June 3, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

Last night, friends brought supper over (graciously still helping us both out since my spouse’s disastrous fall in early April in which he fractured seven vertebrae and two ribs). We got to talking about coming out as a result of my recent posts, and I mentioned the blog post/comment conversation about coming out in mid-life.

To which our friend Michael said, “How can you stay in [the closet]?” Probably the easiest answer to why people stay in their closets is the pain and fear of confrontation. And the “confrontation” is not necessarily external. Who was it that said that the biggest battles we ever fight are inside our own heads?

It set me thinking about some words I began writing years back and sort of refined two years ago, and these are about the external confrontation which we either engage or flee (or both). In part:

“If you are part of the gay/lesbian movement, and part of a Christian organization, you are likely caught in a love-hate relationship with the church (specifically of your own particular denomination). As you wrestle with what it means to be gay or lesbian and to be Christian at the same time, you are also wrestling with the Church as it struggles with what it means to have gay and lesbian people openly in its midst.

“Many of us become discouraged, angry, frustrated and defeated—at the same time we are energized, hopeful, joyful and committed. We have every right to feel both of these moods, and we can be subject to rapid mood swings. Our task is not easy. But we have taken up a cross and we follow. Let us not be grandiose. It is not our own crosses we have shouldered, but Christ’s cross, worthy to be carried, which should humble us as well as ennoble us.

“It’s not for everyone. For what it’s worth, a different metaphor could be more serviceable: we are doing battle, engaged in the very tough hand-to-hand combat of changing the church’s mind, in faith, about some very basic and important issues. “Onward, Christian soldiers!” It is the Cross leading us, moving out before us. But wait! We need some basic training —things we all need to know before we get into the thick of the battle, and some rules of engagement.

“Some people may find the confrontational or battle language here offensive and call it counter-productive. It is not used flippantly, however. The military metaphor may seem out of fashion, but if it ever had any usefulness, it fits here. We are not fighting people—brothers and sisters in the faith. We are fighting the very real demons who inhabit both church and world. We must see ourselves as we really are—a minority within an overwhelming majority, chicks caught in a shell that stubbornly will not break open. We are still emerging, being born, coming out, waking up from a millennium-long hibernation during which homophobia, oppression, and death have reigned.

“Confrontation is unavoidable, even though paranoia may not be justified. As certainly as for the people of the New Testament, there are strong and dangerous forces out there: powers, principalities, angels, demons. The worst mistake gay and lesbian Christians could do is to deny their existence, or to discount the centrality of struggle.

“But in preparation for battle, in the midst of confrontation, we must be certain of what those forces are, and who The Enemy is.”

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Doctrine, "The Closet", Ecumenical Issues, LGBT Christian, Coming Out, Faith, Ministry | Print | 1 Comment »

May 31, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

I just had an interesting conversation this evening, at a Lutherans Concerned/Los Angeles reception/happy hour with a young woman enrolled in seminary. The subject we stayed on for a few minutes was “coming out.”

I don’t get around to this very often in this blog any more, even though I identified it two years ago as a subject worth blogging about —especially for Christians who are sometimes deeply conflicted about being lesbian/gay and Christian. Most of my conversations are with people who are already out, or at least partially out ~ somewhat open about their sexuality even if they’re selective about how they’ve shared it with. It kind of spooks me when I meet someone new who is only recently coming out to self or others. It’s hard to imagine any more that closeted people are still, well, in their closets. As time goes by, kids come out at earlier and earlier ages, so that a completely open gay boy of 13 or 14 is not unheard of. In contrast, when I was that age, it was homosexuality that seemed to be unheard of, and I was into my college years before I had the freedom and furtiveness to search the campus library for any information about it.

The young woman told me that she had come to her local Lutheran church directly from another church. She had been highly regarded there, apparently, and about to be elected or appointed as an officer of that congregation when (it sounded almost like an afterthought) she felt that full disclosure would be important. So she met with key people and said something like, “I just thought you should know,” that is, that she has a female partner of a number of years, etc.

They apparently didn’t take it well, hadn’t imagined it, and told her immediately that she couldn’t be an officer of their congregation, and in fact couldn’t even serve on a committee. But she could still come to church. That lasted about two weeks before she left and found a welcoming, LGBT-positive Lutheran church in the same neighborhood.

As in the church she left behind, there are hundreds—thousands of churches that still have closeted lesbian/gay members (some young, some not young at all) who must watch their backs and whose pastors and fellow parishioners probably don’t suspect they are lesbian, gay, etc. How can this be? I wonder if it happens because the self-righteous and un-welcoming churches must somehow assume that the general public has heard their zero-tolerance policy clearly enough not to attempt to come in or try to infiltrate. They must be shocked, shocked, to discover a Lesbian has sneaked past the gates. But what about the very young teenager who was born into a Christian congregation, only to discover their true inner sexuality 13 or 14 years later.

What was remarkable to me was that we had this conversation now, in 2009, rather than 1989 or 1979. Is this kind of secrecy/fear or rejection/exclusion really still going on in 2009?

You bet it is. The young woman reminded me of a Lutheran parish, I think in Minnesota, that after being a Reconciling in Christ (welcoming) congregation for a time, voted to bail out of the program: they actually decided to become unwelcoming. And to my mind the only reason that can still happen in this century is because the kids growing up there are afraid to come out.

How can I talk to kids, for example, who are14 or 15 years old about being Christian and lesbian or gay, or bisexual/transgender, etc., when they probably don’t know how to talk about it, or how to meet anybody like themselves to talk to? The internet of course—places like this blog—is a door that is wide open for kids who may be uncertain, intimidated, scared or, God forbid, already abused or severely punished because they tried to come out or to get truthful information.

Twenty years ago, Lutherans Concerned periodically sent out mailings to every Lutheran congregation in our region. Sometimes we included a simple poster, with our phone number in very big type.

