Newly formed organization attacks ex-gay ads Institute on Religion & Democracy Monday, September 14, 1998 WASHINGTON (IRD) – A new organization, the Religious Leadership Roundtable, has emerged to denounce newspaper ads that held out the possibility that homosexuals could change their sexual behavior. At a July 24 press conference members of the roundtable took turns blasting the ads as “evil” and “destructive” and filled with “language of violence and hatred.” Their main grievance was the ads’ implication that homosexual practices were sinful. The Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD) notes that a major participating group in the roundtable is the Interfaith Alliance, closely identified with the National Council of Churches and its leading member denominations. “This involvement of the Interfaith Alliance in justifying homosexual practices, and in stigmatizing any who disapprove of them as hate-filled bigots, raises serious questions for NCC and mainline Protestant leaders who have backed the alliance,” said IRD Vice President Alan Wisdom. “Will they uphold the official teachings of their denominations? Will they defend millions of their own church members, whose sincere belief in those teachings has been impugned by the Interfaith Alliance? Or will these mainline leaders continue to lend their names and their prestige to the radical alliance? Whose side are they on?” Most of those who spoke at the Religious Leadership Roundtable press conference came from pro-homosexual minority caucuses within Catholic and Protestant churches. Other participating groups, besides the Interfaith Alliance, include Americans United for the Separation of Church and State and People for the American Way. The Interfaith Alliance counts the NCC general secretary, two Catholic bishops, and several prominent mainline figures among its board members. NCC officials have boasted of their role in founding the alliance in 1994. The ads to which the roundtable responded featured the religious testimonies of former homosexuals who have turned to chastity and even marriage. They were sponsored by para-church groups such as the Family Research Council, the American Family Association and Concerned Women for America. The ads “were polluted” with “simplistic arrogance,” “hypocrisy,” “anti-family rhetoric,” and “an exclusionary agenda,” according to the Interfaith Alliance. Executive Director C. Welton Gaddy claimed that the ads’ appeal for repentance “offer[s] a false choice to gays and lesbians.” “Even though the Interfaith Alliance appeals for ‘tolerance’ it turns out to be rather intolerant,” observed IRD’s Wisdom. “The alliance dismisses some choices – those in obedience to a biblical command – as obviously ‘false.’ It rejects some beliefs – those based upon a teaching of the universal Church – as too hateful even to be allowed a hearing. It implies that individuals have little moral freedom, that they are compelled to act out whatever behavior their ‘orientation’ dictates, and that any hope of change is futile.” “I wonder if this sad message is really the Gospel that our church leaders were called to proclaim,” Wisdom asked. “We would rather hear them speak boldly to our sexually confused and broken generation, with words closer to the earliest preaching of Jesus: ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’” |
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