Dobson, 73, and the board of directors both agreed about the moves, which will go into effect at the end of February, ministry officials said. The decision to part ways was amicable and long anticipated, said Gary Schneeberger, spokesman for the Colorado Springs-based group.

Dobson has distanced himself in recent years from the organization he founded in 1977 and built into an influential force – both as a political powerhouse and provider of conservative family and moral advice. Dobson resigned as Focus on the Family president in 2003 and as chairman of the board in February.

“The Bible tells us that to everything there is a season – and Dr. Dobson’s season at Focus on the Family has been remarkable,” Jim Daly, Dobson’s successor as president, said in a statement. “He has done a superlative job in modeling the graceful transition of leadership from one generation to the next.”

Dobson did not issue a statement on his departure. Dobson’s “health and attitude are great,” Schneeberger said. Dobson suffered a minor heart attack in 1990 and a mild stroke in 1998.

Daly, however, made clear that Dobson “will continue to make his voice heard in the public square.”

“Dr. Dobson is a wordsmith, but one word I don’t suspect we’ll hear him using is ‘retirement,’” he said.

In announcing his resignation as board chairman earlier this year, Dobson said: “One of the common errors of founder-presidents is to hold to the reins of leadership too long, thereby preventing the next generation from being prepared for executive authority … Though letting go is difficult after three decades of intensive labor, it is the wise thing to do.”

Earlier this year, Focus on the Family laid off 8 percent of its work force, casualties of a donation shortfall. That came on top of another round of layoffs last year.

A child psychologist and author, Dobson has become more vocal about politics in recent years. He sharply criticized Democratic candidate Barack Obama in the buildup to the 2008 election, saying Obama distorted the Bible and had a “fruitcake interpretation” of the Constitution – characterizations Obama rejected.

Critics portray Dobson as part of an older generation of evangelical leaders whose influence is waning, and point to younger leaders who are taking up the environment and poverty as political causes.

Daly, 48, who has taken on a higher profile as Dobson has receded from the public stage, shares Dobson’s beliefs about culture wars issues, such as abortion and gay marriage, but hasn’t been as political. Daly complimented Obama for his efforts to promote responsible fatherhood but has said he disagrees with Obama’s policies on most other issues.

Dobson will stop writing the Focus on the Family monthly newsletter – which he used to plead for funds in lean times – and turning it over fully to Daly, Schneeberger said.

No decision has been made about how to fill Dobson’s absence as host of the daily radio show, which reaches an estimated 1.5 million U.S. listeners daily. Schneeberger said Dobson will appear as an occasional guest.

The radio program was a key vehicle for Dobson’s message, and replacing him could prove difficult, said Corwin Smidt, executive director of the Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity and Politics at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Mich.

“It’s going to be hard to replace him given his centrality,” Smidt said. “That doesn’t mean Focus on the Family and its radio program can’t continue to be important. It suggests a challenge before them.”

Brent Childers used to call himself a “Jesse Helms Republican” who justified his homophobic beliefs through biblical interpretation. But last weekend, as he marched in the Equality March in Washington, D.C., he stood alongside his lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender friends in support of their full human rights.

As executive director of Faith in America, Childers works full time to incorporate an inclusive message of LGBT human equality into the Christian dialogue. His organization’s mission is to educate the public about the emotional and physical harm cased by “religion-based bigotry.”

Childers’s change of heart isn’t unique, either.

 It represents a growing shift in support of LGBT rights among evangelicals in the United States. The work of Faith in America also shows that progressive people of faith are developing LGBT supportive organizations to question and ultimately undermine the Religious Right’s ideological monopoly on biblical interpretation.

In the most recent national survey done by the Pew Research Center, more Americans than ever recorded (57 percent) support civil unions.

Thirty-nine percent of this support comes from white evangelicals, and even though that’s not a majority, it shows there are definite inroads being made into that community. Given increasingly divergent opinions in the white evangelical community, a “biblical” opposition to gay marriage is becoming less tenable among them and simply a matter of their interpretation and personal opinion.

