay or bi or trans or queer. It’s become a non-issue.

But at the same time, extremely backward and weird neanderthals are organizing, marching, writing, phoning, blogging and amassing money that could completely yank away the few civil rights we have patched together.

I have talked repeatedly about Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point, and the case could be made we’re at the tipping point now. LGBTQ rights could win the entire culture war, or the entire war could be lost because social attitudes, homophobia, and small-mind electoral muscle simply tip things backward again.

The late Dr. John Boswell researched and lectured persuasively that Europe was relatively tolerant up to the 11^th century or so. And then a lot of medieval factors including fear, xenophobia, war and disease began to “tip” the needle on social tolerance against homosexuals (and I think Jews and Gypsies, etc.) The visceral attitudes of an entire continent began to look for someone to blame for current social ills, a scapegoat. Gay people became the scapegoat. And within about a hundred years’ time, social tolerance for gay people not only evaporated but the death penalty for same-sex acts became the law all over Europe.

Given modern communications, what took a century 900 years ago could take only a few years in our time. Think Uganda, think Fred Phelps, think Sarah Palin and other tea party boobs.

I am not Chicken Little here, crying that “the sky is falling!” When I look up, in fact, I am hopeful. But the muck at my feet is likely to pull me under if I do nothing.

Thanks to Ali Davis on 365Gay.com for alerting me to a Washington Monthly article on how simpletons from small town Texas have hijacked the entire national system on what goes into our nation’s textbooks. The article, “How a group of Texas conservatives is rewriting your kids’ textbooks” by Mariah Blake is more horrifying than any Hollywood horror film.

People in the upcoming generations are not being dumbed–down by inattention and electronic toys alone. They are being dumbed-down by the already-stupid who have been conspiring in plain sight to make sure the young will not be able to think.

I wish I remembered who said this to me a few years back: “There are uneducated people and there are ignorant people. The problem is that the ignorant are teaching the uneducated.”

In the meantime too many of us are doing white parties, etc. If we are not vigilant, the next Burning Man event may be staged by the Hateful Right.

—Pastor Dan

Posted in wingnuts, Violence, LGBT Rights, Public Affairs, Ex-Gay | Print | No Comments »

Know your wingnuts.

February 13, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

from  http://www.streetprophets.com/tag/LGBT :

 Criminalizing GLBTs: the “Christian” thing to do?

Fri Feb 12, 2010 at 12:35:59 PM PST

Recently there has been a spate of commentary from the loony wing of the Christian right, calling for the criminalization of homosexuality in this country.

Item: Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council said that gays should be imprisoned.

“I think that the Supreme Court decision in Lawrence v. Texas which overturned the sodomy laws in this country was wrongly decided,” said Sprigg. “I think there would be a place for criminal sanctions against homosexual behavior.”

“So we should outlaw gay behavior?” asked [MSNBC’s Chris] Matthews again.

Yes,” said Sprigg.

For a second bit of coverage on this, see FRC’s Sprigg Wants To See Homosexuality Criminalized on the Right Wing Watch.

Lately I’ve been digging up a lot on other wingnuts, such as David Blankenhorn, Arthur Abba Goldberg, Rick Santorum, Hak-Shing William (”Bill”) Tam—and the usual suspects (Dobson, Robertson, Phelps, etc.). Sprigg is new to me—I don’t actually enjoy reading every word that issues from the Family Research Council mouth. FRC is an instrument of James Dobson and his religio-political apocalyptarians, after all.

But research is indispensable if you’re going to blog, and the more thorough I try to be in online research, the more amazed and dismayed I feel. We think we had a movement going (the so-called Homosexual Agenda), but there is an equal and opposite (hopefully no more than equal) movement of hate-filled, power-lusting, fear-mongering, pseudo-Christian money magnets out there who have more interlocking corporate directorates than a Lego kit and an Agenda which would take us back to burning faggots at the stake if they got their way.

Bottom line is we absolutely have to pay attention because these wing nuts, at every level of our society, are trying to twist public policy in their direction. If they have their way, the future will not include us, nor would it be safe for young LGBTQ kids who are just discerning their orientation, gender and self-esteem in the world.

Be afraid. And then be motivated. Be the change you want to see in the world, not the change that Sprigg, Dobson, Phelps and their more extremist friends are trying to put into place.

— Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in wingnuts, Violence, Sex, LGBT Rights, Public Affairs | Print | No Comments »

Pink Mountain? How’d I miss this?

January 31, 2010 by Dan Hooper.

This one really twists the mind. A communist legislator?… advocating for gay tourists?… to get married? It gives a whole new meaning to “commie pinko.” (And for the record, the full insult is “commie pinko fag” – there’s a site where you can purchase mugs, t-shirts andmagnets!) If you’re interested, you can read the U.S. State Department’s overview on Nepal (which hasn’t been updated since October). The world she is a changin’. – P.D.

Nepal to legalize gay marriage, offer weddings on Mt. EverestBy Ruth Schneider, 365gay.com .  01.29.2010 2:24pm EST

Want to get married on top of the world? Not a problem, says a travel agency promoting gay marriage in Nepal.

In May, the country is set to ratify a new constitution that legalizes same-sex marriages, according to a report in The Telegraph.

Sunil Babu Pant, a Communist legislator and leader of the country’s gay rights movement, launched Pink Mountain, a travel agency offering wedding ceremonies on Mount Everest, the world’s tallest peak.

Pant’s company will offer regal, elephant-back processions and wedding ceremonies at the mountain’s base camp.

