Religious Voices Supporting

Gay marriage and redefining the family

Among those advocating the full array of “gay rights,” including homosexual marriages, has been PAW.   Working in the courts, PAW’s web site notes that in Baehr v. Miike (Hawaii) and Baker v. Vermont, PAW “has filed amicus curiae briefs in both cases urging the courts to end the denial of equal marriage rights to gay and lesbian couples by permitting them to participate in the institution of civil marriage.”[i]  (emphasis ours)  PAW has also been an advocate for the partial-birth abortion procedure.   

In a June 1998 interview with Gay Today, Americans United’s Rev. Barry Lynn contended that abortion and homosexuality are both indeed religious liberty issues, arguing that “anti-choice legislation and sodomy laws [are] unconstitutional, because they enact particular religious views into statutory form.”[ii]  In the same interview, Lynn was asked to explain why homosexual groups should view Americans United as a “gay ally.”  He responded:

The same people and organizations who would like to restrict the fundamental rights of gays and lesbians are those who would tear down the separation of church and state wall, (and censor libraries AND restrict reproductive choice AND destroy public schools).  I don’t expect every gay rights group to make stopping vouchers its top priority.  However, I think these organizations must realize that if tax dollars start flowing to religious schools, too many of those schools will be teaching absurd notions about how ‘homosexuals want special rights’ and propagandizing children with homophobic notions (and all of us will be paying for it.)[iii]

In a 1995 interview with ACLU media director Phil Gutis, Americans United’s Barry Lynn stated his support for gay marriages, a position also held by Lynn’s former employer, the ACLU.”[iv]  In a 1995 article in AU’s Church and State magazine, Lynn followed the logic of his support for same-sex marriage and argued for “same-gender families:” 

We live in a much more diverse nation of families:  single-parent families, families with members of three generations, same-gender families and families with foster children who stay for brief periods of time.  These are all the American family of 1995.[v]  (emphasis ours) 

Re-defining the family was also one of the topics in the CBF’s 1994 AIDS resource packet:

No longer is family defined as a mother, father, son, daughter, a dog, and a station wagon.  Such definition has changed through time, circumstances, and disintegration.  Family may be defined as a basic, primary group of caring relationships within intimate boundaries...  ‘There are couples who have no intent of marrying.  There are single-parent families.  There are blended families… gay families and lesbian families…, yet they are constituted as families by enduring covenants.’[vi] (emphasis theirs)   (See CBF ) 

In an article appearing in the Baptist Peacemaker, the official publication of the CBF-funded Baptist Peace Fellowship of North America, opposition to same-sex marriages is said to be “[a]s much an issue of the separation of church and state as it is an issue of justice…”[vii]  The article was subtitled “A brief survey on the major events in the justice struggle for gay and lesbian people in the U.S.”

The Alliance of Baptists, a group which claims to have “provided much of the leadership for the [Cooperative Baptist] Fellowship,”[viii] encourages churches to perform gay marriages, which the Alliance refers to as “a ritual of covenant-making.”  The call for ceremonial gay unions is made in the Alliance’s 1994 Report of the Task Force on Human Sexuality:      

We encourage churches to lift up the ideal of covenant – that is, challenging persons, whether heterosexual or same-sex oriented, to express sexual intimacy within the covenant context of a committed, monogamous relationship.   One example of that support could be a ritual of covenant-making between the couple, the couple and God, and the couple and the Christian community.[ix]  (emphasis ours) 

Alliance of Baptists executive director Stan Hastey is a former 15 year staff member of the BJCPA where he served as associate director.  (See Alliance of Baptists)

Religious Voices Condemn

SBC Sunday School Lessons on Homosexuality

On February 3, 1999, Equal Partners in Faith (EPF) issued a press release entitled:  “Baptists Sunday School Lessons Fuel Anti-Gay Sentiments.”  According to the press release, EPF “called ‘misguided and discriminatory’ a decision to offer Sunday School lessons in Southern Baptist churches on how homosexuals can ‘change.’”   The article goes on to quote Steven Baines, a Southern Baptist minister and Project Coordinator for EPF:  “We abhor this latest attempt to teach young people that lesbians and gays are not full and equal human beings created in God’s image, deserving of love and respect.” 

In an effort to re-define “discrimination” to include the teaching of traditional Biblical standards for moral behavior,  and calling for the “celebration” of such human differences as homosexuality, the press release continues:

Teaching young people that lesbians and gay men are ‘sinful’ and should change contributes to a climate that sanctions anti-gay discrimination and violence…. What we need to teach instead is that differences in human condition are a cause for celebration not condemnation.[x]  (emphasis ours)  

EPF’s Steven Baines is a member of First Baptist Church, Greenville, South Carolina, whose pastor is former CBF moderator Hardy Clemons.  Clemons has served as a co-chair of the BJCPA’s Religious Liberty Council since 1995.[xi]

In February 1999, EPF circulated a proclamation in support of  “a national campaign to strengthen and unite the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and ally communities.”  The Proclamation calls for “people of faith” to “join together to celebrate March 21-27, as ‘The Week of Equality for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people.’”  The Proclamation is a further effort on the part of the Religious Left to condemn conservative Christian churches and denominations that refuse to cave in to Religious Left demands to either embrace or remain silent regarding gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered persons:  

As People of faith, we know too well the discrimination, homophobia and hatred that exist in our communities of faith…  We confess that our faith communities have betrayed the dignity and respect of LGBT persons and humbly ask for forgiveness.  We further pledge that…we will work relentlessly to foster an environment of growth, acceptance and full equality for LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered] persons…  (emphasis ours) 

With no mention of the fact that bisexuality, by its very definition, is promiscuous, the Proclamation concludes: 

[W]e affirm that LGBT people are indeed created in the image of God deserving of mutual love and respect.  Our continued prayer is that one day intolerance, ignorance, bigotry and violence against all of God’s children ill be eradicated from the very places where compassion and peace should reign.  Until that day we stand in one voice, one spirit and one hope for the full equality of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.[xii]

 

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