David Benkof
writes the "Fabulously Observant" column for the Jerusalem Post
Traditionally religious organizations and the gay and lesbian community sit across a vast gulf of experience, understanding, scriptural interpretation, politics, and theology.
One organization trying to bridge that gulf, the Soulforce Equality Ride, deserves credit for trying to bridge the gap, but its approach needs some adjustment for true progress to be made.
Now in its fourth year, the Equality Ride is currently traveling across the American South on a six-week bus trip with nearly 20 youthful gays and lesbians of faith. They are visiting seminaries, Bible schools, and historically black colleges to engage in dialogue with (and, where necessary, nonviolent protest against) traditionally religious institutions, in an attempt to make them more gay-friendly.
The program, which draws upon echoes of the early-1960s Freedom Rides, is run by Soulforce, an organization founded by the Rev. Mel White, a gay man I consider to be a rare moral voice within the gay and lesbian community.
Unfortunately, Soulforce appears to be much more interested in echoing gay ideology than in exploring the diversity of ways religious people have legitimately approached questions of spirituality and sin, goodness and God.
For example, one Soulforce slogan is: "The debate is over." Their point is that whether gay relations are a sin is not up for question - any more than whether blacks are equal or slavery is moral.
On questions like whether gay people are human, whether God loves us, and whether we should be welcome in religious institutions, I think the debate indeed is over. But as someone who takes the Bible seriously, I hardly think a real debate has even begun - nor needs to - on whether gay relations are sinful.
The books that argue that gay relations are not a sin, such as
What the Bible Really Says about Homosexuality
by Daniel A. Helminiak, and
Wrestling with God and Men
, by Steven Greenberg (an ordained rabbi), either lack sufficient understanding of biblical Hebrew and the oral law that explains it, or have a conclusion in mind before reaching it via illegitimate methodologies.
It's one thing to say, "Gay relations are a sin in the Bible, but my being with the person I love is more important than the Bible." It's disrespectful and a little pathetic to say the Bible does not say what it clearly does say - and further, that the traditionalist viewpoint deserves no consideration whatsoever.
If I want to engage in dialogue with pro-gay religious forces, I'm hardly going to start by declaring that the debate is over! I'm willing to listen respectfully if the other side is similarly willing.
But the Equality Riders do not appear to be similarly willing. A co-director of this year's Equality Ride, Katie Higgins, said in a news release that "we can't heal . . . until everyone has a place at the table."
Yet Higgins told me a traditionally religious gay or lesbian person like me who thinks gay relations are inherently sinful wouldn't be welcome on the Equality Ride, because such views are "contrary to the mission."
But the whole purpose of her organization is to make room for gay-positive voices in traditionalist schools. If a Bible college kicks out a lesbian for her dissident ideas, Soulforce will employ Gandhian tactics to try to make room for her.
Yet if someone gay with views like mine wants to come on the Soulforce road trip, he will be rejected for not following the program. Smells like hypocrisy to me. Either everyone should have a place at every table, or not.
I'd like to see more openness everywhere - both within traditionalist religious institutions (which can learn from hearing gay and lesbian faith experiences) and within gay-religious organizations (which can come to understand that the sinfulness debate is not, in fact, over).
Perhaps one answer is to foster conservative gay-religious communities. I'm not talking about the controversial ex-gay and the dubious reparative therapy organizations. I know I'm not the only traditionalist devout gay person, and if more of us felt comfortable being open, we could serve as a bridge between those who are traditionally religious and not gay and those who are gay but not traditionally religious.
Instead, we often get rejected by both sides, when we're actually the ideal people to help each side understand the other.