“Most Asian countries don’t welcome gay visitors, so we can have the maximum benefit for the Nepal economy which is fragile after years of war,” Pant told the Telegraph. “The government is hoping to increase the number of tourists from 400,000 to one million next year and has taken a positive attitude to welcoming gay and lesbian visitors to help meet their ambitious target.”

Posted in Go figure!, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, LGBT Rights, Public Affairs, Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »

Pastors, polygamists and beastialists, oh my!

January 30, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

Proposition 8: Pastors Say Prop. 8 could lead to Polygamy, Bestiality

Huffington Post sometimes has bad or misplaced headlines, but this one, posted January 25, is a doozy. Apparently, though, conservative clergy are worried about polygamy. For the record, Proposition 8 cannot lead to polygamy, and what Huffington should have said was overturning Proposition 8 could.

Or at least in the views of the pastoral wing-nuts out there:

Earlier Monday, a team of lawyers led by prominent litigators Theodore Olson and David Boies rested the plaintiffs’ case after spending more than nine days presenting evidence on the meaning of marriage, the nature of sexual orientation, and the role of religion in shaping attitudes about both.The last volley in their attempt to prove Proposition 8 was a product of anti-gay bias and served no legitimate public interest was videotape of a simulcast in which supporters of the ban said gay marriage would lead to polygamy and bestiality.The footage was shown as an example of the work of San Diego pastor Jim Garlow, who helped organize evangelical Christian support for the ballot measure.In one video rally led by Garlow, an unidentified pastor warned “the polygamists are waiting in the wings, because if a man can marry a man and a woman can marry a woman, the polygamists are going to use that exact same argument, and they probably are going to win.”

It appeared the lawyers were introducing the material to demonstrate the campaign for the ban appealed to religious-based, anti-gay bias to scare voters into supporting the measure.

Proposition 8 sponsors objected to the video, saying the content of the simulcast was not controlled by campaign managers or leaders.

However, Chief U.S. Judge Vaughn Walker allowed the material to be put into the record because the coalition of religious and conservative groups behind Proposition 8 paid for Garlow’s work.

Garlow wants to project an aw-shucks kind of attitude. His 2,500 member Skyline Church is really in La Mesa. He has a Protect Marriage link on his site, but doesn’t plaster it with anti-gay or pro-marriage materials. According to the Los Angeles Times article he barely mentioned the gay marriage issue when Proposition 22 was on the California ballot. but in June 2008 he took the lead to enlist a thousand conservative pastors and call for a 40-day fasting period to stop gay marriage.

Even more fringy, Garlow is trying to keep himself in the limelight—on health care reform! On Right Wing Watch, watch this:

Prayercast: Jim Garlow .  Submitted by Kyle on December 17, 2009 - 9:36amPastor Jim Garlow explains how health care reform legislation violates just about every one of the Ten Commandments:

On Wednesday December 16, Reps. Michele Bachmann and Randy Forbes and Sens. Jim DeMint and Sam Brownback will be joining forces with the likes of Lou Engle, Tony Perkins, Jim Garlow, and Harry Jackson for a “prayercast” organized by the Family Research Council during which they will seek God’s intervention to prevent the passage of healthcare reform. . . .

I‘m still looking for details on what Garlow was paid, and whether that is a violation of the church’s non-profit religious exemption under law.

But the last word in the 2008 story seems to underscore the point that was being made in the Perry courtroom in the last few days:

The dueling messages of the state’s clergy reflect passionate divisions in many faiths about the question. But in the political arena, there is no question that opponents of same-sex marriage will rely heavily on religious leaders to carry their message about marriage and to mobilize their congregants to vote.Civil marriage has been taken away because one specific religious point of view decided to enforce it’s concept of marriage. My constant question is why don’t open-minded and open-hearted clergy have the same energy to organize their voices?

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Go figure!, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, LGBT Rights, Public Affairs, Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »

Do family values live in a house of cards?

January 28, 2010 by Pastor Dan.

As we await the resolution of this federal case on Proposition 8, we will be hearing more about David Blankenhorn. He is no friend of gay rights, and yet as a witness called by the defense (on behalf of keeping Proposition 8 in place), his testimony under cross-examination certainly must have left the defense attorneys muttering under their breath. It leaves me wondering who will really succeed in destroying heterosexual marriage. – P.D.

---

Newser, a headliner summary site, has this:US Marriage So Weak, Opening to Gays Will Kill It: WitnessPolygamy will follow, Prop 8 supporter addsBy Will McCahill| Posted Jan 26, 10 9:02 PM CST

(Newser) – The institution of marriage is so weak in the US that opening it to same-sex couples will likely kill it completely—and perhaps even lead shortly thereafter to legalized polygamy, a supporter of California’s ban on gay marriage testified today. David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values think tank, was called as a witness by lawyers defending Proposition 8 in the San Francisco trial.

Earlier in the session, lawyers for the gay couples challenging Prop 8 got a defense witness to agree that anti-gay stereotypes rooted in religion had a large role in the 2008 passage of the measure by state voters—the very type of admission that could get Judge Vaughn Walker to strike down the measure, the AP reports.

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And another one: NewserDefense witness says institution of marriage would be threatened if gays allowed to wed Witness says marriage threatened if gays can wedBy LISA LEFF | Associated Press | Jan 26, 10 6:15 PM CST in USThe head of a family values group testified Tuesday that marriage is in such a weakened state in the U.S. that extending the institution to same-sex couples could be its death blow.

David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values, a private think tank, took the witness stand for the defense in the trial challenging California’s ban on same-sex marriage.

“My best judgment, if we move toward a widespread adoption of same-sex marriage, I believe the effect will be to significantly further and in some respects culminate the process of deinstitutionalization of marriage,” Blankenhorn said.

