[Dialogue] Spong on Bishops and Homosexuality

[KroegerD at aol.com]

May 31, 2006 
The California Episcopal  Election 

The headline in the Washington Post said: “Episcopalians Reject Gay  Hopefuls.
” It was the typical hype of the media. The story went on to say that  the 
Diocese of California (the San Francisco area) had elected Mark H. Andrus,  the 
Suffragan bishop of Alabama, to be the Bishop of California. They described  
him, interestingly enough, as a “straight white male” and said he would be the 
 next in a long line of “straight white males” to serve as the Episcopal 
Bishop  of California. I cannot imagine such a designation in the media just a  
generation ago. The consciousness of the nation is surely rising.  
According to this news account this field of candidates in this Episcopal  
election process was the “most diverse in the history of this Christian  
tradition.” It included among its nominees the Canon Pastor of the National  
Cathedral in Washington, the Rev. Eugene Sutton, an African-American priest of  
enormous stature and talent; the Rev. Donald Schell, the rector of a nationally  
known, liturgically experimental church named St. Gregory of Nyssa in San  
Francisco; the Rev. Jane Gould, a rector of note from Lynn, Massachusetts, and  
three openly gay or lesbian clergy: The Rev. Michael Barlowe from the staff of  
the diocese in San Francisco, the Very Rev. Robert V. Taylor, the talented Dean  
of St. Mark’s Cathedral in Seattle and the Rev. Bonnie Perry, one of America’
s  most creative clergy, who serves as rector of a large and influential 
Chicago,  Illinois, congregation. The nominations, in and of themselves, opened 
the eyes  of many people around this nation to both the fact that women clergy 
have come  of age in this church and that the presence of homosexual persons in 
the  priesthood is a common phenomenon. Both groups are rising every day 
through the  structures of this communion.  
Great hostility has swirled around this election since the nominees were  
first announced. It has come primarily from frightened people not aware of this  
deep inclusivity that is now operative at the heart of this particular part of 
 the Christian Church. It has expressed itself through incredible levels of  
irrational hostility in words, in deeds and in constant threats of “splitting  
the church.” Sexual politics is a potent force in church circles. These 
threats  have been commonplace from the defeated right wing pockets of the 
Episcopal  Church since the election of a gay bishop (Gene Robinson in New Hampshire) 
some  three tears ago. A second gay bishop, they said, would be like “the 
hurling of a  terrorist bomb” into the next meeting this summer of the national 
gathering of  Episcopalians, called ‘The General Convention.’ It would “destroy 
the Anglican  Communion,” they intoned almost hopefully. The Bishop of 
Pittsburgh, Robert  Duncan, the acting spokesperson for this ecclesiastical brand of 
homophobia, led  the charge. For Bishop Duncan, this conflict has clearly 
given him the chance to  have his “fifteen minutes of fame.” He had never been a 
significant leader in  any area of the work of the House of Bishops, prior to 
becoming the voice of  dissent. He used the results of the California 
election to call on the Church  “to repent for its 2003 Robinson decision, to place a 
moratorium on openly gay  bishops and to stop blessing same-sex relationships,
” as if any movement toward  freedom and inclusion in human history has ever 
been reversed. He does not seem  to understand that the increasing openness to 
homosexuality in both church and  society is not a result of a breakdown of 
morality and a rise in “sinful  activity,” as he claims, but is rather a 
response to new consciousness.  
The old definition of homosexuality, as either an expression of mental  
illness or of moral depravity, has been universally abandoned in medical and  
scientific circles as simply wrong. Homosexuality is now perceived as a normal  
part of the spectrum of the human sexual experience. It is known to be present  
among the higher mammals that are not thought to possess the power of choice. 
It  appears to be a consistent and natural, if minority, part of life. It is 
clearly  not capable of being reversed. Homosexuality is now seen as one of life’
s  givens, like gender, skin color, eye color and left-handedness. That new  
understanding seems so obvious to me.  
I am sure that neither Bishop Duncan nor I chose to be heterosexual. All I  
can recall about my own sexual awakening is that somewhere between age 12 and  
13, I decided that girls were not obnoxious any longer. With that new  
perspective, I began to act out behavior patterns that, previously, had not been  
part of my identity: like taking baths more frequently, combing my hair,  
dressing with some sense of taste and even using deodorant. My mother, noting  this 
strange, even bizarre, behavior in her budding adolescent son, said, “The  sap 
has risen!” I did not know what that meant either. I certainly did not make  a 
decision to be heterosexual. Indeed I have no idea how I could have made such 
 a decision for at that age in the South where I was born, I had never before 
 heard the words homosexual or heterosexual and so had no earthly idea what  
either meant. People awaken to their sexual identity, they do not choose it.  
That is a quite simple, observable fact. If homosexuality is not a choice then 
 it is a part of one’s identity. Any prejudice acted out against the “being” 
of  another is, therefore, always immoral.  
Can you imagine an adolescent choosing to be homosexual? What would be the  
intellectual decision making process? “Ah,” I can hear him or her saying, “I  
will decide to be a homosexual! I like being disowned by my family, beaten up 
by  my friends, fired from my job, run out of town, condemned by my church, 
shunned  by my neighbors” and all the other things that we have done as a 
society to gay  and lesbian people. What would motivate the choice of a life of 
persecution? The  irrationality of homophobia simply amazes me.  
Today the strongest expressions of homophobia are found primarily in  
religious circles. That is what made the California Episcopal election  newsworthy. 
