Presbyterian Church

Editorial | Presbyterians on gays The Courier-Journal

It is noteworthy that a Minnesota presbytery became the 87th regional governing body to approve the ordaining of gays and lesbians in the Presbyterian chuch. The decision is a divisive one in a comparatively small but highly educated group of American Christians.

Wandering out of the East Coast/West Coast ‘liberal media’ zone, we share today’s editorial in Louisville’s The Courier-Journal.

… Cynthia Bolbach, moderator of the PCUSA’s 219th General Assembly, said in a YouTube message. “The ongoing struggle reflects that we are not of one mind on whether persons in same-gender relationships should be candidates for ordained office. We have been and we remain divided on this issue.”

She urged those who were aggrieved by the decision “to live into what the amendment does and does not require” and to determine whether the change does “impact your integrity in proclaiming the gospel.” To those who welcomed the change, she urged them to “understand, respect and where possible reach out to those troubled by the passage.” She asked that Presbyterians be mindful of their upcoming conference theme: “the big tent.”

Sound advice to Presbyterians assimilating a long-coming and welcome change, and to all Americans, who are still working on living into that theme, too.

Newt Gingrich On Gay and Secular Fascism

Newt Gingrich Faces Commentator Gingrich NYTimes

On gay Americans: “I think there is a gay and secular fascism in this country that wants to impose its will on the rest of us, is prepared to use violence, to use harassment. I think it is prepared to use the government if it can get control of it. I think that it is a very dangerous threat to anybody who believes in traditional religion.” – November 2008

American Views on Gay Marriage and Homosexuality

Poll: More Americans favor same-sex marriage CNN Political Ticker April 19, 2011

Although more Americans agree on this issue, a generation-and gender-gap still remains. Sixty percent of Americans under 50 support same-sex marriage, but only four in ten of those over 50 feel the same. More than half of men are against legalizing marriage between gay or lesbian couples, but 57 percent of women are in favor of it.

Poll: Support for Same-Sex Marriage Edges Upward Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life

Polls this year have found that more Americans favor allowing gays and lesbians to marry legally than did so just last year. In two polls conducted over the past few months, based on interviews with more than 6,000 adults, 42% favor same-sex marriage while 48% are opposed. In polls conducted in 2009, 37% favored allowing gays and lesbians to marry legally and 54% were opposed. For the first time in 15 years of Pew Research Center polling, fewer than half oppose same-sex marriage.

Uganda’s Draconian Anti-Homosexuality Bill

Uganda Anti-Homosexual Bill Inspired by American Evangelicals The Daily Beast

Despite reports to the contrary, we don’t know the status of Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill in parliament. The draconian bill, prescribing the death penalty for some gay people, mandating prison sentences of at least five years for the “promotion of homosexuality,” and requiring Ugandans to report “offenders” to the authorities had stalled under international pressure and the hammering death of gay rights leader David Kato.

There is every possibility that it will surface as early as tomorrow, part of the new legislative agenda in Uganda’s parliament.

The Daily Beast picks up the story we’ve followed for two years — the reaity that American evangelicals are behind the anti-gay hatred in Uganda.

Uganda is a country where American-style evangelical Christianity is exploding, and there are close links between many American anti-gay preachers, politicians, and activists, and their Ugandan counterparts. As Jeff Sharlet has reported, Bahati, the Anti-Homosexuality Bill’s sponsor, is the secretary of the Ugandan branch of The Family, the secretive American evangelical organization whose members include Sens. James Inhofe, Jim DeMint, and Tom Coburn. Martin Ssempa, a Pentecostal preacher who has championed the bill, was a protégé of Rick Warren and, during the Bush administration, a recipient of at least $90,000 of American aid earmarked for abstinence promotion. Another major anti-gay activist, Stephen Langa, the head of Uganda’s Family Life Network, is an affiliate of the Phoenix-based group Disciple Nations Alliance…

Yet the ideology underlying the bill comes from American conservatives. It is Americans who have elaborated a vision of homosexuality as a satanic global conspiracy bent on destroying society’s foundations, akin to the Jewish octopus in classic anti-Semitic narratives. According to Warren Throckmorton, an evangelical psychology professor once associated with the ex-gay movement, when Uganda’s anti-gay activists speak about homosexuality, they cite materials by Scott Lively and Paul Cameron, two of the fiercest American opponents of the so-called homosexual agenda.

AOC writing on Uganda

Uganda sexual politics tag