Blankenhorn acknowledged that heterosexuals were responsible for the decline of marriage but said allowing gays to marry would accelerate the trend and possibly lead to the legalization of polygamy.

Earlier in the day, a political scientist said powerful churches, religious views of voters and anti-gay stereotypes played a big role in the passage of the ballot measure in 2008.

Claremont McKenna College Professor Kenneth Miller said under cross-examination that he could not say what proportion of voters supported the ban because of bias or theological beliefs.

But he acknowledged that at least some people voted on the basis of anti-gay stereotypes and prejudice, and that in the election a critically important factor was the religious character of Democratic voters.

Miller was also called as a defense witness in the trial, the first in a federal court to examine whether state laws limiting marriage to a man and woman violate the constitutional rights of gays and lesbians.

Plaintiffs lawyer David Boies spent several hours trying to draw admissions from Miller to bolster the argument that Proposition 8 was a product of prejudice rooted in religion rather than sound public policy.

“You are saying the general principle that a religious majority should not be able to use law to impose their views on others is a generally accepted principle in political science?” Boies asked, citing some of Miller’s early writings that were critical of California’s initiative process.

Miller replied, “There might be exceptions, but that is a generally accepted principle.”

Boies also prodded Miller to explain why voters in a state known for being gay-friendly overwhelming supported Barack Obama for president yet denied gays the right to wed.

“I believe religiosity is a critical factor, among other things,” Miller said. “I didn’t list any other that were critical, but I haven’t done any other investigation whether those factors were critical.”

When Boies was finished, David Thompson, a lawyer for Proposition 8 sponsors, asked Miller to clarify his earlier assessment of the political power of gays and lesbians.

“There have been very few initiatives across the United States that affect gays and lesbians, if you set aside the marriage initiatives, and so it can’t be said the initiative process is stripping away rights,” Miller said.

Thompson also asked Miller if concerns he expressed early in his career about the initiative process being used to deny vulnerable minorities their rights applied to the gay marriage controversy. Miller said it did not.

“In my view, taking that decision out of the hands of the people in general is an example of the courts taking too strong a position on this issue, this fundamental issue of social policy in the country,” Miller said.

The exchange prompted Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker to chime in with a question of his own.

“Are you saying it’s never appropriate for the judiciary to intervene in the initiative process,” Walker asked.

“My view is it is appropriate when an initiative, just like any other statute enacted by a legislature, violates, in this case, the federal Constitution,” Miller answered.

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

Good news, religious lunacy.

November 30, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

The web newscaster www.365gay.com does a cool job of monitoring AP news releases as well as publishing its own reports. One AP post recently (which I’d missed) is probably the best little tidbit of news I’ve seen in awhile, indicating that there is no smoking gun of gay priests behind the widespread Catholic sex abuse scandal.  Read the story:

Report: Homosexuality no factor in abusive priests 

by The Associated Press • 11.18.2009 9:22am EST

The report, commissioned and financed by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to the tune of $2 million, did not find that the homosexual orientation of priests was any predictor of who would be involved in sexual abuse. In spite of a policy coming from the Vatican itself a year or so ago to essentially “weed out” homosexually-oriented candidates for the Catholic priesthood, the behavioralists and criminologists who have extensively studied sexual predation and pedophilia do not find a gay = child molester link.

According to the AP report, Margaret Smith of John Jay College of Criminal Justice reported to the Bishops meeting in Baltimore: “If that [Vatican anti-gay] exclusion were based on the fact that [a gay person] person would be more probable than any other candidate to abuse, we do not find that at this time.”

Also another finding from other reports, that I see as good news, is that clergy sexual abuse cases are on the decline ever since the 1980s. Most of the cases still shaming churches and emptying their coffers stem from abusive behavior in the 1960s and 1970s. Perhaps the “transparency” and media attention of more recent times is telling pedophiles and sexual opportunists that they won’t be able to hide their behavior as well as they once did.

On the down side, there is nothing on the horizon to suggest that the Roman Catholic Church will any time soon become more realistic about human sexuality in its moral theology. Its rule of celibacy (a rule of the Church, not a Christian doctrine) for clergy and its iniquitizing of any sexual activity outside of a heterosexual-and-procreative context continues to make its moral teaching seem ridiculous in the larger world and puts many Catholic faithful into a hypocritical bind.

Most ridiculous of all (another rule, not dogma) is to continue to ban women from the priesthood while male priests are deserting the ranks of the clergy if not bankrupting the Church. It has been reported that one-fourth of all Catholic parishes world wide have no priest. The numbers who have quit the priesthood to get (heterosexually) married continues to climb. And the molesters, guilty of some 14,000 sexual abuse cases since 1950, have cost the Church an estimated $2.3 billion in the same time period, according to the AP story.

I know that many of the rank-and-file are outraged at by all of this. The expenditure of money alone (yes, a lot of it paid by insurance companies) is appalling and disgusting. You would think the Church would be broke, but somehow it still finds the funds to fight against civil rights for gay and lesbian couples in California and Maine, too. What else can we do but shake our heads in astonishment and resignation to this religious lunacy. — Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Sex, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Catholic matters, Go figure!, Doctrine, Ecumenical Issues, Public Affairs, LGBT Rights, LGBT Christian, Ministry | Print | No Comments »

Get on with repeal or ditch the constitution!

October 30, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

Three cheers to Roland Stringfellow’s blog on Unite the Fight’s web site.

