Only Adam and Eve?
Homosexuality is wrong. The Bible says so. Leviticus 18:22. You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; such a thing is an abomination.
But wait. What about Galatians 3:28?
There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
Such is the riddle for organized religion: Can churches keep true to the faith while accepting sexually active gay men and women into their fold?
The issue of homosexuality and churches’ stands on it is raging across the country. A report released yesterday by the United Methodist Church shows how divisive the debate can be.
Slightly more than half of the clergy and lay members surveyed agreed with the church’s position: It does not condone homosexuality and believes it is against Christian teaching. Thirty percent of clergy members and 28 percent of laity members strongly disagreed with the church’s stance.
The views varied greatly in different parts of the country. In the West, 58 percent of clergy members and 53 percent of laypeople strongly disagreed with the church’s view; in the Southeast, the figures were 17 percent and 18 percent, respectively.
The United Methodist church also urges its members not to reject or condemn gay members or friends. Most clergy members and laypeople agreed with that position in the survey.
Nowhere is the debate hotter than among the world Anglican Communion and its brothers and sisters in the U.S. Episcopal Church.
In February, Anglican leaders warned U.S. Episcopalians about blessing same-sex unions and installing gay bishops. The whole matter might come to a head in September at a meeting of the bishops in New Orleans. The archbishop of Canterbury, head of the Anglican Communion, is expected to attend.
Other denominations are watching.
“People certainly recognize that what happens within the Anglican community will be held up either as an example of overcoming your differences or what can happen when you divide,” said Dr. James Childs, a professor of theology and ethics at Trinity Lutheran Seminary in Bexley.
“People see the debate and wonder, ‘Is this a world unraveling? Is this a disruption of the natural order? If we affirm this in the church, are we moving toward chaos?’ The answers remain to be seen.”
The governing body of his own denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, is not immune. A February announcement that a popular gay minister at Atlanta’s oldest Lutheran church was being removed because he has a partner has renewed discussion about gay clergy members.
The matter is unresolved and is expected to be a focus of a meeting of the Lutherans in August.
The notion that the issue is escalating for many denominations, and that it may lead to unprecedented fracturing of churches, is well-founded, conservative Christians say.
“Individual Christians, Christian families, organizations and entire denominations must decide whether to affirm God’s word or not,” said Melissa Fryrear, director of gender issues for Focus on the Family, a conservative Christian organization.
“The Bible is clear on sexual behavior: It is between one man and one woman, only in marriage. There is no middle ground, and there are no loopholes.”
Christian conservatives and evangelicals say that Scripture is clear, so there should be no debate. Yet it rages on in churches because it is being discussed at home.
Such controversy is hardly new, said Susan Henking, a professor of religion and social sciences at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, a 2,000-student combined liberal-arts campus in Geneva, N.Y. She specializes in, and has written books and papers on, religion and sexuality.
The current debate over homosexuality and the church is rooted in a society that used to discuss morality only in private, Henking said.
“What we’re really fighting over is, ‘What is the role of religion in the public sphere?’ ” she said.
History tells us, she said, that the most divisive religious fights come during times of shifting boundaries.
“That’s what we have here. We are debating what the role of religion will play in shaping the minds of the secular world and our whole culture. As goes the church, so goes society.”
And that’s exactly what Aly Rivero is afraid of.
Rivero struggled for years to put her internal battles into perspective. Then, in April, she read a newspaper article about a lesbian couple denied communion at their Roman Catholic church in Wyoming, and it all became clear.
One of the women said she spends half her life defending her Catholicism to gays, and the other half defending her gayness to Catholics.
“That was a perfect description,” Rivero said. “People underestimate my personal struggle and the toll it takes.”
Rivero is of Cuban descent; her parents came to the United States in the 1950s. She is a lifelong Catholic. She attended Catholic school and earned her undergraduate degree at a Christian college.
“You can’t erase those teachings,” she said. “But I know who I am, and my God is a loving God, an accepting God. I just wish my family and I could worship the way we want.”
They cannot.
She and her partner of four years, Joy Livergood, live in a comfortably decorated split-level home in a middle-class Reynoldsburg neighborhood. Rivero is a speech/language pathologist; Livergood is a 21-year active-duty and reserve Navy veteran working on her doctorate at Ohio State University. The two met online in 2003 when they lived in Florida.
Rivero and Livergood are raising two children together: Livergood’s 13-year-old daughter and Joseph Rivero-Livergood, who is almost 1.
After Rivero was artificially inseminated, the couple paid a lawyer $3,500 to draw up documents giving each woman equal standing as a parent.
“We are committed and faithful,” Rivero said. “Surely that means something.”
Once established in Franklin County, she says they met with the priest at St. Pius X in Reynoldsburg. The church wasn’t interested in their membership unless they abstained, she said. They refused.
The Rev. Dan Ochs, St. Pius pastor, did not return calls seeking comment. But the discussion as Rivero relates it is consistent with the teachings of the church, said Robin Miller, spokeswoman for the Columbus Diocese.
Church law says that homosexual tendencies are not a sin, but practicing homosexuality is immoral.
Gays, she said, “are to be accepted with compassion, respect and sensitivity … but are called to live lives of chastity.”
Rivero and Livergood are welcome to attend Mass and worship at church, Miller said, but if they are having sex they cannot accept the church sacraments.
Livergood said she last took Holy Communion in 2002. Rivero cannot remember when she last partook.
“We consider ourselves to be spiritual, not religious,” Livergood said. “We think that way because the Catholic Church let us down.”
The Rev. F. Allan Debelak counts himself among those who don’t believe homosexuality will divide churches beyond repair. His East Side church stands as an example, he said.
The congregation of Redeemer Lutheran Church, after months of meetings with more than 90 church regulars and community residents in attendance, voted in 1992 to become a “reconciling in Christ” church.
That means the church accepts everyone, including gays. Debelak also performs what he calls “same-sex covenant ceremonies,” to recognize a couple’s commitment.
The church lost just two or three members after the vote, he said. He estimates about 10 percent of the congregation, which averages about 170 members at Sunday services, is gay.
Debelak acknowledges, however, that he has lost some credibility within the Lutheran synod.
“I’ve become a one-issue pastor in the eyes of some folk,” he said. “And that’s untrue, unfortunate and unfair.”
He counts the Bible’s book of Acts as evidence that his path is the right one. In Acts 8:38, Philip baptizes a eunuch.
“Philip shouldn’t have been doing that. But he did. And I don’t think these are fairy tales. I think they show an unfolding of the church, a progression. I hope that’s where we are today.”
I would include Rorty as one of the most influential philosophers in my life. After my college days and the “reshuffling of my mind” that occurred around that time, I bought just about everything that Rorty published. The content of my shelves has changed a lot since then, but I have always kept Rorty on them. He seems to make the cut every time I trim down in order to restock.
Upon meeting the pope this week, President Bush told reporters: “I was talking to a very smart, loving man. I was in awe, and it was a moving experience for me.”
