Recently in Sexuality Category

I've been getting all kinds of e-mails from a group called Faith in America that bills itself as "the emancipation of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people from bigotry disguised as religious truth."

Coinciding this morning with the National Day of Prayer, Mitchell Gold's Faith in America announced it would commence Sunday a five-city "Call to Courage" campaign. Target cities are off the beaten path: Ames, Iowa; Reno, Nevada; Manchester, New Hampshire; Greenville, South Carolina; and Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Jim McGreevey, the former New Jersey governor who came out of the closet while in office and resigned because of an alleged affair, has converted into the Episcopal Church and will enter its General Theological Seminary in Manhattan. (The ordination of gay priests has become, to put it mildly, a contentious issue in the U.S. branch of King Henry's church.)

Here's the word from the Newark Star-Ledger, which broke the story online today:

Robin Reynolds considers herself a "child of God, a follower of Christ and a lesbian." Yesterday, she led a busload of queer Christians to Patrick Henry College, a conservative Christian campus outside Washington, D.C., that has a massive homeschooled population and a direct pipeline to White House internships.

The article was written by Hanna Rosin of the Washington Post. (Rosin previously profiled Patrick Henry College for The New Yorker.)

Reynolds had the makings of a public relations problem for Patrick Henry. She is African American, and the school is highly self-conscious of its inability to recruit many African American students (this year it has one out of a student body of about 325). She is earnest and polite and always speaks earnest evangelese -- "goodness gracious" and "my word" and "have a blessed day." Before she eats or takes a trip or makes a phone call, she prays to Jesus.

After breakfast the bus rolled up to the college. The campus is tiny, like a Hollywood set of an Ivy League school. At that moment there were no students anywhere, not even looking out their dorm windows. Only police.

Police cars were parked all along the driveway and across the entrance of the school. About 45 officers made a human barrier. The riders had seen plenty of police presence, but this was "intense," said Katie Higgins, one of the organizers.

Patrick Henry did not forbid its students to talk to the riders, but strongly encouraged them not to. In a letter to parents, the school's president called Soulforce's presence a "rude and offensive disruption" and accused the riders of trying to "manipulate" students.

The riders filed out of the bus and stood in a line. Some held signs: "Open Dialogue" and "All at God's Table." They had all taken care to dress professionally, but "professional" is a relative term. At Patrick Henry, boys wear suits to class and girls look like young interns on the Hill. Although the dress code does not mention them, one senses that the riders' nose rings, arms full of tattoos and pink headbands on males would be frowned upon. Reynolds looked neat, but by Patrick Henry standards boy neat, in a pinstriped button-down shirt and slacks.

Two other Soulforce equality riders were arrested for ignoring a "No Trespassing" sign. Sadly, the article makes no attempt to discuss Christian theology about sexuality, let alone the opinion of the Soulforce members, except for saying they are Christian and gay.

Homosexuality is, of course, not as black-and-white for Christians as most want it to seem. I'm no theologian, but plenty of them have disagreed on this issue. Globally, the mainline denomination's growing bend toward inclusiveness has alienated conservative Christians (see: Rift in the U.S. Episcopal Church -- and with the worldwide Anglican Communion -- over ordination of gays). And last month, the president of the flagship Baptist seminary raised a ruckus when he intimated that homosexuality might be hereditary.

There have been a bunch of stories recently about whether a Carlsbad church should welcome a repentent child molester or bar him from attending. In compiling these stories and a few others, GetReligion invokes the story from the Gospel of John in which Jesus comes across a group that wants to stone a woman caught in the act of adultery. "If any one of you is without sin," Jesus says, "let him be the first to throw a stone at her."

"That’s why I find this story so interesting," Mollie Ziegler of GetReligion writes. "I assume that my fellow congregants are like me: we all have a lot of very dark and secret sins that we’re glad are not out in the open. I assume that each person has their own struggle but that the struggle is serious and profound. Maybe that’s why I wish some of these stories — though the ones I highlighted were far and away the best — had a bit more perspective on the general theological approach to sin."