Here we are a year later and where do we find ourselves in the fight for marriage equality in California? Two major camps debating on whether to return to the ballot in 2010 or 2012 and we have to ask ourselves the question, “Have we learned from our mistakes?” Are egos and attitudes being altered in order for power to be shared and different voices heard? Has a clear strategy been created and presented? And what about our motivation – are we still angry and humiliated from our loss a year ago that we are planning to return to the polls with revenge? (”I’ll show you who is a second class citizen.”)

Stringfellow writes on behalf of the faith communities in California who are organizing to overturn Proposition 8.

There are many wonderful, hard working individuals who are putting their hearts on the line as they strive to make our world a more accepting and loving place for LGBTQI people and to make marriage equality a reality for us all. If our goal is to repair the divisions that exist in our society as we work for equality, we must examine and ask ourselves, “Do divisions exist within our movement for equality”?I agree with his view that we ought not to be divided over the 2010 vs. 2012 issue. It is an absurd dissipation of energies, and the supposed merits of each idea (get on the next ballot at all costs, or get on the presidential ballot when more liberals turn out) are probably stirred with personality issues that bubble over behind closed doors–even in the LGBT communities.Unfortunately, well-intended internal battles are part of human nature. You may have read or heard that another proposal is out there to completely revamp or replace the California Constitution, which would of course blow away the Proposition 8 language now enshrined by amendment.But even in this, there is division. Repair California is interested in “incremental change”, and filed ballot language yesterday for a measure that would call a limited Constitutional Convention (see press release; ballot language; fact sheet). Meanwhile, California Forward (www.caforward.org) has a different agenda: “fundamental change.” The two groups talk to one another, which is hopeful that there won’t be unnecessary intra-agenda fighting. But what worries me is that Repair California says it won’t touch our issue. What does that mean?

Mark Carlson in the Lutheran Office of Public Policy in Sacramento stated in an e-mail yesterday, “Jim Wunderman, the leader of Repair California, emphasized that the convention would not deal with marriage, abortion, gun control, or prayer in the schools” [italics added]. But the lunatic cesspools of power and money which seek to control those very things have to be drained of their toxic influence. But California Forward, so far, only addresses “fundamental change” in the area of money and budget, not civil rights.

It is all too clear that California is still ruled by several lunatic fringes. Yes, I know, the Religious Reich characterizes us that same way, but we know the truth. And we demonstrate our sanity every time one more of us comes out and tells the truth about our authentic selves, our lives, and our family relationships. Coming out remains the single most powerful tool we have for defeating conservative extremism. It is they who are on the lunatic fringes, because in addition to barrels of cash, they rely on lies, stereotypes fear and paranoia to push their anti-LGBT agenda.

Hopefully, we in the LGBT communities will be energized by what happens at next week’s polls. If marriage equality is set back further by the vote on Question 1 in Maine, for example, it may kick us into taking the reactionary lunatics far more seriously. It has, after all, come to light that the same money bags which financed Proposition 8 are pouring more of their cash into the Main steal-our-rights campaign. On the other hand, if the move to repeal Maine’s marriage rights law fails, it may energize us to claim our self-respect and go back at reversing the damage done by Proposition 8.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Also see: Equality Events; includes Rachel Maddow coverage of Question 1 and interview’s Maine’s Catholic Pro-Marriage Governor (9 minutes).

Posted in Catholic matters, "The Closet", Lesbian/Gay Marriage, LGBT Rights, Public Affairs, Coming Out | Print | No Comments »

Where have we been?

October 22, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

Church of Sweden to Conduct Same-Gender Marriage Ceremonies

October 22, 2009 • Phil Soucy, Director Communications LC/NA

This morning the Board of the Lutheran Church of Sweden voted and announced that the church would conduct marriage ceremonies for same-gender couples, using gender-neutral liturgies for both LGBT and heterosexual weddings. The vote of the board of the church was taken at its meeting this morning and is reported as 176-62, with 11 abstentions and 2 absences.

Thirty years ago, Sweden declared homosexuality was not disease. The church has offered blessings for same-gender couples since 2007. In April, Sweden passed a law that granted marriage equality to all. That law went into effect in May.

Some in the Church of Sweden are of the opinion that marriage in the church ought to be reserved for man-woman unions, and argued for that position. Today’s vote ended that debate. The new ruling will go into effect on November 1, 2009. The news amazes even me.  I’ve been watching the European Lutheran churches liberalize much sooner and more completely than the American churches (the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod marching decisively into the past and the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod being theologically about where the Taliban is).

European churches started ordaining women as early as World War II ~ for lack of enough males to fill pulpits. The late Swedish theologian Krister Stendahl, who taught for many years at Harvard and then elected Bishop of Stockholm, was an early supporter of the full inclusion of gay and lesbian people in church and society. After retiring in 1989 he returned to Harvard and was a keynote speaker for LC/Los Angeles in the 1990s. When I talked with him personally, he was quite open about the fact that he had a lesbian on his episcopal staff in Sweden. Not long after, I received a phone call form Sweden asking for any resources I had on same-sex marriage rites.

In April Sweden became the seventh country in the world to legalize same-gender marriage. In May, the diocese of Stockholm elected a partnered lesbian, Eva Brunne, as bishop. Times have changed, and the church in many places is changing with it.

But I am sure the America Christian scene will go ballistic about this latest. I can hardly wait to hear what that hate-mongering Topeka preacher will say or do. He’s already banned from entering the U.K. ever again. I wonder if the tolerant Swedes will allow him in to protest the lesbian and gay weddings that are set to begin November 1.

