TIA Opposes SBC Article on the Family

In a July 14, 1998 publication, The Interfaith Alliance called upon its supporters to “oppose efforts to reverse president Clinton’s executive order extending non-discrimination protections to lesbian and gay employees in the federal government.”[i]  About that same time, TIA executive director Dr. C. Welton Gaddy attacked Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family for opposing president Clinton’s executive order and for commending the Southern Baptist Convention for its statement on the Family.  In a TIA press statement, Dr. Gaddy states: 

Reflect for a moment on events of the past three months.  First, Religious Right operative James Dobson meets with Republican leaders and threatens to pull his support from the party unless his demands are heeded and his values embraced by the party…  Only a few days later, Dobson delivers the keynote address at the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, commending the convention’s doctrinal statement calling for wives to submit to their husbands and urging President Clinton to rescind an Executive Order that does no more than guarantee gays and lesbians the provision of basic civil rights.[ii]   

Attempting to portray the SBC’s statement on the family as part of a “partisan political agenda,” Dr. Gaddy states:  “As a leader in the historic Baptist tradition I am disappointed and morally outraged by the Southern Baptist’s attempt to provide a religious foundation for a partisan political agenda that divides communities of faith and Baptists around the country.  Simply put, the statement on women and family was politically not biblically motivated.”[iii]  In another TIA press release, Dr. Gaddy sums up his view of the SBC statement on the family:  “Simply put, it is biblically indefensible, morally questionable, theologically heretical, and politically extreme.”[iv] 

Considering the fact that Dr. Gaddy has served in top leadership positions at Americans United, Alliance of Baptists and The Interfaith Alliance, each of which are strongly aligned with the pro-homosexual community, Dr. Gaddy’s opposition to the SBC statement on the family is quite understandable.  Consider the full text of the SBC statement, which messengers to the 1998 annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention voted to add to the Baptist Faith and Message:   

God has ordained the family as the foundational institution of human society.  It is composed of persons relating to one another by marriage, blood, or adoption.  Marriage is the uniting of one man and one woman in covenant commitment for a lifetime.  It is God’s unique gift to provide for the man and the woman in marriage the framework for intimate companionship, the channel for sexual expression according to biblical standards, and the means for procreation of the human race.  The husband and wife are of equal worth before God.  Both bear God’s image but each in differing ways.  The marriage relationship models the way God relates to His people.  A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church.  He has the God-given responsibility to provide for, to protect, and to lead his family.  A wife is to submit graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ.  She, being ‘in the image of God’ as is her husband and thus equal to him, has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his ‘helper’ in managing their household and nurturing the next generation.  Children, from the moment of conception, are a blessing and heritage from the Lord.  Parents are to demonstrate to their children God’s pattern for marriage.  Parents are to teach their children spiritual and moral values and to lead them, through consistent lifestyle example and loving discipline, to make choices based on biblical truth.  Children are to honor and obey their parents.[v]  (emphasis ours)   

In a July 1998 TIA press release, Dr. Gaddy further reveals his open hostility and incivility toward conservative Southern Baptists when he “issued a warning to Republicans:”

Having witnessed the Religious Right takeover of the Southern Baptist Convention, Dr. Gaddy issued a warning to Republicans.  ‘You cannot appease these people.  They are coming after your political home like they came after my spiritual home.  Having spent untold hours working on a way to maintain cooperation and unity in the Southern Baptist Convention, I learned that compromise is not in their vocabulary.  They, the Religious Right, will be satisfied with nothing less than total control – control of the Republican Party, control of the nation.[vi]      

TIA Opposes “Truth in Love Campaign”

Also in  July of 1998, The Interfaith Alliance and numerous other Religious Left groups launched an assault against an advertising campaign called “Truth in Love” about homosexuality, sponsored by 14 conservative Christian organizations including Concerned Women for America, American Family Association, Family Research Council, Coral Ridge Ministries and Christian Coalition. 

According to Gary Bauer’s Family Research Council, the ads, which appeared in mid-July of 1998 in the New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post, “consists of personal testimony from homosexuals who left the lifestyle.”[vii]  In May of 1999, a similar 60 second “Truth in Love” TV ad began to air.[viii]  

According to TIA’s Dr. Gaddy:  “These ads thinly veil a power play designed to provide cover for recent anti-gay comments made by members of the United States Congress,” specifically, Republican U.S. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott’s “denunciation of homosexuality as a sin.”[ix] 

According to an article from the CBF-funded Associated Baptist Press:  “The [newspaper] ads sparked a debate over whether homosexuals can change.  Groups like Exodus International, a Christian referral and resource network founded in 1976, proclaim that freedom from homosexuality is possible through faith in Jesus Christ and counseling.  On the other hand, research seems to indicate that some people are genetically predisposed to homosexuality and that few gays are able to maintain a heterosexual lifestyle.” 

The ABP articled also quotes TIA’s Dr. C. Welton Gaddy responding to the “Truth in Love” ad’s identification of homosexual behavior as “sin:” 

‘I think that it makes no contribution biblically, psychologically, socially to simply make the statement that homosexuality is a sin,’ Gaddy said, ‘I think it is far better to deal with individuals with compassion and to try to enable those individuals to live out their lives and enjoy all kinds of rights that the rest of us do.’[x]

In a TIA press statement highly critical of the “Truth in Love” ads, Dr. Gaddy states:  “The Religious Right’s media campaign condemning homosexuality gives cause for alarm among people of faith supportive of democracy, committed to civil rights for all people, and dedicated to the preservation of religious liberty.  Their ads call on homosexuals to experience Christian conversion.  The intent is to rid our society of gays and lesbians.  These ads offer a false choice to gays and lesbians  --  convert or go away; accept the cure for homosexuality or suffer the consequences in a hostile society that will not embrace you as a child of God.”  (emphasis ours) 

Dr. Gaddy continues:  “Consider the arrogance of assuming their interpretation of the Bible is the only accurate interpretation of the Bible, their understanding of homosexuality is the only correct understanding of homosexuality, and their statement of faith represents the view of all people of faith.  This is arrogance with a vengeance.”[xi] 

In an October 1998 press release, Dr. Gaddy again attacks the “Truth in Love” ad campaign:  “[T]he Religious Right’s media campaign targets gays and lesbians, labels them as a moral problem, and advocates their eradication by conversion.  The moral and spiritual dimensions of this exclusionary message devastate efforts to build a civil society.”[xii]

Summing up the views of Dr. Gaddy and TIA, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (a co-convener of the National Religious Leadership Roundtable) identifies the Religious Left’s primary objection to the “Truth in Love” ad campaign  –  the “ex-gay” movement and the belief that homosexuals can change.  In a May, 1999 press release, the homosexual group states:  “The multi-million dollar ‘Truth in Love’ political campaign began last summer with a series of full-page ads in national newspapers…  The so-called ‘ex-gay’ movement asserts that people can be ‘converted’ to heterosexuality by embracing fundamentalist doctrine or through ‘reparative therapy.’  These claims have been rejected by the medical community and repudiated by most national religious organizations.”[xiii] (emphasis ours)

Table of Contents 

Previous page

Next page