By nominating three gay and lesbian candidates to be their bishop,  the Diocese 
of California took a stand in the center of this rampant  ecclesiastical 
prejudice. Statements from the ultra-conservative Pope Benedict  XVI and 
right-wing evangelists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson are so hostile,  so filled with 
fear and venom and profoundly ignorant of any modern scientific  and medical 
understanding of homosexuality as to be breathtaking. The Pope calls  it “
deviant behavior,” some kind of “personal disorder” that needs to be  suppressed 
or changed. There is no evidence that these three stated goals are  possible. 
The only organizations that claim to be successful in “curing”  homosexuals 
are identified with right wing conservative religious groups. They  have no 
credibility whatsoever in medical or scientific circles. I think they  are 
fraudulent and do great damage to countless lives, playing as they do on the  
negativity dispensed to gay people out of our deep cultural prejudice. Falwell  and 
Robertson constantly quote the Bible to justify their condemnation of  
homosexuality. They act as if everything that can be found in the Bible must be  true. 
Perhaps they don’t recognize that the Bible was quoted to condemn the  Magna 
Charta and to support the Divine Right of Kings in the 13th century. In  the 
17th century, the Bible was quoted to condemn Galileo and to support the  idea 
that the planet earth was the center of the universe around which the sun  
rotated. The Bible was quoted to justify slavery throughout Christian history.  
Even popes have been slave owners. When slavery died legally in America with 
the  Emancipation Proclamation, the Bible was then quoted to justify 
segregation. The  Bible was quoted to oppose vaccinations. It was quoted to oppose 
educating  women, to oppose giving women the right to vote and to oppose any church 
from  ordaining a woman to its ministry or its priesthood and even more 
vehemently was  it quoted to prohibit making a woman a bishop. In the Bible, Jesus 
even appeared  to believe that epilepsy and mental illness were caused by demon 
possession. Why  do these people think this Bible quoting tactic will succeed 
when used in this  current context? When prejudice has to be covered over 
with sweet piety does it  not suggest that the prejudice is irrational?  
The Church has had gay bishops throughout its life in every tradition. There  
have been gay cardinals and gay popes. I will never forget an intense moment 
in  church politics when, in 1990, I was not only a part of but actually the 
subject  of a dramatic, angry and revelatory debate on homosexuality in the 
House of  Bishops in my church. That debate led to a vote of 78-74 with two 
abstentions,  on a resolution to “disassociate the House of Bishops from the Bishop 
of Newark  (that was my title) and his diocese for the ordination of an open 
and partnered  gay man to the priesthood on December 16, 1989.” Three things 
about that vote  were significant. One is that it was so close. My critics had 
expected an  overwhelming vote that might carry with it a note of censure. 
Second, I was one  of the two abstentions. I did not know how to vote on whether 
or not I wanted to  associate with me. Third, that night after the debate, two 
bishops came out of  the closet to me. Both were married. Both had children. 
One voted in favor of  disassociating themselves from this action, the other 
voted against. The one  voting to disassociate said he covered his fear of 
being revealed by publicly  condemning homosexuality every time it came up. I have 
known other closeted gay  bishops in the Episcopal Church. Some have been 
elected to high offices even in  the House of Bishops and have served with great 
distinction. There have also  been closeted gay bishops who were dishonest and 
compromised. One of our bishops  died of AIDS while claiming that there was 
some other cause of death. Another  resigned quickly after he was outed as a 
gay man, claiming that he had a serious  eye condition. Dishonesty is what has 
marked the church. That is where the  difference lies today. Gene Robinson’s “
sin” is not that he is gay; it is that  he is honest. That was also the “sin” 
of the three nominees for the office of  bishop in San Francisco. It is a new 
day. The prejudice, though still virulent,  is in fact dying. We need to 
rejoice in that.  
_Note from  the Editor: Bishop Spong's new book is available now at 
bookstores everywhere  and by clicking here!_ 
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060762055/agoramedia-20)   
Question and Answer
With John  Shelby Spong 
Dr. Judy Cook, a practicing psychiatrist writes via the Internet:  
Just read your latest mailing with great delight but sadly must comment that  
there are too many educated people who are still ignorant about the origins 
of  homosexuality including - sadly - many members of my medical community. I  
recently went to a church in New Mexico where the pastor was a physician as 
were  several “high rolling” members, who made it quickly clear to me that they 
were a  branch of the (Episcopal) church that separated from those who let 
homosexuals  in. I was both disgusted and amused because, in looking round me, 
there were  numerous homosexuals in the church group. As a psychiatrist, I am 
probably more  aware of this than the “ordinary” member. Had I been more than 
visiting, I  probably would have made a loud noise about the whole thing as I 
have in other  churches. I applaud you for your continuing efforts to bring 
reason to society  about this issue as many others of us also do in our own 
ways.  
Dear Dr. Cook,  
Thank you for your letter and your witness. Prejudice dies hard. I am pleased 
 to learn that the American Psychiatric Council will lend its weight to gay  
marriage. We are in a transition between a new consciousness and old  
definitions. The new consciousness will win but as with every human struggle to  
emerge from ignorance, there will be casualties long after the issue is decided.   
I hope you will speak out regularly.  
John Shelby Spong 
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