It is easy to forget that America is not the center of the debates about LGBT people and the Christian faith. American Christianity has had very different experiences than other one-time Christian nations, and of late, thanks to fundamentalism and the corrosive mixture of religion and politics, American Christians have been dragging their feet for years.

According to Associated Press, “Sweden’s archbishop Anders Wejryd said he was pleased with the decision, while the Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Rights described it as ‘a big step in the right direction.’”

But it still amazes me, and reminds me that those of us who are sexual minority Christians must live into the changing environment in our faith communities. We read the headlines with glee, but remain fearful or completely closeted. Or we go on with life and almost forget that in many quarters we are not as rejected or avoided as we were a decade or two back. If the world’s Christians are indeed loosening up, our emotional homework is to claim the grace we have always believed God has offered to us, and trust the Good News as well as the daily news.

— Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Lesbian/Gay Marriage, "The Closet", Ecumenical Issues, LGBT Christian, Living by Grace, LGBT Rights, History | Print | No Comments »

Go figure!

August 28, 2009 by Dan Hooper.

The news is amazing, but who has time to comment on all of it.  I’ve just added a category to stuff this stuff, and you can read it, roll your eyes, comment to Indwelling, or as they say a lot out west, “whatever . . . .”

Today, in the “U” department, courtesy of 365Gay from Associated Press :

Uruguay, a small country in South American which has been infamous for decades for dark right-wing politics :

Uruguay lawmakers OK gay adoption

By The Associated Press
08.28.2009 8:40am EDT

(Montevido, Uruguay)  Lawmakers in Uruguay have approved a bill allowing gay and lesbian couples to adopt.

Despite opposition from Uruguay’s Roman Catholic Church and some of the political opposition, the 99-seat Chamber or Representatives on Thursday passed the bill 40-13, with the remaining members absent.

It goes next to the Senate, which approved an earlier version of the bill in July but must now vote again on modifications.  If it becomes law, Uruguay would be the first country in Latin American to allow adoption by gay and lesbian couples.

The law supported by socialist President Tabare Vazquez’s Broad Front coalition, which has already legalized gay civil unions and ended a ban on homosexuals in the armed forces.

Utah, a large state in the Western United States, not noted for its open minds, clear reasoning or progressive views of  anything.

Utah governor: No special rights for gay people

By The Associated Press
08.27.2009 5:14pm EDT

(Salt Lake City)  Utah Gov. Gary Herbert said Thursday that discriminating against gay people shouldn’t be illegal, although he would prefer it if everyone were treated with respect.  In his most definitive comments yet on gay rights, Herbert told reporters he doesn’t believe sexual orientation should be a protected class in the way that race, gender and religion are.

“We don’t have to have a rule for everybody to do the right thing. We ought to just do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do and we don’t have to have a law that punishes us if we don’t,” Herbert said in his first monthly KUED news conference.

In Utah, it is legal to fire someone for being gay or transgender. The gay rights advocacy group Equality Utah has been trying to change state law for several years but has always been rebuffed by the Republican-controlled Legislature.  Last year, the group got Republican Gov. Jon Huntsman’s support for extending some rights to gay people, although none of the bills it backed became law.  Huntsman resigned earlier this month to become U.S. ambassador to China, leaving Herbert, who was lieutenant governor, in charge of the state until a special election in 2010.

Will Carlson, Equality Utah’s public policy director, said Herbert’s comments show he doesn’t understand how prevalent discrimination is against gay and transgender people in Utah.

“I agree that we ought to be able to just do the right thing. Unfortunately, the Salt Lake City Human Rights Commission makes it clear that not all employers are doing the right thing,” he said, referencing a city report released earlier this summer that said discrimination was rampant.

Salt Lake City is considering an anti-discrimination ordinance, but conservative state lawmakers already are eyeing passage of a state law that would trump it.

Herbert reserved judgment on the ordinance until he’s had a chance to read it, but said he doesn’t like the idea of protected classes in general.

“Where do you stop? I mean that’s the problem going down that slippery road. Pretty soon we’re going to have a special law for blue-eyed blondes … or people who are losing their hair a little bit,” Herbert said. “There’s some support for about anything we put out there. I’m just saying we end up getting bogged down sometimes with the minutiae of things that government has really no role to be involved in.”

Carlson said he wants to arrange a meeting with Herbert to help him understand the problems gay Utahns face.

“We don’t have an epidemic of blonde-haired, blue-eyed people getting fired or evicted. We do have a situation where gay and transgender people are being evicted and losing their jobs, not for job performance, but because they’re gay or transgender,” he said.

Apparently Uruguay is more progressive than either Utah or Florida.  Note the following from day before yesterday:

Fla. gay adoption ban goes to state appeals court

By The Associated Press
08.26.2009 8:58am EDT

(Miami)  Florida’s strict ban on adoptions by gay people is going before a state appeals court.

The state is appealing a Miami-Dade County judge’s November 2008 ruling that the law is unconstitutional. The ruling came in the case of Martin Gill, who along with his partner has adopted two young boys. The appeals court is hearing arguments Wednesday in Miami.State attorneys say the judge essentially legislated from the bench and that state lawmakers should decide the matter. Attorneys for Gill and the two boys say the judge was expected to review the facts in detail before making her decision.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing Gill, calls Florida’s gay adoption ban the broadest such law in the nation.

Posted in Go figure!, LGBT Rights, Public Affairs | Print | No Comments »

Missouri Synod weighs in on gay clergy.

August 24, 2009 by Dan Hooper.