There is additional hopeful news. Young evangelicals are measurably diverging from the condemning views of their church elders on LGBT rights.

In a recent survey during the 2008 presidential election cycle, 58 percent of young white evangelicals supported some form of legal recognition of gay partnerships, whether in the form of civil unions or marriage. Twenty-six percent supported full marriage rights.

The promise of this rising evangelical support of LGBT human rights cannot be overstated. If trends continue, evangelicals can no longer be counted on as a solid unwavering base of the Religious Right. And without the support of young evangelicals the Religious Right will become even more of a reservoir of aging bigots than a dynamic and growing grassroots movement.

But LGBT supporters should engage evangelicals and seek to expand their numbers instead of patiently waiting for the younger generation to outnumber the old. It is critical to work with young evangelicals, who can serve as effective messengers within their faith communities and age groups—and can broaden the language of LGBT advocacy to include faith messages that resonate with evangelical congregations.

Faith in America is one organization dedicated to working with faith communities, but there are others. For instance, Evangelicals Concerned and the Global Alliance of Affirming Apostolic Pentecostals are developing in once predominately socially conservative evangelical and charismatic denominations.

Organizations like these know the spiritual motivation and language needed to mobilize younger evangelicals who may feel unsure or even guilty about their belief that all people should have the right to marry.

“Every person coming to Washington—whether they are religious or not,” Childers wrote in a Newsweek article, “does share one faith, and that is faith in America.”

With his organization and personal leadership, Childers is helping to create a public space that more and more evangelicals can inhabit in good conscience and in good faith

. And along with many others he is demonstrating to the larger LGBT movement that there is indeed a commonality among LGBT rights advocates and the large evangelical population in America—a commonality that may even form the foundation for a broad-based winning coalition.

The New International Version, the Bible of choice for conservative evangelicals, will be revised to reflect changes in English usage and advances in Biblical scholarship, it was announced Tuesday. The revision is scheduled to be completed late next year and published in 2011.

“We want to reach English speakers across the globe with a Bible that is accurate, accessible and that speaks to its readers in a language they can understand,” said Keith Danby, global president and CEO of Biblica, a Colorado Springs, Colo.-based Christian ministry that holds the NIV copyright.

But past attempts to remake the NIV for contemporary audiences in different editions have been plagued by controversies about gender language that have pitted theological conservatives against each other.

The changes did not make all men “people” or remove male references to God, but instead involved dropping gender-specific terms when translators judged that the original text didn’t intend it. So in some verses, references to “sons of God” became “children of God,” for example.

Supporters say gender-inclusive changes are more accurate and make the Bible more accessible, but critics contend they twist meaning or smack of political correctness.

Acknowledging past missteps, the NIV’s overseers are promising that this time, the revision process will be more transparent and that they will actively promote what they describe as a long-held practice of inviting input from scholars and readers.

The NIV was first published in 1978 and more than 300 million NIV Bibles are in print worldwide; its publishers and distributors say the translation accounts for 30 percent of Bibles sold in North America.

The Committee on Bible Translation, an independent group of conservative scholars and translators formed in 1965 to create and revise the NIV, will oversee the new revision.

An effort earlier this decade to create a separate version of the NIV that used more gender-inclusive language in an attempt to reach a younger audience fell flat with groups that felt it crossed the line.

That edition, Today’s New International Version, will cease publication once the new-look NIV is released, said Moe Girkins, president of Grand Rapids, Mich.-based Zondervan, its North American publisher.

“Whatever its strengths, the TNIV has become an emblem of division in the evangelical Christian world,” Girkins said.

It was the TNIV that ushered in changes from “sons of God” to “children of God,” or “brothers” to “brothers and sisters.” In Genesis I, God created “human beings” in his own image instead of “man.”

Many prominent pastors and scholars endorsed the changes. But critics said masculine terms in the original should not be tampered with. Some warned that changing singular gender references to plural ones alters what the Bible says about God’s relationships with individuals.

The Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution saying the edition “has gone beyond acceptable translation standards.”

“We fell short of the trust that has been placed in us,” said Danby, of Biblica. “We failed to make a clear case for the revisions.”

Danby said that freezing the NIV in its 1984 state was also a mistake, however. He emphasized that in the revision, about 90 percent of the NIV will be unchanged.

Douglas Moo, a professor at Wheaton College and chairman of the Committee on Bible Translation, said the group is committed to “a complete review of every gender related change.”

“I am not sure how it’s going to come out,” Moo said. “We have a genuine, authentic review process … Everything is on the table.”

One of the most vocal critics of gender-inclusive translations, Randy Stinson of the Louisville, Ky.-based Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, said the group supports updating the NIV. He credited organizers for their openness.

“We’re still probably going to differ on the way they handle some of the gender language,” Stinson said. “But we’re open and anxious to see what they come up with and we’re really going to be reserving judgment.”

Most changes will have nothing to do with gender inclusivity, Moo said. And the TNIV provides a glimpse of likely changes: In the ‘84 NIV, Mary is “with child,” but in the TNIV she is “pregnant.” In the NIV version of Psalm 146:9, “The Lord watches over the alien.” The TNIV used “foreigner” instead of “alien.”

This is a hard question. 

It’s hard partly because of its legal implications. Georgia Tech, another state school, recently lost a lawsuit because its safe-space program distributed literature uniformly criticizing traditional interpretations of the Bible. Not surprisingly, a federal judge ruled that this practice violated the First Amendment by favoring particular religious viewpoints. (Georgia Tech has kept its safe-space program but dropped the religious literature.)

Legal matters aside, the question raises difficult policy issues. What counts as “safe”? 

Safe-space programs generally involve a school-sponsored diversity training focusing on LGBT issues. Upon completing it, participants receive a sticker to display on their office doors announcing their “ally” status. 

Given how often religion is used as a weapon, I can understand why many LGBT students would not feel “safe” while being judged as sinners. We should never underestimate the potential damage done by telling youth, at a delicate stage in identity formation, that acting on their deep longings could lead to eternal separation from God. 

In contemplating my friend’s question, I mainly thought of those vulnerable students, and how best to protect them. I also thought of my friend John.

John is a faculty member at a small private liberal arts college. He is an evangelical Christian who believes that homosexual conduct conflicts with God’s plan as revealed in the bible. And yet John defies easy stereotypes. He supports civil marriage equality, decries the various ways religion is used to harm LGBT people, and avoids “heteronormative language” (his words) in his classroom. 

While he believes that homosexual conduct (not to mention plenty of heterosexual and non-sexual conduct) is sinful, he also believes that all humans – himself included – have an imperfect grasp of God’s will, and that we should generally strive to respect other people’s life choices and give them wide latitude in forging their own paths. John and his wife have welcomed me in their home, and during grace before the meal, his wife asked for God’s blessing on me, my partner Mark, and our relationship. (For the record, I did not take the latter to imply approval for every aspect of our relationship.)

In light of all I know about John and his loving treatment of LGBT persons, I can think of few spaces “safer” than his office. Any program that would disqualify him draws the circle of “safe spaces” too narrowly.

Moreover, there are good strategic reasons for wanting to make the circle of self-proclaimed allies as inclusive as possible, consistent with the well-being of LGBT students. We need people like John to make their presence known.

Yet I am not suggesting that we draw the circle so broadly as to rob “safe space” of any real meaning. Any student in any campus office – stickered or not – should expect to be treated with respect and professionalism. Presumably, the safe-space sticker denotes venues that substantially exceed that bare minimum (as John’s office would).

So how does one draw the circle broadly enough to include John and other conservative religious allies while excluding those who might rant about gays burning in hell? 

As with any policy question involving human beings, there’s no perfect formula here (just as there are no perfect people). To some extent, the desired group will be somewhat self-selecting. Those interested in condemning LGBT people to hell generally don’t attend voluntary pro-gay diversity trainings. 