665-LCLA

We imagined a scared kid who didn’t dare let on to anybody that s/he wanted to know more about being lesbian or gay. Maybe the secretary of the church would allow the poster to be put up on a bulletin board. And maybe these kids would see it, and without revealing even a nonchalant interest in it, could see the number from across the room and memorize the phone number.

Yes, we did get a few calls like that, but the young person on the other end of the phone line was too scared to give us a full name or an address to send more information or a monthly newsletter.

Enter the internet, and the information is all here and nobody has to give names at all if you don’t want to, and even a 14 year-old Christian kid knows how to surf the web and then delete your browsing history so other users of the computer won’t have a clue where you’ve been cruising. Of course, getting good information and advice on coming out doesn’t take away the frustrating, painful, risky work of actually coming out.

If you are that kid, remember: (1) God loves you as you are (2) don’t panic; (3) the love and truth of the Gospel is much bigger and more powerful than all the little narrow minds in your local church; (4) you’re only a teenager for a short time, so you will have greater and greater freedom to explore and express your real self as you grow; (5) Google for help, for answers, for advice and for trustworthy counsel (and I don’t mean Twitter or Craig’s List or chat rooms!); (6) if necessary, delete your browser’s history; (7) trust your own inner feelings and experiences because the Holy Spirit may be speaking to your heart and guiding you to do the right thing for your life.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in "The Closet", Gay Catechism, LGBT Christian, Coming Out, ELCA | Print | 1 Comment »

May 23, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

 Two frogs are sitting in a pot half full of water on the stove. There are bubbles all around them. “You know, it just doesn’t get any better than this,” said the first one.

“What do you mean? Are you crazy?” said the other. “This water is getting hot. I think we should get outta here.”

“Why are you always so negative?” said the first. “It’s not boiling, after all. It’s only simmering.”

“I can’t believe it! I suppose now you’re going to tell me the pot is half full, not half empty.”

I read an interesting piece yesterday in Instinct magazine, which surprised me. It’s a pretty-boy fashion magazine that catches our eyes but seldom gets read.

Joel Perry’s article”Is There Still a Closet?” is a relatively sympathetic look at those (how few? how many?) sexual minority persons out there who are still hiding. His article is not edgy—he doesn’t contemplate anything as exotic as transgender politician or a bisexual bishop—but he talks about his friend Davis from small town North Carolina who still sings in the church choir and says, “You try not to live a lie; however, you have to cover your tacks well.”

Perry is probably more sympathetic than I might be. Maybe a transgender politician must hide, but a 42-year old medical assistant can get work almost anywhere. Why would he stay where he can’t breathe, can’t move, can’t live? Why would he try to hold his breath for a lifetime because there is no air in the closet? Or maybe in North Carolina?

Or is it that he just doesn’t know how to come out gracefully, or where to begin?

My friend, most of us didn’t start out to be radical activists. But there came a moment when we finally realized that the pain of inaction outweighed the risks of action.

The truth is that coming out is a multi-part test of one’s own inner integrity. You don’t come out only once, but many times to different audiences. The outcome of any of these will vary, depending on how well prepared you are, and what kind of people you trust with your integrity. It can be painful, and it can be relatively easy and enjoyable. depending on how each coming out event unfolds. Typically, my friends report that at least for some —family especially—they already know and were just waiting for them to talk about it.

Another important thing to remember is that the risk and pain are temporary. Once the coming out process is behind you, your life takes different turns. If doors slam shut, others will open. If some friends shun you, you will make other, more genuine friends. If you grow in the process of deciding you must breathe free, you may discover that other people are also able to grow and change their views and opinions. The family, friend or co-worker who is often overheard telling homophobic jokes may actually change his or her tune just because you were honest about yourself.

And the most important thing to remember, if you are a person of faith, is that God already knows your secret. The thunderbolt has not hit you, no matter how long you’ve been hiding your little secret, so many it’s time to reconsider how damning your sexuality really is. Could it be that God knows, and God still loves you? That the all-wise and omniscient God, the one who knows the heart, fully understands and does not condemn you? That grace outweighs condemnation, and love is more important than sin?

Could it be that you’ve been avoiding thinking about God for fear of the consequences, only to realize that God’s Spirit may be your best friend and advocate as you go through the coming out process?

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Gay Catechism, "The Closet", Homophobia, LGBT Christian, Living by Grace, Coming Out | Print | No Comments »

May 20, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

I had a brief conversation last night at a Love Honor Cherish event with Father Geoff Farrow, the courageous priest who came out last fall and was expelled from his parish because he would not, in conscience, echo the bishop’s order that the faithful all vote in favor of Proposition 8.

When is the right time to speak up, or to remain silent? This is one of the eternal questions of human integrity, and no matter what generation or century you live in, there are things over which some people will trip and fall headlong away from their own inner sense of who they are and what is important in life. Our culture doesn’t provide opportunities for people to lift up their own values, or speak about them easily. Our culture itself has little integrity left, when it comes to values (unless you count right-wing flag waving which I don’t).

Integrity is perhaps the tap root of genuine ministry as well, as Father Geoff fully knows. When we counsel people —and many times the counsel is quite informal, rather than scheduled and deliberate behind closed doors— what people are listening for in a priest or pastor is not necessarily the religious or doctrinal “party line.” They are listening for our integrity: to hear how we inwardly weigh and process the decisions that we all face as human beings in a dehumanizing culture.

Fr. Geoff mentioned those priests who left the ministry but never moved out of the rectory. Their genuine ministry ends when they loose their integrity. (Fr. Geoff had started packing up his personal effects in the rectory before he came out and spoke to the media about being gay.)

I had an opposite experience years ago. I was outed in my previous parish—but secretly so that the rumor was going around but nobody would tell me what they were being told. I was forced to resign over other petty complaints. So I left the professional ministry, the paycheck side of the equation, but was not finished with my inner sense of vocation or calling to be in ministry. So for many years I kept teaching, writing and preaching whenever I could while I worked in an ordinary office job.