First, this tidbit from KXMB CBS, in Bismarck, ND (with video?): “Update on the latest in religion news:”

“MINNEAPOLIS (AP) The president of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod has told members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America that their votes on gay issues will have negative consequences.”The Reverend Gerald Kieschnick (KEESH’-nik) addressed the churchwide assembly of the ELCA a day after its delegates lifted a ban on partnered gays and lesbians serving as clergy.

“Kieschnick said that decision will hurt relations between the nation’s two largest Lutheran denominations and “cause additional stress and disharmony within the ELCA.” Conservative Evangelical Lutheran congregations won’t be forced to hire gay clergy, but opponents nevertheless warned that straying from Scripture could result in a loss of members and finances.

“Lutheran CORE, a conservative group within the ELCA that fought the gay clergy policy, will hold a convention in Indianapolis next month to review its next steps.”  Sound: CUT ..235 (08/23/09)

I’ve been waiting for this since early Saturday — news from the Minneapolis Assembly about what “greetings” the head of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod would bring in light of the ELCA’s assembly actions in the days before.Next I quote from the blog letter from Phil Soucy, Communications Director for Lutherans Concerned/North America:

“‘Greetings’ were brought to the assembly by Reverend Dr. Gerald Kieschnick, President of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod. … The Reverend Dr. did not smile, but began his message by quoting Paul in 2 Corinthians 15: ‘…we implore you, on behalf of Christ: be reconciled to God. For our sake, He made Him to be sin who knew no sin so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. What a blessing it is to know that our sin is forgiven, removed from us as far as the east is from the west because of the atoning sacrifice of Christ on Calvary’s cross…’ . . .”He later quoted from the Kolb-Wengert translation of the Formula of Concord on doctrinal controversy and discord, to wit: ‘…for these controversies are not merely misunderstandings or semantic arguments where someone might think that one group had not sufficiently grasped what the other group was trying to say or that the tensions were based upon only a few specific words of relatively little consequence. Rather, these controversies deal with important and significant matters, and they are of such a nature that the positions of the erring party neither could nor should be tolerated in the church of God, much less be excused or defended. Therefore necessity demands explanation of these disputed articles on the basis of God’s word and reliable writings so that those with a proper Christian understanding could recognize which position regarding the points under dispute is in accord with God’s word and the Christian Augsburg confession and which is not. And so the Christians of good will, who are concerned about the truth, might protect and guard themselves from the errors and corruptions that have appeared among us…’

“His was a serious message of rebuke, delivered somberly and, as he said, ‘…in deep humility with a heavy heart and no desire whatsoever to offend. The decisions by this assembly to grant non-celibate homosexual ministers the privilege of serving as rostered leaders in the ELCA and the affirmation of same-gender unions as pleasing to God will undoubtedly cause additional stress and disharmony within the ELCA. It will also negatively affect the relationships between our two church bodies. The current division between our churches threatens to become a chasm…’”

I am not at all surprised by Dr. K’s grim and humorless chastisement of the ELCA for taking the courageous step of opening the gates to lesbian/gay/partnered clergy. Actually, I chuckled at the line that he said ‘…in deep humility with a heavy heart and no desire whatsoever to offend.” Well, Rev. Dr., you certainly offended a lot of us, then, without desiring to! Neat trick, doubtless grounded in backward thinking if not in passion or desire.This is the very heart of the deep divide which has opened in the last four decades between different groups of Lutherans. The Missouri Synod has become more and more 19^th century in its obsession about perfect agreement in all matters, even if it means continuing to cut all relationships with other Lutherans who differ. Perfect agreement in theology means nothing short of perfect thought control, and LC–MS seems to have achieved it. Kieschnick’s heavy-hearted remarks to the ELCA were not only a rebuke of us, but clearly a warning shot fired at his own churchbody. Don’t even think about raising any new discussions of human sexuality in the LC–MS. It is a settled matter which will not be revisited.

Kieschnick’s remarks, and the severe quotation from the Formula of Concord – which he obviously chose to lift out of its 16^th century context and attempt to apply it in the 21^st century – has all the marks of Missouri’s obsession about sin and evil, lockstep doctrinal conformity, and dire consequences for difference of opinion. Not only is he and his officialdom—to which the LC-MS churchbody has remained captive since J.A.O. Preus’ take-over of the LC-MS in the 1970s—unwilling to have any honest dialogue about where Christians disagree in matters of faith, he has chosen not to respect the deeply-held convictions of other fellow-Lutherans/fellow Christians who hold to those convictions by reason of their own conscience.

In other words, Kieschnick’s and LC–MS’s official interpretation of tough contemporary issues and matters of faith are the only ones which may have validity anywhere in Christendom. Any other point of view, according to his rough application of the quote from a document written in A.D. 1580, “should not be tolerated in the church of God.”

Has Kieschnick forgotten that the dispute back then which the Reformers could not tolerate were disputes with the Roman Catholic Church, not with fellow evangelicals? And has he not noticed that Pope Benedict XVI himself has basically said that all of us — all Lutherans and all Protestants and everybody else who are not under his personal authority are not even a “church” in the proper sense? In effect Kieschnick’s rebuke of the ELCA, a churchbody nearly twice the size of the LC–MS parallels Benedict’s rebuke of all other Christians. In Kieschnick’s case it is utter arrogance masquerading as doctrinal purity. In Benedict’s case it is utter arrogance masquerading as divine authority.

But Kieschnick’s quote is wrong for a more fundamental reason. Read this again, carefully: “Therefore necessity demands explanation of these disputed articles on the basis of God’s word and reliable writings so that those with a proper Christian understanding could recognize which position regarding the points under dispute is in accord with God’s word and the Christian Augsburg confession and which is not.”