Last Wednesday, LA Weekly published this story about what happened to Rabbi Juda Heschel after he "unwittingly downloaded" two photos of child porn:

Heschel’s nine months at Fort Dix Federal Correctional Institution, one of which he spent in solitary confinement, were only the beginning of his downward spiral. Seven years after those fateful mouse clicks to illegally download child porn, Heschel has abandoned his last name (Heschel is his middle name) and lives an impoverished life in a tiny Venice apartment, decorated with the pictures of his three children who live on the East Coast. In Los Angeles, his potential employers and landlords usually assume that “registered sex offender” means rapist or child molester. He has been denied jobs and turned down for apartments. One of the most difficult moments came when a Los Angeles synagogue initially told him he was no longer welcome — even as a congregant.

As Los Angeles Archbishop Roger M. Mahony becomes embroiled in new claims that he knew about — and failed to stop — sexual abuse by a California priest, a number of high-profile sex scandals involving rabbis here and elsewhere have created a simmering fear among believers.

“We in the Jewish community are recognizing that we aren’t immune from these problems,” says Rabbi Mark S. Diamond, executive vice president of The Board of Rabbis of Southern California — one of the area’s two main rabbinical bodies, along with the Rabbinical Council of California. “For too many years I’ve heard Jewish people say this is not our problem, it just affects other faiths and denominations. We’re seeing otherwise.”

Diamond was horrified, for instance, to see his close colleague Rabbi David Kaye ensnared last year on Dateline NBC’s “To Catch a Predator.” (Kaye was sentenced to six and a half years in prison for attempting to seduce an actor who, working with Dateline, posed as a 13-year-old boy.) Around the same time, the principal of one of Los Angeles’ most popular Jewish schools, Rabbi Aron Tendler, stepped down amid allegations that he had sexually abused teenage girls. A few months later, Rabbi Mordechai Gafni, a popular leader in the Jewish Renewal movement, lost his chair at Los Angeles’ Stephen S. Wise Temple Elementary School after confessing to molesting several of his former female students.

The story ran under the headline, "To Forgive or to Shun," and writer Justin Clark quoted Rabbi Mark Borovitz, a convicted felon and spiritual leader of Beit T'Shuvah, an addiction recovery center for Jews in the Pico-Robertson area. (I was at Beit T'Shuvah for Passover Monday. It was nice to see, as I have before, how blending the 12 steps program with Jewish teachings can help some addicts recover and move forward.)

Borovitz credits Heschel with bringing nearly two dozen individuals into Beit T’Shuvah’s Sex Addicts Anonymous program.

“As with alcohol or drug addiction,” Borovitz says, “the best sexual-addiction counselors are those who are in recovery themselves.”

Nevertheless, Heschel says he misses having the rabbi’s pulpit, and regularly sends out his résumé — without success. “When I send my résumés, it’s my curiosity,” he says. “Is this group willing to accept someone who has made genuine t’shuvah?”

The Rev. Albert Mohler, president of the flagship Southern Baptist Theological seminary, made waves last month by discussing the possibility that homosexuality is hereditary. Such a circumstance would mean one of two things: Either homosexuality is not a sin because we are created in the image of God or that God does punish children for their parents errors.

The latter circumstance is pretty unlikely based of 2,000 years of theological research. The former also is unlikely based strictly on the energy conservative Christians put into lobbying against gay marriage, though some liberal denominations, like the Episcopal Church and the United Church of Christ, have more inclusive understandings of homosexuality, even if it is splitting the church itself.

As for Mohler, he had the (dis)honor two weeks ago of being the springboard for Stephen Colbert's satirical segment "The Word," which I found being re-run late last night. An often hilarious spin on a single news issue, with the punchlines being delivered as subtitles while Colbert talks, "The Word" on Mohler lacked wit, instead relying on a snotty intellectual elitism.

"We can use science to make the real world look more like the Bible," Colbert says while "Already Working On Flood" flashes on the screen. OK, that's clever, particularly because the next night's Word took issue with the schism forming between evangelical Christians seeking solutions to global warming and those who only want to focus on the "core values" of sexuality and abortion (see the first paragraph here).

But this, not so much. "According to the Old Testament, the sun goes around the earth. So I am calling on NASA to attach giants rockets to the sun and get it to revolve around our globe. And I certainly hope Rev. Mohler will join me. Because then the world won't just be natural. It will be supernatural," Colbert closes with. "And that is The Word."

