[Dialogue] Bushies-Gays The Church

[KroegerD at aol.com]

October 25, 2006 
Sexual Hypocrisy in Church and  State 
It has long been observed in religious circles that the most outspoken  
critics of homosexuality frequently turn out to be themselves closeted  homosexual 
people. Now we discover that among those in the political arena who  have done 
most to politicize the homosexual issue in an effort to curry votes  among 
conservative voters in recent elections are themselves also deeply  compromised 
on this issue. At stake is the issue of integrity, a quality sorely  missing, 
I fear, in both the life of the Christian Church and in the present  Bush 
administration. In both arenas the duplicity of sexual politics needs to be  
exposed.  
Let me begin with the Church. Benedict XVI, the current pope, has made the  
purging of homosexual candidates for the priesthood one of his top priorities.  
This is nothing less than pandering to cultural prejudice solely for public  
relations. The tip off is clear when he states that no attempt will be made to 
 remove from their positions those homosexuals who are now priests, bishops 
or  cardinals. That would decimate the ranks of the ordained! He only plans to 
put  up a fire wall at the entry-point. A thoroughly gay church wants to 
pretend that  it is the enemy of homosexual clergy. What a pathetic response to 
abusive clergy  behavior.  
This Church failed to be honest, suppressing its history of dealing with  
abusive clergy by transferring them to other states, and minimizing criminal  
behavior. Needing to make a stand somewhere, they decided to denounce all  
homosexuality, implying inaccurately in the process that homosexuality is the  cause 
of this abusive behavior. Nothing revealed the dishonesty of this planned  
diversion more than the transfer of one of the chief architects of priestly  
abuse, Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, to a prestigious Vatican assignment when  
by every standard he should have been tried, convicted and sentenced to jail 
for  willfully covering up evidence of criminal behavior. Here is a church 
whose  ordained ranks are filled with gay males leading the chorus against  
homosexuality. That is, quite frankly, "queer behavior."  
My own church is no better. Internationally the Anglican Communion was  
recently headed by a deeply homophobic Archbishop of Canterbury named George  
Carey. He, along with the majority of England's Anglican Bishops, constantly  
passed resolutions and quoted the Bible to condemn homosexuality. In response, a  
group of Anglican clergy, who knew more about where homosexuals were in the  
hierarchy than the Church thought they did, began a public campaign to out those 
 gay bishops who were busily condemning homosexuals. The carnage in the 
Church of  England was palpable. The number three ranked Anglican bishop was forced 
to call  a press conference to announce that he was "sexually ambivalent." He 
was later  elevated to the number two position! England's fourth ranking 
prelate had to  face the newly revealed fact that in his twenties he had been 
arrested for  soliciting homosexual favors in a public wash room. Church leaders 
called these  charges a "youthful indiscretion" and he served until his 
retirement.  
Still another 'outed' bishop resigned his post and entered a monastic  
community, where he could live in an all male community with impunity and  
anonymity. When George Carey retired he was replaced at the head of the Church  of 
England by Rowan Williams a man well known, prior to being named Archbishop  of 
Canterbury, for his liberal attitude toward homosexual persons. He peeked  into 
the closet of Anglican clergy and, frightened at the vision, began to  
backpedal rapidly on both truth and character. He actually concurred in the  
appointment of a known gay man to be an area bishop in a major Diocese until  forced 
by the cries of homophobic evangelicals into acting in such a way that he  left 
himself with neither integrity nor any other redeeming feature, forcing his  
own appointee to withdraw. At the same time, however, underneath the radar  
screen of public attention at least four gay men were being appointed Deans of  
English cathedrals. They were in fact men of enormous talent that I have 
admired  for years. While these Deans were worthy of respect, the secretive church 
that  appointed them was not.  
In the American Episcopal Church we have time after time discovered that  
violent homophobia was pouring forth from sources that turned out to be deeply  
closeted gay men. A western bishop, from whose mouth streamed vitriolic  
condemnations of homosexual people, was discovered with his gay lover shortly  
before his retirement. The issue was hushed up. A convenient eye disease was  
offered as the excuse for the fact that his retirement was moved up. Both he and  
the Church's integrity disappeared from public view. A Midwestern bishop died 
of  AIDS, but that too was covered over and never faced. With his death, 
however,  one of the most homophobic voices of our church was silenced, and those of 
us  who knew the facts, railed at this ecclesiastical duplicity. At the same 
time  one of the great bishops of our church was elected vice-president of the 
House  of Bishops. He served with great distinction, but when he retired and 
came out  of the closet, no one was surprised. In 1990 my Church's House of 
Bishops was  debating a resolution to "disassociate" itself from me and my 
diocese for  ordaining an openly gay man who lived in a publicly acknowledged 
partnership.  That resolution passed by a 78-74 vote majority with two abstentions. 
I was one  of the two since I did not know how to vote on whether or not I 
wanted to  associate with me! Following the vote, two bishops came out of the 
closet to me  separately and privately. Both were married. One had voted for me, 
the other  against me. The one who voted against me apologized and told me 
that he dealt  with his fear of being exposed by condemning homosexuality in 
every public  forum. No one, not even his wife, even suspected him. I promised 
him that I  would never reveal his identity and I haven't, but I also told him 
that his  position was contemptible. The next day another bishop, who had led 
the attack  on me came to me, again privately, to ask if I would be able to 
take a  homosexual priest who needed to move. He had no place in his Diocese, to 
move  him. It was one more illustration of a two-faced church structure for 
which I  have no respect or patience.  
I thought of these church episodes recently as I watched the leadership of  
the Republican Party squirm under the revelations of Florida's Representative  
Mark Foley. This party is filled with the same kind of duplicity. Under the  
leadership of Karl Rove, whose openly gay, adoptive father died in 2004, the  
Republicans have regularly run political campaigns designed to capitalize on  
uninformed fear about gay people. The first Rove 'smear campaign' was directed  
against Texas Governor, Ann Richards, implying that she was a lesbian. That 
dark  campaign propelled George W. Bush into the governorship of Texas. 
Homophobia has  been a theme in every Bush campaign since. Now with destructive 
homosexual  behavior revealed in the midst of the GOP, they have engaged in a 
cover-up.  Dennis Hastert has emerged as the political counterpart to Cardinal Law. 
One  cartoonist actually portrayed Hastert in the ecclesiastical robes of a 
Catholic  bishop. He had been told about Congressman Foley's inappropriate 
e-mails to  congressional pages at least three years ago, but disregarded those 
reports.  Even with these suspicions abroad, Hastert and other ranking 
Republican leaders  went to Congressman Foley in 2005 seeking to get him to run for 
Florida's  Republican Senate nomination to oppose incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson. 
They  wanted to use Foley's popularity to stop what they saw as the doomed 
candidacy  of Katherine Harris. Control of Congress was so important that these 
Republicans  played sexual politics until the whistle was blown. Then they 
"could not recall"  being warned about Congressman Foley's proclivities, that 
were, it now appears,  widely known.  
Meanwhile on Tuesday, October 11, 2006 an openly homosexual man named Dr.  
Mark Dybul was sworn into office at the State Department with his partner  
holding the Bible. Dr. Dybul was flanked by First Lady Laura Bush and Secretary  of 
State Condoleezza Rice. In her remarks Ms. Rice referred to the mother of Dr. 
 Dybul's partner as his "mother in law." While I welcome this enlightened  
attitude, I remember that this is the administration that has urged an amendment 
 to the constitution banning gay marriage as our only protection against  
"liberal, activist judges." This is the administration in which Vice President  
Cheney's lesbian daughter has been made invisible. This behavior reveals that  
homosexual people are today's political victims, the new "Willie Horton!" Bob  
Woodward's book "The State of Denial" refers to Steve Herbits, the openly 
gay,  top consultant to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, as the one advisor 
who  "foresaw the disaster in Iraq." We also now know that aides to President 
Bush  and assistants to such homophobic senators as James Imhofe of Oklahoma, 
Mel  Martinez of Florida, and Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania are known to be 
open  homosexuals. I am not upset by that fact. I am upset that people will bash 
 homosexuals publicly, while depending on them privately.  
The final revelation of this administration's crass behavior came on Sunday,  
October 15, 2006 in an interview on CBS's Sixty Minutes with David Kuo, a 
former  top official in the Bush "Faith-based Initiatives" program. In his book,  
"Tempting Faith," Kuo reported that Bush administration spokespersons who 
were  willing to blast gay people in public, were in private referring to "these  
f-----g faith based programs" and calling its homophobic Evangelical base a  
bunch of 'nuts.' Both the hierarchy of the Church and Republican politicians  
will clearly resort to lies and cover-up to preserve power. No lie can, 
however,  be sustained indefinitely. Even Republicans are today beginning to tire of 
this  tactic. Two contenders for that party's 2008 nomination are John McCain 
and Rudy  Giuliani, consistent supporters of gay civil rights. Perhaps it is 
not the  Republican Party, but this particular administration that is the 
culprit. Maybe  they even learned their behavior patterns from the Christian 
Church.  
John Shelby Spong  
_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 
Natalie Day and Holly Fannin from Fernley, Nevada, write:  
As long time readers of yours, we have come across something that we do not  
know how to answer and we were wondering if you would like to shed a little  
light on this subject for us. It concerns Heb. 11:8-16, particularly v. 16. It  
states (paraphrasing here) that God is not ashamed of Abraham and Sarah 
because  they believed by faith the things God promised to them. No argument 
there....  however...would God have been ashamed of them if they HADN'T believed? 
And, by  extension, is it possible for God to be ashamed of us if we do not 
believe in  that "heavenly country?" I'm not asking because I want to know if God 
would be  ashamed of me (because I believe that God isn't), I'm asking because 
 theologically I don't see how it is possible for God to feel ashamed of 
those  who have been adopted, sanctified and justified. It would seem to me that 
IF a  person were under grace, then it would be impossible for God to feel 
anything  but union with that person by way of the Holy Spirit through Jesus 
Christ.  
Dear Holly and Natalie,  
First you need to read the text carefully. It does not say that God is not  
ashamed of Abraham and Sarah. It says God is not ashamed to be called their 
God.  In Hebrew society, it was considered a woman's shame if she could not 
conceive.  According to the Book of Genesis, God removed the shame by making it 
possible  for a postmenopausal Sarah to have Isaac. The story in Genesis was wr
itten some  900 years after the time of Abraham and Sarah and, I suspect, grew 
in the  process so the next question is to determine what it meant to the 
author of  Hebrews.  
It surely had nothing to do with shame as we tend to use that word. It was  
important to the Jewish image of themselves as the chosen people to demonstrate 
 that nothing could stop the promises of God from being fulfilled. Miracles 
at  the inauguration of a new nation are common features of folklore.  
Finally, whoever wrote Hebrews (it was not Paul) was not writing the words of 
 God. He or she was writing his or her words to a late first century C.E.  
audience. Read them, mark, learn and inwardly digest their meaning but don't  
ascribe to them inerrancy. That is to give to them worship that is only due to  
God.  
John Shelby Spong 
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