Why I find this to be a deeply flawed application of a 440 year old document is that it refers to “these disputed articles”, meaning articles of faith. Do we need to remind Rev. Dr. Kieschnick that the Augsburg Confession (published in 1530) does not even contain an “article of faith” on human sexuality, let alone homosexuality? Should it not be pointed out to him that articles of faith are about God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, justification by grace through faith, etc., and not about anthropology, sociology, biology or psychology. Christians do not put our faith in these matters or in our current understandings of any of them, even if we are influenced by them because they change. And when matters of anthropology, sociology, biology or psychology change, our opinions and attitudes change with them.

Strictly speaking, our faith is never in ourselves (gay or straight, Catholic or Lutheran, woman or man, married or single, sinner or saint). But the LC-MS obsession, like other fundamentalist religious obsessions, is that they get to define with exactitude what is sinful and against the will of God and therefore cannot be tolerated in the church of God.

As. St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 14:36, “Or did the word of God originate with you? Or are you the only ones it has reached?” Yes, it’s kind of funny that Paul said that as a rebuke of one congregation with whom he disagreed over allowing women to speak in church, a real issue of faith that also has divided the ELCA and the LC–MS since the 1970s. (Missouri Synod does not ordain women to the ministry, and tries to keep them out of all authoritative positions over men in the church from the local congregation on up.) Their reasoning is as fundamentalist as you can get: they can point to some verses in the Bible that they say with vehement certainty applies to the present times, and because of their own certainty they will not even grant the civility to talk with a sister or brother in Christ who differs in discernment of what applies or doesn’t apply. In doing so they completely bypass and ignore a lot of other Holy Writ that reminds us to listen to one another, to pray for one another, to bear one another’s burdens, and to draw near to Christ rather than searching the scriptures for a proof text. They ignore the divine permission which Christians are given to “bind and loose” even matters which are covered in the Scriptures.

Maybe we will, sadly, look back on 2009 as the year when Christianity definitely began to crack into two irreconcilable camps. Each of us believes that we are reconciled to God, but not by our own achievements, conformity, certainty or doctrinal purity, but purely and solely by grace. Think about that, Rev. Dr.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Bible & Interpretation, Ecumenical Issues, Doctrine, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Catholic matters, Environment, LGBT Christian, Public Affairs, History, Faith, LGBT Rights, Ministry | Print | No Comments »

A mid-day cliff hanger.

August 21, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

I thought it was all going to be over by now. At 9:15 a.m. (Los Angeles time) two resolutions had passed, by 77% and 60.6% majorities. Two down, two to go. But since I am not in Minneapolis, I am missing the procedural stuff. Apparently the agenda got postponed, ran over-time or something, and now the remaining two resolutions (re: my life, my integrity, my ministry and that of hundreds of others like who are lesbian or gay and partnered or hope to be partnered someday) are dangling from the cliff of Roberts Rules of Order. See the ELCA News Release below.

A thousand people are gathered in a huge room in downtown Minneapolis to politely argue with or attempt to persuade/cajole/manipulate one another into changing their point of view! Truly the ELCA is now in the middle of the road. As I said recently, the UCC and the Episcopal Church are clearly on its left flank. The United Presbyterian Church USA is on its right flank. Our churchbody is in a relationship of full communion with those other Protestant church bodies. And yesterday, the same ELCA Assembly voted 958 to 51 (a 95% majority) to enter into full communion with the United Methodist Church, which is way right of us on human sexuality. Last I checked they were still defrocking even straight Methodist clergy just for participating in a blessing ceremony for two lesbians or two gay men.

The problem of being in the middle of the road, you know, is that you get sidewsiped—from both sides. So as we dangle from the cliff, stay tuned!

—Pastor Dan Hooper

ELCA News Service  09-CWA-32-MRC

August 21, 2009

ELCA Assembly Takes First Steps on Ministry Policies Document

“MINNEAPOLIS (ELCA) — Voting members of the 2009 Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) are in the middle of taking steps to make it possible for the Lutherans in same-sex relationships to serve as professional leaders in the denomination.”The churchwide assembly, the chief legislative authority of the ELCA, is meeting here Aug. 17-23 at the Minneapolis Convention Center. About 2,000 people are participating, including 1,045 ELCA voting members. The theme for the biennial assembly is “God’s work. Our hands.”

“Voting members have begun considering four distinct resolutions Aug. 21, which are designed to change current ELCA policy that requires the denomination’s professional leaders to abstain from “homosexual sexual relationships.”

“The resolutions are contained in a report and recommendation on ministry policies developed by the Task Force for the ELCA Studies on Sexuality.

“A majority vote is required to pass each of the four resolutions.

“With a 771-230 vote, the assembly amended and approved a resolution that states “that in the implementation of any resolutions on ministry policies, the ELCA commit itself to bear one another’s burdens, love the neighbor, and respect the bound consciences of all.”

“With a 619-402 vote, the assembly approved a second resolution that commits the ELCA “to finding ways to allow congregations that choose to do so to recognize, support, and hold publicly accountably life-long, monogamous, same-gender relationships.”

“Prior to considering the two resolutions, voting members defeated a “substitute” motion with a 344-670 vote to strike out all four resolutions and replace it with the following: ‘rostered leadership of this church who are homosexual in their self understanding are expected to abstain from homosexual sexual relations and practicing homosexual persons are precluded from rostered leadership in this church.’ Albert Quie, voting member from the ELCA Minneapolis Synod, made the substitute motion.

“As voting members were considering resolution two, Edward A. Kirst, voting member from the ELCA Northeastern Ohio Synod, made a motion to require a two-thirds vote—instead of a majority—for approving the remaining resolutions. That motion was defeated with a 407-576 vote.