From the day I left that parish, I determined I would never go back into the closet, even if I never went back into the professional Lutheran ministry. It was how I preserved my sense of integrity. And in the years since, I am convinced that coming out as a Lesbian/gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or whatever sexual minority and telling one’s story, is the most important thing we can do to preserve our sanity and integrity, and to change the world. In fact, in a society where personal integrity is not highly valued (we left countless politicians do as they please and weasel out of it any way they can just to get their names off the front page quickly), the one bright spot or the moral high ground for humanity and personal integrity is our movement to come out and tell our stories honestly even at high personal cost.

Without your integrity, said Father Geoff last night, “it’s like your death, on a lay-away plan.” Your humanity, your life, is being given up a little bit at a time. But coming out and choosing to have integrity, if you ask me, is kind of like being born again.

(Father Geoff blogs at www.FatherGeoff.com.)

—Pastor Dan Hooper

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

May 8, 2009 by Dan Hooper.

You don’t have to point this out to me: After all the blogs about the same-sex marriage fight in America, what does gay marriage really have to do with being Christian? The question can cut both ways, and, no, I haven’t addressed it here (probably because an entire book won’t fit on this screen), yet.

In the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s analysis of why Proposition 8 (overturning the Supreme Court’s May 2008 decision which legalized civil same sex marriage in California) passed, the religion card played a big role. Conservative churches produced buckets of money to push Prop 8, and they demanded that their members vote for it, to “save” marriage.

(As if the lesbians and gay men were going to, multiple choice, (a) steal it; (b) damn it; (c) throw it away; (d) destroy it; or (e) none of the above.)

((One commentator of the Daily KOS site I mentioned last week said this about same-sex marriage coming to Iowa: “Thank God! Marriage is saved. Let Gays do to marriage what they do to run down neighborhoods…. fix it up, make it better, sell it back to the heteros for tidy profits, and move on to the next thing that needs rehab.”))

But on the progressive side, a lot of churches are entirely supportive of same-sex weddings. My own parish started to allow same-sex ceremonies in the church long before I was called to serve there. Last fall, it went on record against Proposition 8. The United Church of Christ (successor to New England’s Congregational churches), in its advertising campaign “God Is Still Speaking” and other venues has made clear that it supports gay marriage. So does the Universalist–Unitarian church denomination.

At one level, marriage is completely irrelevant to the Christian message. Jesus stressed that in the world to come people “neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven,” (Mark 12:25) and he criticized those who tried to bait him or pose trick questions or devise spiritual litmus tests. “But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites?” (Matthew 22:18)

But at another level, marriage is foundational for the family and community life which most human beings believe is important to humanity and civilization. Traditional Christians, who have so far opposed same-gender marriage, strongly believe in the value of family and fidelity.

But, so do progressive Christians, including many LGBT Christians and their straight allies. Speaking as such a one— both as a pastor and as married (33 years together; legally recognized for 7 months and counting)— I too believe in the value of family and fidelity.

Then why the odious, noxious and expensive fight over civil  marital rights? Why Christians against Christians?

It certainly isn’t just semantics. No one owns the word “marriage.” Besides, the traditionalists have the words “Holy Matrimony” and a host of other terms to use. And they don’t use the words “civil marriage” to describe the sanctity or sacramental nature of Christian marriage, anyway.

And as I said to a reporter last June in West Hollywood, “if you want to ‘protect’ marriage, then buy your own wife some flowers and listen to her when she talks to you. Protect your own marriage, and Marriage will take care of itself.”

No, the only reasonable answer is that ring-wingnut leaders, who do believe in the value of family and fidelity, do not want anyone else to have except people like them. This is no mere struggle over the use of the word “marriage,” and therefore it’s no mere struggle over whether a “civil union” or “domestic partnership” is truly equal to a civil marriage. The bald, undisguised truth is that right wing does not want homosexual persons to have and enjoy family, fidelity, stability and security. To deny us familial relationships makes it easier to continue to reject us as promiscuous sexual perverts, even when clearly many of us are not. They want to lower our ability to lead stable lives which might be regarded by others as decent and comparable to their own stable lives.

Taken as a group, the negative actions of the Right, especially the “Christian” Right, if successful would all reduce us back to closeted, insecure, self-loathing and pathetic individuals who neither deserved nor possessed significant relationships. They would prevent us from having the right to employment or housing, from serving in the military, from parenting or adopting children, from belonging to a Christian church, from teaching in public schools, or even from having intimate relations in the privacy of our own homes. If you glance back to pre-Stonewall times, 40 years ago this coming June, gay and lesbian people were in constant fear of the law simply for having a drink and talking to one another in a neighborhood bar.

The clear pattern of prejudice has been to do everything possible to deprive us of our self-esteem, our dignity and our very humanity; and instead to taunt us that we are despised here and damned hereafter by God.

Even the rhetoric about the so-called Gay Agenda is a smoke-screen thrown up by the right wing to conceal their agenda: to control, hurt and destroy people who are different from themselves. The methodology is to intimidate, shame, attack, and sue.

Do you think I am painting this with over-broad strokes? That I exaggerate, that I am unkind and therefore un-Christian toward those of simple faith and traditional values? I know activists that would say the opposite: that I am being too kind, too gentle on the right wing. Jesus, after all , utterly reject the right wing of his day. “You brood of vipers!” (Matthew 3:7); “You hypocrites!” (Matthew 15:7) He caricatured the self-righteous in parables, for example, “The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.’” (Luke 18:11)

It is not my place to judge. But of this I am certain: the call of God to all Christians is to do all we can to build one another up with love, to be compassionate, and to forgive one another as we have been forgiven. In my view, that precludes virtually all of the angry, harsh rhetoric of right-wing Christians who repeatedly defame and reject progressive Christians.

So, if marriage is the battleground right now, but the war itself is over our dignity self-esteem, our humanity, then marriage is important for progressive Christians. We are simply not backing down. We will stand against any and all who devalue our relationships, our life experiences, our faith, our consciences, and who would deny us our place at the table (Luke 15:28–32), even other brothers and sisters who call themselves Christian.— Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Lesbian/Gay Marriage, "The Closet", Doctrine, Ecumenical Issues, History, LGBT Christian, Public Affairs | Print | No Comments »

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 »

March 12, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

I have written before about the toxic and corrosive effects of shame on human beings. (See for example, “Pray for the Bobbies of this world,” January 3, 2009)

I seriously think that what lies at the center of the culture wars’ battlefields is shame.

Those conservatives who spend millions of dollars and hours doing everything possible to deprive LGBT people of our rights are not merely trying to preserve rights and decency for their “traditional values” constituency. Beneath all of that strategic and rhetorical stuff they are really trying to shame us back into the closet, back into the stone age. Without shame, the reactionary and conservative side cannot make gains in these “wars.”

The battle over Proposition 8 in California is only the latest issue in these “wars.” On every other battleground I can think of in recent decades, there has been the public issue articulated by the cultural/religious right, but there has been the underlying shame-related view as well. This analysis is clumsily worded here, but I think we could devote more attention to this correlation until clarity is revealed:

Shame is a constant in the formula of the cultural and religious right. It is still thought to be a convenient tool or weapon, that can be picked up and used any time other arguments are not persuasive enough to push LGBT people into their closets. And shame, as viewed by the conservative power base, is thought to be almost self-evident. That is, the way in which they make attempts to shame us —just for being who we are, or just for wanting to live our lives with the same rights and the same opportunities as other people— is built on their conservative view that what is so shameful about being or behaving as a homosexual/bisexual/transgender person, is that it is just shameful.  Most typical of all is the attempt of the Right to belittle pride by shaming it.

Americans for Truth trying to shame the Chicago Gay Pride Parade.  Keep reading down the page to find this shocking headline: “I Was Attacked By a Homosexual Mob!”

What is self-evident about circular reasoning? That we or our behavior is shameful because, well, it’s shameful? We should, in their view, just know and admit that we ought to be ashamed of ourselves. And if we’re not, that is evidence that we are shameless, which is pathetic, disgusting and shameful.

Shame is often defined as unwanted attention. Take a room full of people, single out one person and have all the others simply stare at this one person and yell, “Shame on you!!” This is the power of the majority over the minority. For centuries, the heterosexual majority has reserved this power to shame lesbian/gay, bisexual, and transgender people, and for that matter any other minority that they don’t like, simply by yelling “Shame” until the minority is intimidated enough to back down, withdraw, build a closet, or run away in fear for their lives.

This is 2009, for God’s sake. Why does shame still work as a cultural and religious gimmick, a contrived deus ex machina to rescue the conservative view from an otherwise dismal collapse? That is, after all, the other use of religion — the one I don’t subscribe to at all — when you appeal to a judgmental and cruel God to shame people when your own efforts don’t seem to work well enough. The fact that LGBT people are not sufficiently ashamed of themselves in the sight of God is largely what propels the Religious Reich to such extremes.

But the God I know and obey is the one who calls us to compassion, to love, and to take risks in order that God’s realm may come to this earth. The spiritual lights by which I try to walk are those which reveal the power of love and grace, and call all people to come out of their fear and hiding, rather than to be shamed or run from God’s steadfast love and kindness. Perhaps the most spiritual thing any of us can do is to refuse to be shamed, and to have confidence that our integrity and our conscience are leading us to change society in a positive direction.

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Doctrine, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, "The Closet", Fundamentalism, LGBT Christian, Spirituality, LGBT Rights, Coming Out | Print | No Comments »

February 19, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

The ELCA released the final Draft Sexuality Statement today, called “Human Sexuality: Gift and Trust,” but it doesn’t contain much that is new. This Draft of a social teaching was authorized in 2001, and has been painful in its formation. This coming summer in Minneapolis, the voting members of the ELCA will have the last word on the draft and probably adopt it at the official policy of the churchbody. In the meantime, the Council of Bishops and others will be able to take a crack at it.

You can download the documents here.

What is new is the accompanying document – recommendations about what to do with gay/ lesbian partnered clergy or candidates for ministry. On first reading, it appears to be the “half a loaf” solution to a problem that vexes church denominations: each Synod can decide for itself, whether to accept, tolerate or ban gay clergy.

Right now, that probably means that large metropolitan areas with more liberal congregations and bishops will continue to accept sexual minority clergy, but more suburban and rural areas will not.

But the half loaf solution is almost all wrong. Instead of adopting a policy of “local option” – leaving it to each congregation to decide if it accepts or hates the thought of a homosexual, bisexual or transgender pastor– or in the alternative, liberalizing the policy from the top down, this “half loaf” solution puts the decision at the synod level.

Geographic synods do have a lot to say about the people who serve as pastors in their jurisdiction. A powerful bishop can either open doors in a parish church, or welcome in a pastor or pastoral candidate in the effort to place him or her in a congregation, or virtually block any pastor from serving or being considered for a call.

The whole reason the Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries came into existence more than a decade ago was to get around these blockades which synodical bishops have the authority to set up. A network of open-minded congregations has developed and is expanding which will consider an LGBT candidate (otherwise fully-qualified by professional and spiritual measures). Fear of discipline by the synodical bishops have kept many congregations from being open-minded about LGBTQ clergy, and literally forced individuals who are lesbian or gay to remain very closeted, which is amazing in this day and age when coming out as a sexual minority is moving forward in every other sector or our society.

But the “half loaf” recommendations, by lodging this partial liberality at the synod level —if approved in August by the ELCA’s Assembly—almost guarantees the politicizing of every decision at the synod level. When a bishop is elected, or any member of the Synod Council is elected, you can bet that people will be pressing them to reveal where they stand on homosexual clergy.  Instead of either slamming the door or opening it wide to fly a rainbow flag, the door will flop open or closed depending on who gets elected.  Since one or another of these positions are up for election every year, it means that every annual Synod assembly may become a time to re-open the debate over LGBT clergy, like re-opening a wound over and over.

We aren’t privy to the discussions of the national committee, chaired by Rev. Peter Strommen, that drafted these recommendations. All we can tell is the effect of their discussions, and the effect is to shove the homophobic policy down to a regional level as if this will get homosexuality off of the priority list at the national level. Folks, it is not that simple.  You will come to regret it.

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Doctrine, "The Closet", LGBT Christian, Coming Out, Ministry, ELCA | Print | No Comments »

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 Homophobia, "The Closet", Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Fundamentalism, LGBT Rights, LGBT Christian, Public Affairs | Print | No Comments »

June 18, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

There will be no sudden rash of lesbian weddings or gay weddings in our congregation.

That’s not because the leadership or membership are opposed to same-sex weddings. The Council voted, before I was even considered as their pastor, to permit the use of the Sanctuary for same-sex ceremonies. So the commitment of the church is there to see this as a real ministry.

And it would not be because we have no lesbian or gay members. The percentage of the membership has been steadily growing for years, because lesbian and gay people see this church as open, welcoming, supportive and genuine in our commitment to try to follow Jesus.

It would be because there are very few couples—five at last count, another one or two of whom one member of the couple belongs to the church. Largely, our lesbian/gay membership are singles.

Some are happy being single, and aren’t particularly interested in explaining further. Others will make casual comments that the right man or the right woman has not come along. Either they have been unlucky in love, or are perpetually shopping.

I cannot help but wonder, not about these as individuals, but about lesbian and gay people as a group, that we are still so submerged by social rejection, a.k.a. homophobia, that we cannot fall in love or make commitments—or if we’ve made them, are emotionally and spiritually unequipped to care for and feed those relationships to keep them healthy.

Internalized homophobia was a big subject twenty years ago. It has been used to explain everything from male promiscuity to broken relationships to low self-esteem, to the evasive way in which even permanent partners would refer to one another obliquely, to conceal the nature of the relationship. Internalized homophobia and being closeted were cloaked with the same dark covering, stained with the same black ink. Things deeply buried, we theorized, kept us from recognizing our true self-worth, and our entitlement (yes, entitlement) to breathe the same air, inhabit the same planet and pursue happiness the same as everybody else who is living.

Nowadays, there is nothing fresh to be said about internalized homophobia. While the larger society is still wringing its hands about the causes and the effects of sexual orientation (as recently as this past Monday’s Los Angeles Times Health Section), the lesbian and gay community have essentially stopped thinking about. We believed that we had somehow gotten over it, taken care of it, put it aside as a relic of our past along with shag carpeting, oversized playpen sofas and Princess telephones.

What does gay look like?, Los Angeles Times, June 16, by Regina Nuzzo

But the dearth or absence or paucity of love is palpable. At last count there was something nearing 100,000 domestic partnerships registered in the state of California. Domestic partnership more or less resemble marriage (not enough to suffice for the Supreme Court), bestowing a lot of rights and responsibilities on same-gender couples. But only 100,000? California has a population of 30 million, of which we can safely assume 3–10% are gay or lesbian. That would suggest there should be a million domestic partnerships, if we really want to secure our rights and protect our family through legally-recognized relationships.

Where is everybody? Alas, I suspect that 90% of everybody feel unloved or are still looking for love in all the wrong places, or like the long-term unemployed have simply given up looking.

I can only hope that the legal permissibility of marriage will encourage those who are unsure of themselves. It moved me deeply to see the majority opinion of the Supreme Court repeatedly reference the respect of the community as a necessary part of equal recognition for same-sex couples. Maybe the language of respect and honor will begin to undo what deeply-buried internalized homophobia has done to us — at least in the younger generation. We can hope.

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in "The Closet", Lesbian/Gay Marriage, LGBT Christian, Public Affairs, Ministry | Print | No Comments »

April 12, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

My friend Roberta was ordained to today. It’s a start.

A well educated, mature woman, with a theology degree and a Ph. D., Roberta became Roman Catholic and sought her theological education at a time, fresh after Vatican II, when thousands of women thought that the Roman Catholic Church was going to start ordaining women to the priesthood any day now. In the meantime, Robert is a writer, teacher, and professional mediator.

Forty years after Vatican II, she’s still waiting, of course. I can’t help wondering if we are now all waiting for the present Pope to die for things to finally change, or for the church itself to die. Hmm.

Today Roberta was ordained as a Deacon, not a Priest— in the American Catholic Church, one of those independent churchbodies that traces their line back to the Old Catholics who broke with Rome in 1870 over last-straw dogmas which they would not accept: papal infallibility and the bodily assumption of Mary into heaven, etc.

Roberta was ordained in our Lutheran parish sanctuary, of course. Welcome, my friend to the original “old” Catholics – the churches of the Reformation, who have been waiting 500 years for reconciliation.

We have little to brag about, of course. We didn’t start ordaining women to the ministry in this country until 1970. It’s almost as if Vatican II made more of an impression on us than on the Roman Catholics. At any rate, 38 years is a long time to wait for ordination.

As desperately as the whole church of Christ needs servants and ministers, it continues to find ways to drag its feet. My friend Scott, an ELCA heterosexual seminary graduate, waited about two years for a call and ordination to serve a congregation. What as wrong with him? Is he chopped liver? And in the meantime, dozens of congregations in our geographic area are dragging their feet, unable to work the process to select and to call a Pastor. Why? Scott wanted a call very much, and continued to be a servant of the church in a non-ordained position while he was waiting. On hold, as it were.

“Your Call is important to us. Please hold.” This seems to be the church’s message to its seminary graduates.

Then I got to thinking: Was there something wrong with this guy? I mean, did he fail some key courses? Does he have an attitude problem? Is he a closeted heretic? Why are they overlooking him? I finally asked him one day at a clergy gathering face-to-face, “Whom did you piss off?”

“That’s what I’m beginning to wonder,” he said with a sad chuckle in his voice.

Women routinely have to wait a long time to get the Call. And for their second call (if— God forbid—they should ever want or have to move on to a new opportunity to serve), there are “on hold” for a very long time.

It’s especially true of course for lesbian and gay, bisexual and transgender students and graduates and pastors. The institutional church has spent the same forty years ditzing around with its LGBT children.

