A Gay Pastor, Part Two

March 21, 2004

Hi Guys,

After over thirty years serving as a United Methodist minister, I am well aware of the ramifications of this issue. There were a few gays in my congregation. About eight years ago, two of them, a male couple, asked me to help them become United Methodist ministers.

At one time, as I wrote in my last post, being gay was a crime punished by death. Later, most notably in ancient Greece, being gay was widely practiced, and was not considered a crime. I know very little about this historical period, so I have no idea how it worked out in Greece. When I was a boy, being gay was a disgrace and was looked upon as being unnatural. That is the way it was then. I find it hard to accept the idea that man can do anything that is unnatural. To do so we would have to somehow remove ourselves from Nature, and that is clearly impossible. Humans make plastic, bees make honey. In both cases nothing unnatural was achieved.. I have heard of gay animals. I think being gay is not unnatural.

Some years later, being gay was described as a genetic flaw, an illness. We were not to hold the gay person responsible for their sexual orientation, anymore than we would hold a person who contracted polio responsible for their illness. Homosexuality was an illness, not a choice. The idea was to find some way to cure gays of homosexuality. Clearly, if being gay is an illness, a genetic defect, our science is not capable of curing it at this time.

During this period, gays pretty much stayed in "The closet", because homosexuality was not acceptable to the majority of people, disease or not.

As years past, and we became aware of the homosexuality of some of history's greatest thinkers, artists and composers. of statesmen, military leaders, popular entertainers. I was most surprised to learn that Randolph Scott was gay. I have never been able to tell the gay from the straight. Peoples attitude toward gays changed somewhat during these years. Live and let live became the norm. Except in the case of certain mentally ill people who continued to make problems for known gays. Several gays were murdered or severely injured and sometimes still are.

In the last few years, gays have "Come out of the closet." With few negative consequences. We all seem more at ease with homosexuality; things have changed. Now we are to see homosexuality as a valid way of life. A person is said to have chosen to adopted a gay life style. And homosexuality is being viewed as just another alternate life style among many others. For the most part, being gay is no longer seen as a genetic failure or an illness to be cured.

Of course, there are people who consider being gay a moral failure, a crime against society, a social disgrace, an illness. But these attitudes are now in a minority.

Gays now are demanding the right to marry , and have the states grant them equal rights under the law. We have reached a turning point in gay, straight interactions. Something is going to happen soon that will change our society forever.

Jim

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