Activists Work to Show Gays Are Not Anti-Religious
A recent poll shows many gay Americans lead robust faith lives
Though he was raised in the United Methodist Church, Harry Knox knew he couldn't become a minister in his denomination because it doesn't ordain openly gay members. He enrolled in a seminary of the more liberal United Church of Christ but was eventually denied ordination anyway. "My whole career as an activist is an accidental ministry," says Knox, 48, who now works at the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay rights group. "I would rather be a local pastor."
Instead, since 2005, Knox has built HRC's "religion and faith program," which works to combat the stereotype of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community as antireligious. "For far too long, LGBT organizations did not put religious allies at the forefront of our efforts," Knox says. "That's a mistake we're making less often now."
Those religious allies may be more plentiful than most Americans think. A Barna Group survey out last week shows that most gay Americans lead pretty robust faith lives. While 72 percent of straight American adults describe their faith as "very important" in their lives, so do 60 percent of gays and lesbians. Almost as many, 58 percent, say they've made a personal and ongoing commitment to Jesus Christ.
And though they are much less likely than straights to share the beliefs of born-again Christians—which comes as no surprise, since most churches in the born-again tradition condemn homosexuality—the Barna survey found that 27 percent of gays do hold those beliefs. "Many in the Christian community assume there's this significant gap between heterosexuals and homosexuals in terms of faith beliefs and activities," says George Barna, the country's top pollster on religious issues, who supervised the survey. "While there are statistically significant differences, it's the narrow size of the gap that's most surprising."
The poll unleashed a torrent of hate mail, mostly from believers furious with Barna's conclusion: that many gays are Bible-believing Christians. But more and more gay rights organizations are joining HRC in stepping up efforts to highlight the faith beliefs of many gay Americans, largely through religious outreach programs. And some religious traditions and denominations are taking steps to welcome gay and lesbian members.
Gay rights activists say that the 2004 election, when voters in 11 states passed gay marriage bans that were heavily promoted through churches, was a wake-up call. To help counter the image of the gay marriage battle as a fight between gays and religious Americans, HRC, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and other national gay rights groups quickly hired religious outreach staff.
Some gay rights leaders objected to the idea of building bridges to faith groups and leaders. "For as long as there has been an anti-LGBT movement, the language and organizations behind it have been religious," says the Rev. Rebecca Voelkel, who spearheads faith outreach for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. "So there's still a gulf between the LGBT secular community and pro-LGBT religious folks, and there's a lot of trust that needs to be built."
But the gay rights movement's religious voices have used the passage of a gay marriage ban in California last year to strengthen their case for religious outreach. A recent National Gay and Lesbian Task Force analysis of gay activists' failure to stop California's ban, known as Proposition 8, concluded that the movement "has a problem with religion."
"The voices of conservative religious leaders," the report read, "must be responded to by the voices of progressive faith leaders whose religious beliefs and traditions allow them to speak to people of faith as moral equals." Since then, activists like Knox and Voelkel have spent time meeting with religious leaders in California as they strategize about how to challenge the ban.
While enlisting religious leaders in political fights, gay rights activists are also working to make churches and denominations more gay friendly. Many mainline Protestant denominations have made changes. The United Church of Christ now ordains gay ministers, and the Presbyterian Church (USA) is considering following suit. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America will vote on the issue this summer. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's Voelkel says she is working with all five movements of American Judaism to help them become what she calls "welcoming and affirming" toward gays. Her group's list of welcoming and affirming Christian congregations has swelled to 3,400, up from 1,300 four years ago.
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Reader Comments
Try biblical literacy...
because that is what you are lacking. During ancient times, hospitality was very important to at least the Middle Eastern cultures and more important than family honor. While this is unacceptable and wicked to us today, the ancient peoples of Lot's time were okay with it. It should be noted that God did not approve of these things and still does not approve of them. Being righteous does not mean perfection. Noah was righteous, but he got drunk and God does not like drunkeness. Abraham was righteous, but he didn't trust God to protect him despite what God was doing and going to do for him.
God didn't choose Lot to be righteous. Lot was righteous because of his faith in God, even though it was weak.
Lot's wife was turned into salt because she looked back. Again, nothing that suggests sex. Your sources must be lacking in considering context because your arguments take selected verses out without considering those around them.