“Are we welcome in the church, or not?”

“Well, yes, sorta,” they tell us.

“We have faith, and we have been loyal to a fault to an institution which really doesn’t know what to do with us, so are we welcome to participate fully in the life of the church or not?”

“Well, yes.”

“Does that participation include professional ministry, under Call, as ordained servants of the servants of God?

“Hello?”

“Your Call is important to us. Please continue to hold.”

It really isn’t a matter of whether the church will ever finish studying us, like butterflies pinned under glass. It is a matter of whether the church of Christ will ever get on with its mission to follow Jesus, serve people, and move on to new and exciting opportunities. But sadly, the institutional church seems to be incapable—institutionally—of carrying out real ministry and stepping up to anything new.

So here’s to you, Deacon Roberta. Congratulations!!

She has selected her area of missional concentration as a Diaconate for Spirituality and the Arts in the Los Feliz area of Hollywood/Los Angeles. I don’t think it’s been tried before, and of course there’s no money for it, but knowing Roberta, it will happen. Like thousands of women, minorities, lesbian and gay people, renegades and troublemakers within the body of Christ, she has the vision while the whole church seems to be blind. You go, Roberta!

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in "The Closet", Catholic matters, Ecumenical Issues, History, Ministry | Print | No Comments »

December 22, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

I received an e-mail yesterday about the death of a retired pastor, 89 years old. The news brought up mixed feelings in me.

As a pastor of the church I should feel some sadness for this man, who lived a long life and remained faithful to our church. I don’t know all the facts of where he served in his long career, but I only know of the one brief time—a few months—when he served as the interim pastor of a congregation I was attending.

This was in the 1980s while I served in a specialized ministry of the church.  I wasn’t officially “out” although my immediate superiors knew that I was gay and had been living in a relationship of more than 6 or 7 years. But officially I was still quite closeted.

But this particular pastor, in his 60s at the time “put two and two together” and realized that I was living with another man.  Now, perhaps in the span of his career he counseled and prayed and struggled with people who faced very significant life issues.  Perhaps he was quite supportive and loving with them.  But he never spoke to me about being gay, or how I could justify serving the church as an ordained pastor while living in a semi-secretive relationship with another man.  He never asked me about my faith, my pilgrimage in life, my sense of call, my understanding of the Bible, or any other significant life issue.

Yet I came to find out that, behind my back, he was spreading the news that I was homosexual.

Within two years I had been recommended by my bishop, and called from my specialized status back into the parish ministry in the area.  And within about a year in that position, I began to feel the suspicion of parishioners.  Before long I was asked to leave the congregation, but was never confronted over any significant failing on my part.  This story unfolded slowly, but within a few more years a woman who was in a position to know the facts confirmed for me confidentially that the reason I had been forced to resign was that people were told I was gay.  I knew that this particular pastor had been the one who launched the wave of rumors which pushed me out of the ordained ministry of the church.

Twenty some years ago, this was the fate of those who lacked the courage, the resources and freedom to just “come out.”  We were slowly, excruciatingly, hampered, limited, excluded, rejected in ways just as secretive as our lives were.  We were eliminated from the lives and callings and jobs and relationships we thought we were so skillfully preserving by keeping our own personal agony secret.  This happened everywhere in society, but especially in the church. It was as if no one needed to confront us or say anything, because we should just understand the reasons we were being rejected.  I think it must have felt similar to what African-Americans felt when they were passed over for a job or an advancement, or denied housing, or avoided in social settings—that they were just supposed to understand why they were disliked or discriminated against.  We were all supposed to internalize the shame which society implicitly demanded of us.

The upshot of my loss of career was the personal decision—with the help of a competent therapist—that I would never again go back into a closet.

But I have mixed feelings about the man who spread the rumors that deprived me of 16 years of my life work.

Was this like the patriarch Joseph in the book of Genesis: hated by his brothers, sold into slavery, and because of false accusations went to prison before being vindicated by God?  In this (overlooked) story, Joseph finally confronts his hateful brothers with love and forgiveness:

“His brothers were so dumbfounded at finding themselves face to face with Joseph that they could not answer.  Then Joseph said to his brothers, . . . ‘I am your brother Joseph whom you sold into Egypt.  Now do not be distressed, do not reproach yourselves for having sold me here, since God sent me before you to preserve your lives.’”—Genesis 45:4–5

This elderly pastor and I were brothers in the family of God, so I should be respectful of his passing.  The circumstances of life sent us along very different paths, and he would never have had reason to fully understand me.  When he personally brought great harm to me, I confess, it took years to expunge the bitterness out of my life.  We never saw each other again. He went into retirement.  I went into another line of employment for sixteen years.

And now at his death what am I to feel?  I came out; I have never regretted that step, and will defend the necessity of coming out publicly, especially within the church of Jesus Christ.

Society has changed—in ways for which this elderly pastor would, I am sure, have felt contempt.  Increasingly there is safety for more and more LGBT people to be who we are, and to live without the shame that earlier generations forced upon us. We still may have to duck some homophobic slurs and even violence.  But more and more we will not internalize the homophobia that previous generations accepted as inevitable.  Perhaps, like ancient Joseph, it took me years of life experience to be able to let my bitterness go and to forgive the one who intended harm, because now I know that God intended it for good.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Bible & Interpretation, "The Closet", LGBT Christian, Faith, Ministry, Coming Out, ELCA | Print | No Comments »

October 11, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

20th Anniversary:  National Coming Out Day

For the past 5 years I have been a member of the Extraordinary Candidacy Project (ECP) Roster — a list of clergy and wannabees either removed from the clergy roster of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) or denied access to that roster by reason of our relationships to our life partners.

At present the ELCA still has an oppressive policy that categorically excludes from ordained service anyone who will not promise a lifetime of sexual celibacy—even though the policy itself is in violation of the historic Lutheran Confessions of the 16^th century which rejected clerical celibacy as a requirement, and against the writings of blessed Martin Luther.