Yet there are also steps one can take to tailor the circle. My recommendation would be to include, among various other elements of a pledge taken by safe-space training participants, something along the following lines:

“I understand that my own values and beliefs may differ from those of students who seek me out for a ‘safe space,’ and will refer students to appropriate resources given their particular values, beliefs, interests and desires.”

The idea here is that students who wish to retreat to a “narrower” circle will be assisted in doing so. Note that religious people offer such assistance all the time. Think, for example, of the Christian who helpfully directs a student to the Buddhist Student Center, despite her personal conviction that eternal salvation is through Christ alone.

On this approach, students who want pro-gay religious literature can receive it and evaluate it for themselves. At the same time, those who want the advice of fellow conservative evangelicals, for example, or fellow Orthodox Jews, can receive it and evaluate it for themselves. 

Admittedly, my recommendation would allow conservative religious students to request and receive – in a designated “safe space” – literature of a sort that’s often deeply damaging to LGBT people. But the approach is preferable to the alternatives: a public university’s (illegally) favoring particular religious viewpoints, on the one hand, or its becoming silent on religious issues–the Georgia Tech solution–on the other. 

Universities are places for free exchange of ideas. As long as that’s done in a compassionate manner that respects student autonomy, it should never be considered “unsafe.”
********************

John Corvino, Ph.D. is an author, speaker, and philosophy professor at Wayne State University in Detroit.
For over seventeen years he has traveled the country speaking on homosexuality and ethics. His writing has been featured in regional and national periodicals, at the online Independent Gay Forum, and in numerous scholarly anthologies. His column “The Gay Moralist” appears Fridays on 365gay.com.
For more about John Corvino, or to see clips from his “What’s Morally Wrong with Homosexuality?” DVD, visit www.johncorvino.com.

Under the leadership of Kennedy, the former pastor who died in 2007, Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church was a forerunner to modern evangelical megachurches and a fiercely conservative voice on social issues like homosexuality and abortion in the mostly liberal, Democratic city of Fort Lauderdale.

Graham’s grandson, Tullian Tchividjian, took over earlier this year as its pastor.

But some Kennedy loyalists, including his daughter Jennifer Kennedy Cassidy, are upset with the direction Tchividjian is taking the church and have called for his ouster.

Tchividjian cuts a far different image from Kennedy. His hair is spiky, his beard sometimes scruffy, his skin tan. He has forgone wearing a choir robe at services, as Kennedy had.

And while he has shown no sign of theological differences with Kennedy, he has rejected politics as the most important way to change the country, while Kennedy was extremely active in politics as an influential Christian broadcaster.

Cassidy and five other members recently circulated a letter with a petition urging a meeting to consider the firing of Tchividjian, indicating he had misled them in their search for a new pastor.

Dissenters at the church have been vague in their criticism of Tchividjian’s leadership. Their letter called him “a disaster” who has shown “a complete lack of respect” and made “grievous missteps.”

They lament the merger with Tchividjian’s former church, the far smaller New City Presbyterian, saying “their staff has taken complete control.”

“We were told many things that all sounded good at the time, but in fact those soothing words have largely proven empty and it keeps getting worse,” the dissenters wrote. “They range from preferences bordering on the mundane to violations of ethical standards that have guarded the purity of the church for decades.”

Tchividjian dismissed the dissenters as “a super small but very vocal minority” in an e-mail message to The Associated Press, but referred calls to Bill Ashcraft, a longtime member and church elder. Ashcraft estimated fewer than 100 of the church’s roughly 2,000 members support the pastor’s dismissal.

“They would like for things to be exactly as they were under Pastor Kennedy,” Ashcraft said. “We didn’t bring Tullian Tchividjian to Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church to do exactly what D. James Kennedy was doing.”

After the Coral Ridge members circulated the first letter, Tchividjian called a meeting to address their concerns, but Ashcraft said none of the dissenters attended, instead sending a second letter. After that, they were told they were not welcome at the church until an internal judicial process was complete.

