Homosexual radicals demonize religious beliefs of opponents

0 Comments | Insight on the News, August 31, 1998 | by Mark Tooley

A new pro-gay ecumenical coalition called the Religious Leadership Roundtable is blasting traditional religious believers who oppose homosexual practice. According to its members' groups, Christians and Jews who adhere to the Bible's prohibition against homosexual behavior are practicing hatred and bigotry.

Shrill rhetoric from the coalition highlights how pro-gay activists no longer appeal simply for tolerance or civil rights. They now excoriate the mere public expression of traditional religious beliefs about sex as inherently hateful and even dangerous.

The coalition is responding to a series of full-page newspaper ads promoting religious ministries that help homosexuals become heterosexual or celibate through prayer and counseling. The ads were sponsored primarily by conservative parachurch groups such as the Family Research Council, the Christian Coalition, the American Family Association and Concerned Women of America.

"What we are seeing is hard-ball political action thinly disguised as spiritual evangelism -- a strategic ploy of the religious right that is detrimental to both healthy religion and good government," warned Welton Gaddy of the Interfaith Alliance, a group closely tied to the National Council of Churches, or NCC. Gaddy failed to note that almost all churches belonging to the NCC have positions on homosexuality similar to views expressed in the ads.

Other groups in the coalition include Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, People for the American Way and homosexual caucus groups claiming affiliation with the Catholic Church and mainline Protestant denominations.

The ads to which they responded featured the religious testimonies of former homosexuals who now reject their former sexual habits as sinful. Some since have married and become parents. "Jesus didn't come to give people what they desired," said one ad. "He came to reveal God's honest truth about deception and sin and to offer a way out with a lifetime guarantee."

According to the pro-gay coalition, the ads employed "language of violence and hatred to denounce other people." Integrity, a group for homosexual Episcopalians, said the ads were "evil" and disregarded Christian teachings about the "dignity of every human being."

Dignity, a group for homosexual Catholics, denounced the ads as "misleading and destructive" while claiming the ads' message does not conform to Catholic teaching. Its leader, Robert F. Miailovich, said "ministries for ex-gays are "hurting women and men who have struggled ... to integrate their sexual orientation with their faith.... To say that homosexuality is a sin is wrong."

Another group for homosexual Catholics, New Ways Ministry, said the ads "call us to redouble our efforts to protect the rights of sexual minorities." Its spokesman, Francis DeBernardo, did not specify what minorities he had in mind beyond homosexuals. But he claimed that no "mainstream churches" advocated a change of sexual orientation.

A newly issued report from People for the American Way lumps together political opponents of same-sex marriage with the terrorists who bombed a lesbian nightclub. Specifically scored in the report are religious leaders who oppose acceptance of homosexual practice within their own denominations. For example, United Methodist attempts to prohibit same-sex ceremonies in chapels at church-affiliated Emory University in Atlanta are portrayed as a virtual hate crime.

People for the American Way cite as proof of homosexuality's immutable nature the American Psychiatric Association's decision of 25 years ago to remove homosexuality from its list of aberrant behaviors. But most religious people look to councils and scriptures more ancient than the 1970s for guidance.

The high-octane response to the newspaper ads vividly captures how polarized American culture has become over issues of sexuality. One side believes in humanity's sinful nature, in an unchanging moral law applicable to all people and in a personal God who can redeem and transform. The other side believes in human goodness, an abstract and unknowable deity, fluid moral standards and a radical self-autonomy that allows each person to create his or her own reality.

There really is no common ground between such diametrically opposed worldviews, which ensures that the culture war between them is long-term. The pro-family groups that sponsored the ads shrewdly retrieved the mantle of morality and compassion by focusing on ministries for former homosexuals. But the furious response to the ads, which even questioned their viewpoint's right to expression, illustrates the vast, lost ground that cultural conservatives will have to fight to recover.

Mark Tooley is a research associate and United Methodist Action Committee director at the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington.