Midlife Meditation

The Scouts beat the Methodists. On July 18, the Scout Executive announced that the policy forbidding gay adults from serving as Cub and Boy Scout leaders had been revoked. Chartering organizations still have final say in whom is qualified to lead a pack or troop, meaning churches may continue to discriminate, but the national organization no longer ties the hands of those sponsors who seek to remove sexual orientation from their lists of qualifications. Putting the decision in local hands was not enough for a number of churches, who promptly disavowed their association with Scouting. The radical religious right will continue to bury its head in the sand of denial even as it goes on blindly lashing out at people whose identity is itself sinful by their definition. Consequently, evangelicalism continues its slide deeper into irrelevance. By the time Millennials are fully in charge of this nation's government and other institutions, conservative Christians will be little ...

A monk, a priest, a rabbi, several ministers, and half a dozen nuns walk into the governor's office... So it's Indiana that takes the ball and runs with it. The Supreme Court opened the door for the  "religious freedom" excuse for state-sanctioned discrimination last summer with the Hobby Lobby decision.  At the time, Court-watching pundits warned that the decision would empower right-wing Christians to write their bigotry into law. Then came the waiting game: which state would be the first to extend a sanctimonious middle finger to the gay community? The answer came this week, as Indiana Governor Mike Pence signed a bill giving business owners the right to refuse service to persons who offend their religious sensibilities. If you've followed this blog since its inception two years ago, you know I've had some very harsh things to say about Christianity. I've railed against the institutional cowardice that holds denominations back from impleme...

"We are a better people than what these laws represent, and it is time to discard them into the ash heap of history." --Judge John E. Jones III, in his opinion striking down Pennsylvania's version of the Defense of Marriage Act I started my last post with this quote, but didn't really address it. The occasion of its writing was a cause for great celebration, as marriage equality is now the law of the land in nineteen states. Of the remaining 31, discriminatory marriage legislation has been challenged in court in all but one, and given the perfect victory record of every previous challenge, it is just a matter of time--months, perhaps--until gay and lesbian couples can enter into civilly recognized marriage contracts throughout the United States. (It might take a little longer in North Dakota, the only state without such a lawsuit in progress.) This is, as I just said, cause for celebration. It's been a long time coming, and now it's happening so quickly!...

I was driving my step-daughter to the gym yesterday when she spotted this bumper sticker: It was the first time either of us had seen this particular graphic, but it instantly reminded us both of another that's been around for awhile: Tolerance, coexistence--these words are commonly interpreted as societal ideals, the next stage in the evolution of Western culture, a Utopian paradise of peace and good will. I'm sympathetic with that hope, but I'm of the opinion it falls far short of what our society should really be striving for. Starting in the early 1990s, when I was pastor of a Reconciling Congregation (a United Methodist Church that seeks full inclusion of gays and lesbians in its ministry), I have been working for on what educators call a "scope and sequence" of accepting diversity. It's a framework for understanding the historical development of cultures both toward and away from being at peace with minorities. This morning, I finally put this fr...

Is all-star college football player Michael Sam gay by choice, or by birth? Slate writer Will Saletan makes the convincing argument that, considering all the difficult choices Sam had to make to become the athlete he is, being gay is hardly something he would've picked; and by extension, coming out is certainly something he could have elected not to do. This point has been in my arsenal since at least 1992, when my opinions about gay rights were first confronted by a well-meaning homophobe. The impetus for this conversation was the 1992 General Conference of the United Methodist Church, which was making national headlines for its quadrennial struggle over whether to relax its rules against  ordaining gay pastors. In that conference, as at every time the battle has been joined, the church came down conservative, tightening rather than relaxing restrictions. Even so, the very fact that Methodists were having this debate, that it wasn't a simple given that homosexuality alw...