“They spelled out some vague complaints for the pastor but they didn’t ask for any modification of anything. They just asked to sign a petition to sever this pastor’s relationship with the church,” Ashcraft said. “It’s hard to negotiate with people like that.”

Jim Filosa, a Coral Ridge elder who along with his wife is among those disciplined by the church, said he couldn’t discuss the matter in detail. Cassidy and others who were disciplined didn’t return calls seeking comment, but Filosa said Kennedy’s daughter shouldn’t be described as the effort’s ringleader.

“She is just one voice in many,” he said.

Cassidy still remains on the board of Coral Ridge Ministries, the broadcast ministry founded by her father that is technically separate from the church, though it is closely affiliated. A spokesman for Coral Ridge Ministries, John Aman, released a statement saying despite Cassidy’s involvement in the leadership challenge, there was no further comment.

Ashcraft said the hope is that the dissenters eventually rejoin the fold. In an Aug. 6 letter to congregants, Tchividjian wrote “No church government can tolerate such an insurrection from those who will not listen to admonition, refuse all counsel and will stop at nothing until they have overthrown legitimate authority and replaced it with their own.”

Tchividjian, 37, is the middle of seven children born to Stephan Tchividjian and Graham’s eldest daughter, Gigi. He attended Coral Ridge and its adjacent school as a young man and Graham officiated at the church’s dedication ceremony. Tchividjian eventually dropped out, spending about five years partying on South Beach before recommitting to Christ, joining the seminary and becoming a minister.

Coral Ridge’s founding in 1959 marked the creation of what would become one of the country’s first megachurches. It had been without a pastor from Kennedy’s death in September 2007 until Tchividjian was appointed in March.

Focus on the Family, founded by child psychologist James Dobson, is on pace to fall $6 million short of a $138 million budget for the fiscal year that began last October, spokesman Gary Schneeberger said.

Jim Daly, president and CEO of the Colorado Springs, Colo.-based evangelical ministry, explained the challenges in a letter to approximately 800,000 donors.

“Right now we’re facing a serious budget shortfall that threatens our ability to reach out to parents, families and married couples who count on our help,” Daly wrote. “Income is down nearly $6 million from what we expected and planned for this year. I want to assure you that we’re committed to good stewardship AND living within our means, just as so many families are today.”

Focus on the Family also announced Tuesday it would no longer stage “Love Won Out” conferences across the country. The events drew both participants and picketers for their promise to “help men and women dissatisfied with living homosexually understand that same-sex attractions can be overcome.”

The events will go on, instead staged by Orlando, Fla.-based Exodus International, a network of ministries whose core message is “Freedom from homosexuality through the power of Jesus Christ.”

Schneeberger said it made strategic sense for Exodus, which is expanding its work with churches, to take over the conferences starting in November.

“Financial realities played a role in the decision,” he said. “That said, Exodus is really the one who should be running ‘Love Won Out’ anyway. It makes sense independent of economic realities,” he said.

Gay rights groups have long criticized such initiatives as harmful. The American Psychological Association last week said mental health professionals should not tell gay clients they can become straight through therapy or other treatments. The group also endorsed approaches “that integrate concepts from the psychology of religion and the modern psychology of sexual orientation.”

Schneeberger said that one staff position will be eliminated and that other financial steps are under discussion. Last fall, budget problems prompted Focus on the Family to eliminate more than 200 positions.

A lone gunman, who used the e-mail name “ServantofMessiah”, shot Tiller while he ushered at Reformation Lutheran Church, where he and his wife were active members. Prior to Tiller’s assassination, the “loving” faithful had put bullets in his arms and bombed his clinic. 

Unfortunately, with Tiller’s controversial clinic finally out of business, the lesson for the loony may be that lethal force is more effective than lobbying. In the Times article, Mark Geitzen, chairman of the Kansas Coalition for Life, expressed this sentiment when he said during a phone conversation, “God has his own way…but you can’t say our prayers weren’t answered.”