Wine was typically safer to drink than water. Does that excuse the actions of the daughters? No, but it does make sense for Lot to take wine along.
I don't need to have a degree in all of those "sciences" because nothing you are saying is scientific. You are making things up because a certain phrase gets you excited, when there is nothing to get excited about. Do you have a problem? Because you put sex into things where it clearly isn't there.
No, some Christians are old earth Creationists and believe God created the earth billions of years ago and eventually went on with the days of Creation. Others are youn earth Creationists and to them the world is only 6000 to 9000. Then there are theistic evolutionists who say God created life through evolution. In the end, it doesn't matter which is true because none of them are salvation issues for Christians. The Bible only indicates that life was not done by evolution, not what the age of the world is.
The writers of the Bible were not too concerned with how certain materials like tar were brought about. They were more interested in God's interaction with humanity. Also, who's to say that God couldn't have created the earth with fossil fuels and materials already? If He could create the universe by thought and spoken word alone, then this too would be possible for Him.
Another insulting comment improperly using my name
Drf once again shows flawed etiquette in using my first name, as if knows me. We must all use the "name" posted by commentators, to identify them, but it's rude to make his comments as if I'm the only person reading his jeremiads. He misreads the Lot incest tale & forgets Lot offered his virgin daughters to a mob for gang rape, before God "chose Lot as a righteous man," & sent him off with his wife & daughters. It is a typical dirty traveling salesman's joke. Get rid of the protective mom by "turning her to salt," *drying her out sexually," and leaving dad with the girls, after he made them take plenty of wine along to excuse the dirty deed. Drf has a tremendous gap in his reading of psychology, mythology, pathology and other sciences that can be used to analyze what Scripture writers had in mind. Creationists say Earth isn't as old as 9000 years. It took millions of years for buried fern forests of the dinosaur age to turn into petroleum. Yet the Ark was said to be caulked with tar. Bible authors were ignorant people as shown by their contradictions. Eagerness to believe their product depends on intellectual level of people of any era.
aura, stop lying...
it isn't becoming of you. Look, in Genesis 19:30-38 we find that the daughters and Lot were hiding in a cave in some nearby mountains. They notice there was no man among them. This doesn't mean they thought they were the last three people on earth. Notice, they didn't talk to God about their problem nor do we see God pointing to Lot as the solution to their problem. Also, the women were more interested in preserving their family line (verse 32) than the whole human race. The daughters are responsible for their actions. They acted out their sinful thoughts. Lot, though rather drunk and was not aware of what was happening, did have some responsibility in marrying off his daughters which he failed to do. But to say it was all Lot's fault is deceiving. Not all sin is sex related, see Acts 5:1-11.
Not all church leaders or members are sex crazy.
You and others might be millionares, but money and wealth do not provide joy or peace. Money can be inflated into being worthless. Material posessions can be destroyed or stolen. But the gift of God is eternal. Repentance does not mean you are proud of your sins. Anyone who comes before God with pride and asks for forgiveness does not understand what he is doing. It is a confession made through humility and humbleness because you are not coming before a spiritual machine that gives eternal life when you say the "magic words". You are coming before a holy God who doesn't have to do anything for you.
If you study the Torcaso v. Watkins case in 1961, you'll find that Secular Humanism is considered a religion by the Supreme Court.
You see the same things done by atheistic groups who sell merchandise to kids and adults, yet you don't consider them false. Actually, the age of fossils is rather misleading. Consider strata fossils, fossils that are in multiple layers of rock at once. If it takes hundreds of years for rock layers to form, then the organic material for the fossil to be made would have decomposed well before the fossilization process. Also, the fossil record doesn't support macro-evolution. If we were concerned about students, then we should give all of the evidence for both sides and not just support one side. After all, we want them to make well informed decisions don't we?
I believe you are alluding to Psalm 14:1. Yes, the English word is fool, but the Hebrew word for fool is also rendered as someone who is sinful or unrighteous. Hell is not a torture chamber. It is a place of punishment for those who chose not to be saved. God hates sin and His nature demands that He punish those who are sinful. He loves us, so He made a way for us not to have to face judgment. But He also gave us free will to choose His salvation or not. Those who don't are have no one to blame but themselves. You are stuck in the Middle Ages. We had a Reformation and many are living with it. Get with the program.
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