It is not the first time that an individual or a group of people have been excluded from a Christian roster of priests and ministers. Sometimes it is done for clear moral failure. (People want to make that case against us, too.) Most often it is for the underlying violation of an authoritative decision. Luther himself was excommunicated from the church for a variety of reasons, chief of which was that he dared to talk back to the church hierarchy and so undermine their “authority.” The Pope continues to do this to people in the 21^st century as a way of silencing dissent. (More later.)

There is little doubt that the framers of the current ELCA policy excluding gay and lesbian pastors (see Section III. of “Vision and Expectations”) was also a cynical attempt to silence dissent. The generation of highly-placed church-crats which wrote the policy in 1990 were old enough to remember when even the threat of exposure of a lesbian or homosexual was enough to silence them—intimidate them, shame them, and chase them back where they came from (a closet).

To remove an ordained priest or pastor pretty much silences them. They lose their pulpit, their soap box, their career and livelihood. It’s over, folks, for most of them. They move on to other “day jobs.” Many lose faith in the Church entirely.

Only about a century before Luther inflamed a reforming spirit all over Europe, Other would-be reformers were effectively silenced by being disciplined, then stripped of their clerical rank, condemned as heretics, turned over to the secular authorities, and burned at the stake. This happened to William Tyndale and John Hus for the high crime of translating the Holy Scriptures into the language of the people, and encouraging ordinary people to read and understand (interpret) the Scriptures for themselves. As I mentioned in a sermon September 30, I still find it amazing that church “authority” could become so evil as to commit murder for translating the scriptures into the ordinary language of the people when St. Jerome did exactly the same thing 1,000 years earlier by translating the Hebrew and Greek into the “Vulgate” – the common Latin of the time.

Luther, however, survived being silenced. He publically burned the Papal Bull (a fitting image for our time) condemning him, along with the entire code of canon law, and went right on teaching, preaching, and writing. He was and remains extraordinary 500 years later.

What makes our clergy roster in the Extraordinary Candidacy Project extraordinary is that we belong to the generation of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Christian clergy who like Luther before us refuse to be silenced. Being dropped, or excluded from the ELCA’s Roster has not gotten rid of us. We’re still here, we’re queer. Get used to it.

Officially, of course, the “extraordinary” word means that we have been ordained extra ordinem, beyond the “ordinary” procedure for calling and ordaining Lutheran pastors with the blessing (the signature on a letter of call) from a Bishop. As of 2007, ELCA Bishops are still not in a position to sign letters of call for LGBT pastors without risking their own removal or discipline. To their credit, some 20 of our 65 bishops showed up at the August 8 eucharist in Chicago at which the Rev. Bradley Schmeling presided and more than 650 people sang, prayed, and called upon the Holy Spirit to bring change to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Change is coming, but we continue ordinations extra ordinem through the authority of Lutheran congregations to call and ordain their own pastors, an inherent right which Luther himself vigorously defended in the 16^th century.

The July 2 decision of a Committee on Appeals of the ELCA to remove Pastor Schmeling from the roster of the church —without ever meeting him or hearing a single word of testimony on his behalf—was a crass and cynical gesture meant to silence him and get him off the pages of our daily newspapers. It isn’t working. Pastor Schmeling is still serving as the beloved pastor of St. John’s Lutheran Church in Atlanta.

But perhaps even more extraordinary is that members of the ECP roster aren’t sitting around either grousing about this terrible church policy, or waiting for the policy to change (even though every two years it gets closer to the “tipping point” when it will. This roster of extraordinary pastors is extraordinary because we have gone on with our ministries — with serving people, preaching, teaching, presiding over the sacraments of the church, ministering to those in nursing homes and hospitals and prisons. Many of us reach out to and serve an entire population of wounded or alienated believers whom the larger church has completely ignored. And, we’re raising our own funds, through organizations like Lutheran Lesbian and Gay Ministries, Lutherans Concerned and Wingspan Ministries in Minnesota, to carry on this work.

I am reminded of the saying attributed to St. Francis of Assisi: “Preach the Gospel. If necessary, use words.” The Extraordinary Candidacy Project and Lutheran Lesbian and Gay Ministries made the joint decision this past winter to organically join forces, becoming an entity which pulls together at the same pace and in the same direction, to preach the Gospel with or without words. The new entity —not to be seen as a separate church body, but an expression or a movement of the Holy Spirit at work—will be known as “Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries.”

And extraordinary they are. We are not a club representing and protecting the “sanctus quo,” but striving with God’s help to be faithful to a calling which we recognize and validate in one another, and which we pray will one day be understood and validated by the larger church. In the meantime, the ECP pastors jumped the gun on National Coming Out Day (October 11) by taking their “next step” in August when 82 of us came out publicly. Many of these people were gathered prayerfully with the voting members of the ELCA’s “Churchwide Assembly” in Chicago when the photo below was taken.

Photo: Paul Nixdorf

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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September 24, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

Today I was re-arranging my books in the study. The LGBT books take about 3 shelves. It surprised me to find a number of titles that fit together so closely: Ron Eichberg’s Coming Out: An Act of Love, Christian de la Huerta’s Coming Out Spiritually, Chris Glaser’s Come Home!, O’Neill and Ritter’s Coming Out Within: Stages of Spiritual Awakening for Lesbians and Gay Men, and Kaufman and Raphael’s Coming Out of Shame: Transforming Gay and Lesbian Lives.

I probably have more related titles somewhere.  These are enough to make the point, that gay men and lesbians have more to do than just announce and start enjoying their new consciousness of belonging to a sexual minority. Coming out entails a huge amount of psychic and spiritual homework:  to understand myself deeply, to make peace with my differentness, to prepare myself for battle with homophobia, to survive in a hostile world.