“During the afternoon plenary, voting members will consider the two remaining resolutions—that the denomination find a way for Lutherans in same-sex relationships to serve as ordained ministers and other professional leadership roles in the church, and that the denomination consider a proposal for how it will exercise flexibility within existing structures and practices to allow for Lutherans in same-sex relations to be approved for professional service in the church.”

Information about the 2009 ELCA Churchwide Assembly can be found at http://www.elca.org/assembly on the Web.

For information contact:  John Brooks, Director (773) 380-2958 or news@elca.org  http://www.elca.org/news

ELCA News Blog: http://www.elca.org/news/blog

Posted in LGBT Christian, Ecumenical Issues, Sex, LGBT Rights, History, ELCA, Ministry, Uncategorized | Print | 1 Comment »

Perception and deception, hype and hypocrisy.

August 12, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

Flipping through some papers I had saved from months ago, I came across a “Naked City” column by Christopher Lisotta from Frontiers Newsmagazine last January—an interview with publicist Howard Bragman, who recently wrote the book on P.R., “Where’s My Fifteen Minutes?”. There was an interesting comment:

Frontiers: “You write PR no longer means “public relations.” What does PR mean?”

Bragman: “PR stands for the concepts of perception and reality. We live in a society where perception has become more important than reality.”

No kidding? But never mind the fact that the advertising and P.R. industry has made this true. We are a nation of plastic, imitation, phoney, lights and mirrors, “truthiness.” I once read the fine print on a 0 calories soft drink can, and it admitted to “artificial imitation flavors” on the ingredients list. Not just imitation flavors, but artificial imitation flavors. How much more phoney could you want? How American!

It is true that “perception” and “reality” are the defining elements in a public world made transparent by Google, Twitter, Facebook, and IP addresses.

When it comes to LGBT people, the reality of our lives still doesn’t really matter to the public. Their perception is that we are weird, sex-crazed, pleasure-loving creatures with no ethics but huge wads of discretionary income. We are muscle-bound girlie men –both gays and lesbians. We all carry the AIDS virus, we hate heterosexual marriage, we all molest children and we are bringing God’s judgment down on America, a nation of “fag enablers.”

That’s the stereotype. That’s the perception. Never mind that we work and pay taxes, that we make decent (and tasteful) homes, raise the best kids, volunteer for everything and donate to all kinds of causes; that we serve our nation both in uniform and in every kind of job and profession. Never mind that we are often care-givers for the elderly and those with HIV.

And never mind that millions of us go to church, for God’s sake. (If it weren’t for gay organists, choir directors and florists, the church would be a dreary and silent box of self-righteous people.)

But the perception is that we shake our naked boobs and butts on pride parade floats, and secretly want to sodomize our neighbor’s pre-teen children.

So how do we change the public’s idiotic perception and derail the lying machine which cranks out hateful speech and packages it as truth? In my view, probably not by hiring P.R. firms. They did that the fight Proposition 8 a year ago, and gay/lesbian coupledom was so sanitized for the public that we ceased to exist.

The best thing any of us can do is to come out—because unlike Hollywood’s movie stars and publicity seekers, we won’t get photos in People magazine. Most of us just come out to friends, families and close neighbors. Since the already know us, we have enormous influence over their perception of other lesbian/gay people and will actually change their perception by bringing it into line with the reality of what they know in our lives.

Bragman talks about clients who come to his firm because they believe their reality is better than the public perception, so they want to improve the perception. There is, in my words, a perception deficit which good publicity and solid integrity can correct.

Not so with “truthiness,” a word minted by friends of the Bush administration. All something needs is the “look and feel” of truth whether or not it is true. In short, public perception is more important than deception of the public. This month’s Advocate, for example, questions whether the LGBT community has been deceived by the Obama administration. Our perception before last November was that he was our hope for solid, systemic change. But have we been deceived, because we’re now seven months into Obama’s 48 months and we have nothing to show for it: not DOMA, not the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and only a gutted Hate Crimes legislation. Of course, Congress is only concerned with the public’s perception, not with systemic change, not with a new reality.

What about people who have a public perception which is better than the reality? You mean like many heterosexuals? Like family values? Bragman calls this “hype.” Like anybody or anything that claims to be the biggest, best, hottest, or most important in the world, for example. Like everybody on Facebook or in those chat rooms and personals.

Frontiers: “What was your perspective as a PR guy on the No on 8 campaign?”

Bragman: “My number one mantra in PR is if you do not define yourself somebody else is going to define you. And you’re not going to be as happy about them defining you as you are about defining yourself. So I think we committed the PR sin of letting our opponents define us. . . ”

My take on being Christian, of course, is that Jesus used to have good PR, good perception. But many of his followers, who puffed themselves up on hype (I would call it hyp-ocrisy), their reality has nearly destroyed his perception by the public.

And my take on being LGBT/Christian is that since countless other (heterosexual) Christians don’t worry too much about integrity and truth (they tell facile lies about us with no qualms), or bringing disgrace on the name of Jesus (think televangelists), it may well be up to us to restore the public perception of what a follower of Jesus Christ is like with traits like: honesty (come out), integrity (not a patchwork, but made of whole cloth), generosity, sacrifice, and the readiness to “turn the other cheek” to false perceptions. For example, Matthew 5:11 from the Beatitudes: “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.” In other words, walk the walk, don’t just talk the talk.

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Sex, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Homophobia, HIV and AIDS, Hollywood, Public Affairs, LGBT Rights, LGBT Christian, Coming Out | Print | No Comments »