Four months ago, it seemed like Bel-Air's University of Judaism was stepping out from the shadow of its big brother in New York, the Jewish Theological Seminary. JTS is the flagship of Conservative Judaism and has trained the movement's most esteemed rabbis. The governing body of the Conservative movement, of which the UJ has always been the second-fiddle seminary, adopted an opinion by the UJ's rector that says ordaining gays and lesbians is OK before God. And this month the UJ announced it had admitted its first gay students to its Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies.

It remained unclear if JTS would follow suit. Of the four members who resigned from the governing body after the December vote, two are on the faculty of JTS. But today, JTS said it will start admitting gay students.

Coincidentally, the University of Judaism announced last week that they were going to be merging with Brandeis-Bardin Institute in Simi Valley to build a better overall Jewish cultural, social and educational program. Officials of the newly named American Jewish University hope the move raises the two's collective national profile.

Is homosexuality hereditary?

Since the early '90s, some medical research has answered “Yes." Conversely, conservative members of the Abrahamic religions – Islam, Judaism and Christianity – have argued against a biological basis for sexuality: If man is created in God's image, why would God design him to like other men?

In the United States, the loudest voice opposing a homosexual predisposition has been that of conservative Christians. (Think Focus on the Family founder James C. Dobson.) And that's why the recent comments of the Rev. Albert Mohler have been so earth-shaking.

Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, asked on his blog the question: “Is your baby gay? What if you could know?” The evangelical world buzzed about whether Mohler had fallen prey to the pull of the dark side of the Force (liberalism).

His intitial post, which was followed by this one, concluded with this:

Christians who are committed to think in genuinely Christian terms should think carefully about these points:

1. There is, as of now, no incontrovertible or widely accepted proof that any biological basis for sexual orientation exists.

2. Nevertheless, the direction of the research points in this direction. Research into the sexual orientation of sheep and other animals, as well as human studies, points to some level of biological causation for sexual orientation in at least some individuals.

3. Given the consequences of the Fall and the effects of human sin, we should not be surprised that such a causation or link is found. After all, the human genetic structure, along with every other aspect of creation, shows the pernicious effects of the Fall and of God's judgment.

4. The biblical condemnation of all homosexual behaviors would not be compromised or mitigated in the least by such a discovery. The discovery of a biological factor would not change the Bible's moral verdict on homosexual behavior.

5. The discovery of a biological basis for homosexuality would be of great pastoral significance, allowing for a greater understanding of why certain persons struggle with these particular sexual temptations.

6. The biblical basis for establishing the dignity of all persons -- the fact that all humans are made in God's image -- reminds us that this means all persons, including those who may be marked by a predisposition toward homosexuality. For the sake of clarity, we must insist at all times that all persons -- whether identified as heterosexual, homosexual, lesbian, transsexual, transgendered, bisexual, or whatever -- are equally made in the image of God.

7. Thus, we will gladly contend for the right to life of all persons, born and unborn, whatever their sexual orientation. We must fight against the idea of aborting fetuses or human embryos identified as homosexual in orientation.

8. If a biological basis is found, and if a prenatal test is then developed, and if a successful treatment to reverse the sexual orientation to heterosexual is ever developed, we would support its use as we should unapologetically support the use of any appropriate means to avoid sexual temptation and the inevitable effects of sin.

9. We must stop confusing the issues of moral responsibility and moral choice. We are all responsible for our sexual orientation, but that does not mean that we freely and consciously choose that orientation. We sin against homosexuals by insisting that sexual temptation and attraction are predominately chosen. We do not always (or even generally) choose our temptations. Nevertheless, we are absolutely responsible for what we do with sinful temptations, whatever our so-called sexual orientation.

10. Christians must be very careful not to claim that science can never prove a biological basis for sexual orientation. We can and must insist that no scientific finding can change the basic sinfulness of all homosexual behavior. The general trend of the research points to at least some biological factors behind sexual attraction, gender identity, and sexual orientation. This does not alter God's moral verdict on homosexual sin (or heterosexual sin, for that matter), but it does hold some promise that a deeper knowledge of homosexuality and its cause will allow for more effective ministries to those who struggle with this particular pattern of temptation. If such knowledge should ever be discovered, we should embrace it and use it for the greater good of humanity and for the greater glory of God.