Tiller’s death vividly illustrates the danger posed by the violent language and imagery used by fanatics, who believe they are personally entrusted to enforce God’s will. What concerns me is that the aggressive tactics used against abortion providers are slowly seeping into the anti-gay movement.

As the wider culture becomes more accepting, homophobes are growing increasingly frustrated, which has led to bolder and more confrontational actions. Are anti-gay leaders egging on unstable followers to attack gay people or provoking gays to defend themselves so they can manufacture martyrdom and justify retaliation?

At the Dore Alley Fair in San Francisco last weekend, a number of muscular Christians wearing Jesus shirts reportedly tried to march through the event thumping Bibles and waving signs.
 
In Charlotte, Dr. Michael Brown, the founder of the Coalition of Conscience, organized several hundred followers in red shirts to descend like uninvited locusts on Charlotte Pride last week under the banner, “God Has a Better Way.” 

Aside from the pompous name of their demonstration, the protesters confronted gay people and browbeat them with cherry picked Bible verses. Brown’s ostensible reason for marshaling the troops was to introduce Pride attendees to his angry version of God.

But, of course, the notion that gay people in conservative North Carolina needed Brown to educate them about religious fundamentalism was farcical. Indeed, many of the people at Pride had only found personal acceptance after long journeys to reconcile their spirituality and sexuality.

No, Brown was really there to besiege Charlotte’s gay residents with his hostile hordes. His group’s in-your-face presence was designed to disrupt peaceful assembly and make Pride attendees feel guilty and uncomfortable so that they might skip future gay events.

Fortunately, the pious proselytizers were on their best behavior after the militant writings and actions of Brown came under intense scrutiny by local Q-Notes editor Matt Comer. In his research, Comer found that Brown started his FIRE School of Ministry to “raise up a holy army of uncompromising spirit-filled radicals who will shake an entire generation with the gospel of Jesus by life or death.”

In a vacuum, such religious language may be viewed as a relatively benign rhetorical flourish. However, when followers are portrayed as holy warriors in a life and death struggle against a minority group that is falsely accused of working to undermine freedom of religion, the seeds of potential disaster are intentionally being sown.  

In advertising his rally, Brown proclaimed that the “hour is urgent” and that Christians must “turn back the tide of homosexual activism.” In a written statement following his intolerance invasion of Pride, Brown wrote, “Enough is enough to the destructive goals of gay activism…we say it stops in Charlotte.”

Most alarming are these charlatans’ deliberate perpetuation of paranoia by trumpeting alleged religious persecution that exists only in their warped minds. For example, in his statement Brown accused gay people of “trying to put Christians in the closet.” And, he capped it off by saying that gay people are “tampering with the foundations of human society.”

Brown tries to cover his tracks by sprinkling his apocalyptic rhetoric with calls for non-violence. Good orators, however, understand the principle of “layering” messages. If in one sentence you speak of violence and in the next of non-violence, the listener will almost always embrace the words that support his or her belief system.

Dr. Brown isn’t naïve and surely understands that the GLBT masses will not retreat into the closet unless events conspire to make coming out a blood sport. Short of extreme bullying and brutality he’ll never accomplish his lost cause of “stopping” progress on gay rights in Charlotte.

Brown, of course, doesn’t actually have to make an overt pitch for mayhem. Simply by inciting his flock he is setting the stage for future tragedy. It is time for Brown and his comrades to abort their increasingly hostile and combative tactics before it leads to more wanton death in the name of abundant life.

As you may have seen in the comments on my piece on the plans for “God Has a Better Way” to show up at Charlotte’s Pride event on Saturday, Dr. Michael Brown checked in and asked me to contact him directly through his website.

I did, and quickly received a short reply to let me know that Brown had received my e-mail. He later sent a longer one – very polite – mentioning some issues he had with the piece.

Brown was courteous and respectful during the entire exchange, not to mention surprisingly good-natured about the part where I called his video creepy.

I have promised to be fair in return.