Hostility to LGBT people seems to be on the decline in the last few decades . . . until we remember that:

• well-funded right-wing groups are working tirelessly to deprive us and prevent us from exercising civil rights;
• hate crimes in general are declining somewhat but hate crimes against sexual minorities continue to rise;
• very few cities and states in the U.S. and few nations in the world provide the relative tolerance we experience now.
• well-known and well-funded religious leaders continue to espouse extremely vile attitudes against LGBT people—among them ex-preacher and televangelist Pat Robertson, Anglican archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria, and the current pontiff Benedict XVI, and of course many Muslim leaders.
• earlier historical periods of tolerance gave way almost overnight to periods of bigotry and extreme intolerance.

Coming Out of Shame is an extremely compelling although densely-written book.  Kaufman and Raphael are absolutely right in calling shame “a sickness of the soul.” But that does not mean a sinful state of being from which one must repent.  Shame is a condition most often imposed from the outside and then internalized.  Numerous components of shame are “assembled” inside of us.

“The principal forms of shame are discouragement, embarrassment, shyness, self-consciousness, inferiority, and guilt.”

Do any of these shoes fit you? We hold ourselves back because of shame. We set ourselves up for unnecessary failure.  We worry about pleasing people for the wrong reasons (”the best little boys in the world.”)  We self-eliminate in contests where shame could be used against us.  I know of several cases within the Church where keen and gifted persons withdrew their names from consideration for jobs where they could have done wonderful work, because of the reality that they could be exposed, shamed, destroyed, if their sexuality ever came to light.

And shame is one of those “gifts” that keep on giving until we learn to deal with our interior selves and to extract ourselves from shame. Until we come out of it.

Shame does not confirm guilt. Shame may be caused by the actions or reactions of other people toward us. But their actions or even reactions are not necessarily evidence of something objectively wrong in us or our behavior.  Our cross to bear is that we are still, in this 21^st century, expected to feel shame for things as immutable and ordinary as who we are, and how we were “wired” by our Creator. What appalls many right-wing fundamentalists (and energizes them politically) is that out-lesbian and gay people do not exhibit any shame.  Right-wing political action is an attempt not only to deprive us of liberties and rights but to re-shame us and drive us back into closets where we would remain alone and ashamed of ourselves.

National Coming Out Day is Thursday, October 11. “Take your next step” out of your closet.  The Human Rights Campaign has resources for you to create your own National Coming Out Day Video.  And HRC has a downloadable 23-page Guide to Coming Out.

But the reality of our lives and our times tell me there is a lot more homework to do after you come out. In some ways, the real coming out experience is only superficial unless it is a complete spiritual re-birth from the inside out.

“Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’”—Jesus, John 3:7

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in LGBT Christian, Fundamentalism, "The Closet", LGBT Rights, History, Recovery, Spirituality, Coming Out | Print | No Comments »

September 6, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

The practice of “outing” is controversial, because it seems to break the inherent code of silence that gay and lesbian people have used for their very survival in a hostile society. When “Grey’s Anatomy” actor T. R. Knight came out as gay, it was partly to beat the rush before someone else outed him. Knight’s story was featured in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times.

In recent years a kind of “ethic” has emerged—especially when talking about known public figures—about the use of outing. In the current scandal involving Senator Larry E. Craig (R-Idaho), for example, his arrest for solicitation of sex in a Minneapolis airport bathroom was only the latest episode of an apparently closeted, double life. Craig has been accused of previous sexual incidents with males.

What made him a target for outing, on sites such as Mike Rogers’ www.BlogActive.com, is that Craig has consistently been a legislative foe of the civil and legal rights the LGBT community are seeking.

 Mike Rogers

Rogers is the subject of a new Washington Post profile, “The Most Feared Man on the Hill?”

 Wayne Besen

Author and commentator Wayne Besen devoted yesterday’s column to Rogers and his list of member of Congress who are ripe for outing. He is rigorous in his research, and was the first to publish the dirty secrets about Ed Schrock (former Virginia congressman), who later decided not to run for re-election; Mark Foley (former Florida congressman); and of course Larry Craig who will obviously not be running for re-election either. (Or, not? Wednesday’s Washington Post reports Craig is reconsidering his own announced resignation!) Rogers’ blog, by the way, reported nearly a year ago meeting with several men who had sexual relations with Larry Craig.

Two things about Rogers apparently generate these political fears.

For one, his sense of integrity leads to an ethic about the practice of outing. From Besen’s daily column:

“When those private lives are in direct conflict with the public policy that these officials espouse, I think it’s fair game that their private lives be brought into this,” Rogers told The Washington Post. “And I have a blog to do that with. Here’s the question: What community is expected to protect its own enemies? Don’t beat up the gay community, and then expect us to protect your secrets and your double life. It’s just not right.”

And the second thing is that Rogers has a list of 33 others like Schrock, Foley and Craig on Capitol Hill: mostly men, mostly Republican (30 of them), and he is carefully researching them. Why is such scandal, or potential scandal, important to me? Not hypocrisy alone – that lasso would draw us all in. I am much more concerned about the gross misuse of the Christian faith as a tool for the manipulation and hurt of other human beings.

People get manipulated and hurt every day. It’s a cruel world out there. But when the Christian faith — a spirituality of love, compassion, and mercy — is willfully used by people in power to manipulate and hurt, I become upset. And I become especially inflamed when those being hurt are gay or lesbian, bisexual or transgender. All of us have suffered enough manipulation, shame, hurt, loss of self-esteem, loss of our civil rights. But when a spirituality which can redeem us from the shame and hurt is itself turned into a tool of control and abuse, that is the last straw with me. I cannot control public policy, legislation, court cases or public opinion. But I will try everything, with the simple gifts God has given me, to offer grace, love and truth to our community and defend the true Christian faith from such demonic misuse. Many of the people on the “religious right” or in places of power in Washington, try to identify the Christian faith with strict/conventional/heterosexual moralism to the degree that any variation from their view is condemned.

And here we have members of Congress condemning themselves by their own standards. (Senator Craig, in his public statements, continues to insist he is not gay and never has been–by which statements he means to imply that being gay is shameful and he is above such shame!)

When will the manipulation, hurt, shaming and condemnation stop, in the name of Jesus?

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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