Comments on: Lutheran gay clergy vote tests mainline churches

By: Wayne M.

Wayne M. — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 23:09:05 +0000

Like other Christians, LGBT Christians are motivated by a desire to serve God and Christ first. A sad tragedy is that for many years, we often believed the line that we were sinful and lived our Christian lives almost in self-hatred. This often meant that many LGBT people chose to live the stricter disciplines of some denominations. For example, many LGBT Roman Catholics entered the priesthood or religious life, believing the vow of celibacy would provide a motivation to avoid sexual contact with other men (or women in the case of nuns). In fact, this choice often turned decent moral people into sexual time bombs or embittered old men and women.

However, the blessing is that God did not abandon us. We saw this first with the emergence of the Metropolitan Community Church under the Rev. Elder Troy Perry in 1968, the year before Stonewall. Now we see this with many progressive Protestant denominations recognizing scientific and psychological truths on homosexuality, and repenting of their ostracism of LGBT people and welcoming us to both lay and ordained ministry.

No doubt there are people in the Episcopal-Anglican, Evangelical Lutheran and other denominations who do not recognize God’s call to welcome His LGBT children. If they are honest, they will not choose to split affirming denominations, but rather they will join those denominations such as Roman Catholic, Southern Baptist and others who choose to use limited interpretations of the Bible as an excuse for ignorance, discrimination and bigotry. (Let us call these things what they are.)

This is similar to what I chose to do some years ago– leave the homophobia of the Roman Catholic church and join a denomination willing to welcome and affirm LGBT people (as well as women and others).

It is very important for us, as LGBT folk, not to focus on homophobia and use is as an excuse for anti-religious bigotry. While our bitterest opponents are from the Christian and religious community, so are some of our strongest allies. Our enemy must be religious homophobia, not religious people.

– Wayne Madden

By: Drewski

Drewski — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 16:01:39 +0000

Lutherans in the US already have a conservative option. Missouri Synod Lutherans are NOT gay-friendly and show no indication of becoming so. ELCA has never been known for taking the hard line that Missouri Synod does.

Then too, it’s easier to have respect for a denomination whose origins trace to 95 theses nailed to a church door southwest of Berlin, than one involving talking salamanders and gold plates in the wilds of 1840s western New York.

By: Jay

Jay — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 13:22:44 +0000

What I find interesting is that a lot of gay people remain in churches that discriminate against them and tell them that homosexuality is a sin. I suppose they do this for social reasons or because they don’t see many options, especially if they live in small cities. Also, in most mainline churches at the local level the doctrinal condemnation of homosexuality is largely ignored: i.e., the ministers don’t really preach against homosexuality even if the denomination considers it a sin. But as more mainline churches move away from considering homosexuality a sin (the main vote at the ELCA assembly was to agree to disagree within the denomination as to whether homosexuality is a sin–that vote led to the decision to allow partnered clergy), gay people will move to those churches.