Brown took issue with some of my reporting. (He says he has also contacted the Box Turtle Bulletin with objections to their article as well.) He started off by clarifying his group’s use of the word “surround,” which I took for my article from the God Has a Better Way video:

“…we’re gathering more than 1,000 believers to surround the gay pride event in Charlotte with worship, prayer, intercession, and the message of the love of God.”

I interpreted that to mean that Brown and his followers planned to ring the park, but Brown says that I have misinterpreted. From his e-mail:

“Actually, the Pride Charlotte event is on private party in a courtyard surrounded by buildings. Our event will be taking place across the street, and our plan was to ‘surround’ their event with prayer and worship – a spiritual concept that those unfamiliar with the Pride Charlotte logistics took as a literal threat to physically surround their event.”

Upon doing a Web search, I see that the phrase “surround with prayer” is in common use in some Christian circles in a figurative sense, for example in asking a community to pray for someone with an illness.

My misinterpretation does make the GHBW event sound more threatening than it is, and I apologize for the error.

Brown next objects to my statement, in referring to the Box Turtle Bulletin article, that Brown’s group had prayed with the help of “a powerful sound system.”

Brown says, “We had no powerful sound system (in all my years of involvement in the events, we’ve never had a loud sound system).”

According to a May 8, 2005 article in the Charlotte Observer on the Pride event in question, “…Christian music blared from the sidewalk…” so I guess half-points all around. I was incorrect in saying that Operation Save preached through a sound system, but it does look like one was in the mix.

Given the context, that sounds mildly less intimidating to me, but not a ton.

Brown also took issue with the idea that anyone in his group behaved in an unkind or intimidating manner: “UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES DID ANY OF OUR PEOPLE DO SUCH A THING. UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES DID THEY COMMUNICATE WITH THE CHILDREN WHO WERE THERE, AND UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES DID THEY TELL THEM THAT THEIR PARENTS WERE SINNERS GOING TO HELL, AND UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES DID THEY HARRASS PEOPLE”

I do believe Brown when he says that those were the instructions to his followers. But I also know that you can’t fully control who shows up at your rally or how they behave when you’re out of sight. I don’t know how he can guarantee that no one stepped out of line.

Brown has quotes from anonymous sources on his side who say they weren’t doing or saying anything hurtful or intimidating; Box Turtle has anonymous sources who say they were intimidated.

The same Charlotte Observer article reports some tense interactions, and notes one named source who says she was told she was going to hell.

I believe Brown’s intention was to avoid overt harassment and belligerent phrasing, but I’ve been to a few rallies in my day and I think I know who I believe about the actual results.

In my e-mail response to Brown, I explained to him why I believe a large group of people protesting a Pride event is in and of itself intimidating, and that the many poor ambassadors before him have made it nearly impossible for such a presence to be interpreted as anything but hostile. This, to his credit, was his response:

“I do not want to trivialize your comments re: LGBT culture, but I actually share these very things with churches to tell people how your community is commonly treated and how you view us. I have read every moving story of abuse and hatred suffered by GLBT’s that I could get my hands on, often with much pain. Believe it or not, as an outsider, I do understand…

…So, despite the seeming contradiction in all this for you, I absolutely recognize the extreme rejection you have had to live with – including the “hell” pronouncements – and that’s one reason that I have worked so assiduously here in Charlotte for the last five years to establish a precisely opposite picture to that of the horrific Fred Phelps types of figure.”

So far, we were getting along just swell. Based on his e-mails, Brown is a likable guy.

That was the message today from a conference call organized by the Center for American Progress with Rev. Gene Robinson, the openly gay Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire and Rev. Rebecca Voekel, Director of the Institute for Welcoming Resources and Faith Work of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, plus the authors of two new reports on gay marriage and religion.

What was most interesting is that the two reports -  one analyzing an anti-gay marriage propositon in Michigan that passed, and one analyzing the Prop 8 campaign in California – come to the same conclusion: It is very important for the gay marriage movement to break the monopoly that the religious right has on religious and moral arguments around marriage.

In the past, the battle has gone like this: The anti-gay right uses Biblical and religious language, plus the infrastructure of religious institutions, to make the case that equal marriage invalidates the sacredness of limited straight marriage.

Gay activists, on the other hand, have a secular message of civil and human rights, focusing on the benefits gays and lesbians get from marriage. We reach out to religious groups, sure, but only once the battle lines have been drawn, and then haphazardly.

This is why we lose, when we do.

The solution?

First, that we acknowledge that religious opposition requires a religious response. Those on the call said that it is very important that we call on GLBT’s who are religious to speak up both in their faith communities and in their queer communities in order to help find common ground.

We must cultivate and support progressive religious leaders who speak out in the media and in the pulpit on our issues. We must show the media and the public that the Religious Right does not speak for all people of faith, or even all Christians.

We must emphasize to legislators and the public that religious marriage and civil marriage are two different states that share the same noun. We must say, as Robinson does, that forbidding gay marriage is a case where religions are infringing on a state’s right to marry those they deem fit.

We must build “strong and authentic alliances” with religious leaders and convince them that gay rights is a matter of justice.

And we must not write off any religious group as unmovable – all denominations and religions have moderate voices.

Voekel said that there are 5 million members of Welcoming Congregations across the nation – congregations that have voted to affirm that they are open to GLBTs. Younger evangelicals are twice as likely as evangelicals over all to support gay marriage, said Winne Stachelberg, vice president for external affairs for the Center for American Progress. 60 percent of Catholics under 30 support gay marriage. 2/3 of mainline Protestant clergy support gay relationships.

New Hampshire showed us the way to a new strategy: confirm religious liberties in the same law that passes equal marriage. Robinson said that “this is a new dimension to the discussion and a very effective one.”  He said that the religious liberties confirmed in the NH marriage law are redundant ones, already part of state law. But if re-affirming them is what leads to gay marriage passing, then so be it.

Robinson said, “We need to change the attitudes of religious people and clergy toward LGBT’s, but that’s a fight for another day. That’s a conversation that needs to take place in the denominations. We’re here to change the civil law.”

The suit was filed by Americans United for Separation of Church and State on behalf of a graduating senior and several families in the district, challenges the Elmbrook School District’s decision to hold graduation ceremonies for Brookfield Central High School and Brookfield East High School at Elmbrook Church.

“Public schools should schedule graduation ceremonies at public venues where families of all faiths or none will feel welcome,” said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United. “Some parents and children do not feel comfortable attending commencement in this religious setting. Graduation is too important to leave some families out.”

The graduation ceremonies are scheduled for June 6 and 7.

The plaintiffs, who have chosen to remain anonymous, assert that they are extremely uncomfortable attending graduation at the church, given its religion-permeated environment.  The plaintiffs also feel unwelcome at the church because it teaches that non-Christians like the plaintiffs, and even some denominations of Christians, will go to Hell.

Elmbrook is a theologically conservative evangelical Christian church with strong views on contentious religious and political issues. The church says homosexuality is “not an acceptable lifestyle” and is “contrary to God’s will,” attacks atheists as people “who think they are smarter than God” and condemns TV talk show host Oprah Winfrey for promoting “a spirituality that is at fundamental odds with the historic biblical faith.”

The church displays a large cross in its sanctuary, and the facility includes other religious iconography as well. Church officials have refused to cover the cross. On at least one occasion, members of the church passed out religious literature to graduation attendees in the lobby, the suit said.

“Graduating seniors should not be forced to choose between entering a religious environment of a faith to which they do not subscribe and missing their own graduation,” said AU Senior Litigation Counsel Alex J. Luchenitser.

” Graduation should be a joyous occasion for students and their family members, and it should not be ruined by such religious coercion.”

The lawsuit seeks a preliminary injunction barring the school district from holding its graduation ceremonies at Elmbrook Church or any other house of worship.

In its complaint, Americans United notes that there are other facilities available for graduation ceremonies and that virtually all of them are non-religious in nature.