c. 1998 Religion News Service
Two decades after Anita Bryant protest, Miami bars gay bias
(RNS) More than two decades after singer and conservative activist Anita Bryant led a successful campaign against gay rights, the Miami-Dade County commissioners have voted to ban discrimination against gays.
A similar ordinance was tossed out in 1977 when Bryant’s Save Our Children group mounted a highly visible protest against the law. The county was one of the first to offer civil rights protection to gays and one of the first to repeal such a measure.
After more than four hours of public comment, and with members of the Christian Coalition praying against the measure nearby, the commissioners voted 7-6 to approve a law barring discrimination against homosexuals in housing and the workplace, the Associated Press reported Wednesday (Dec. 2).
More than 300 demonstrators _ both opponents and supporters of the proposed ordinance _ gathered outside the downtown building where the commissioners meet.”We’re taking a stand for righteousness,”said Pieter Swart, a member of the Miami-Dade County Christian Coalition. He said gays already have equal rights, adding:”We’re talking about special rights for an abomination of a sin.” But Katy Sorenson, the commissioner who proposed the anti-bias law, said that”oppression in the name of religion is a time-honored tradition. I’m sorry that people are fearful. Those fears are usually based on ignorance.” Outside, supporters of the ordinance carried signs proclaiming,”We are Christian, too.” Bryant, who no longer lives in Florida, could not be reached for comment, the AP said.
In a separate but related development, the Family Research Council is hailing as a victory for freedom of religion the Supreme Court’s decision Monday (Nov. 30) not to hear the appeal of a gay man ousted as a Boy Scout leader because of his homosexuality.
The justices, acting without comment, turned away El Cajon, Calif. policeman Charles Merino’s challenge to the Boy Scouts’ ban on homosexuals.
But gay rights attorneys said stronger challenges to the Boy Scouts’ policy are wending their way through the legal system and one of them may give the court the opportunity to act on the merits of the challenge to Scout policy.
Robert Knight, the conservative FRC’s director of cultural studies, said it would have been better for the court to take the case and”unambiguously”rule for the Scouts; its decision not hear Merino’s challenge”is still a victory for the freedoms of speech, association and religion.”Perhaps we are nearing a time when the ACLU and other liberal bullies will finally leave the Scouts alone,”he said.
Priest shortage in Canada may force large-scale church closings
(RNS) A shortage of priests in the Canadian Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Edmonton may force the archdiocese to close almost half of its parishes.
The archdiocese, which covers much of the province of Alberta, is one of the Canadian church’s largest geographical units and has about 300,000 Catholics.”I think this is a phenomenon that is hitting every diocese in North America and Western Europe,”said John Acheson, author of a 110-page report,”Faithful into the Future,”which recommends closing almost half of the archdiocese’s churches because of the priest shortage.
The archdiocese currently has 79 priests serving 166 parishes. In many parishes, Mass is said only once a month or so because of the lack of a priest.
The plan to close _ or consolidate _ 78 parishes has been accepted in principle by Archbishop Joseph MacNeil, Ecumenical News International, the Geneva-based religious news agency reported.”The plan is to move ahead with the recommendations,”Acheson said.”At the same time,”he added, this is not to be seen as a crisis for us. I think society is changing, so our church has to change.”
Churches’ `decade of solidarity with women’ draws to festive end
(RNS) The World Council of Churches-sponsored Ecumenical Decade of the Churches in Solidarity with Women has drawn to a close with a four-day festival in Harare, Zimbabwe, and a pledge by the 1,200 participants to keep women’s concerns alive in the world’s churches.
High _ and most immediate _ on the agenda was a call on the WCC’s Eighth Assembly, which opens Thursday (Dec. 3) in Harare, to declare violence against women a”sin”and urging delegates to the WCC meeting to”restore (women) to their rightful place in God’s household.””The world is not a yet a safe space for us,”said Thoko Mphumlwana of South Africa, one of the presiders at the four-day festival.
The challenge to the WCC was contained in a six-page, single-spaced open letter to the WCC Assembly and it pressed more than a dozen initiatives _ especially on violence _ that had come to the fore over the past 10 years in hearings, meetings and other events in which WCC-member churches around the world looked at the role of women in the church and society.
In the letter, participants said violence in the church is”a heresy, an offense against God, humanity and the earth.” The Rev. Konrad Raiser, general secretary of the WCC, the global ecumenical agency with some 330 Protestant and Orthodox church members, promised that the WCC would continue to work on the issue.”My first commitment is to not cover up the sickness of our church,”Raiser said.”We must share these stories and continue to break the silence of violence against women.”
Anglican gay rights bishop sees Lambeth as turning point
(RNS) Last summer’s Lambeth meeting of Anglican bishops from around the world and its unequivocal condemnation of homosexual activity may be a turning point in the church’s debate over gays, according to one of the communion’s most forceful proponents of gay rights.
In time, said Bishop Richard Holloway of Edinburgh, Primus (head) of the Scottish Episcopal Church,”decent opinion”on the issue will catch up with the communion. “Evidence is emerging that the virulent contempt shown to gay and lesbian people by many of the speakers at the (Lambeth) Conference has galvanized support for them among a number of hitherto silent bishops,”Holloway wrote in The Parliamentary Monitor, a monthly magazine circulated among politicians.”It is too soon to say that a consensus for reform is emerging, but I suspect that an increasing number of bishops throughout the Anglican Communion will start making their reformist opinions known, in spite of the discomfort the issue generates in evangelical circles.” However, African bishops _ who led the fight at Lambeth rejecting any acceptance of homosexual behavior _ are maintaining their fierce opposition to any acceptance of a homosexual lifestyle as compatible with Christianity.
Bishop Josiah Idowu-Fearon of Kaduna, Nigeria, in a speech at last month’s general synod of the Church of England, said the Lambeth Conference’s resolution on homosexuality had been received”with gratitude to the Lord”in Nigeria and had further strengthened their practice of not admitting into any positions of leadership certain categories of Christians, including polygamists, divorcees, gays and lesbians.
Such people were loved and given pastoral assistance, the bishop said.”They have always been seen as members of the body of Christ who need to be assisted to find their full freedom in Christ,”he said.”Our communion has never demonized such sisters and brothers, as the press would want us to believe.” In a separate but related development in England, militant gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell has been fined 18 pounds _ $30.70 _ and assessed 320 pounds _ $528 _ in court costs for disrupting the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Easter sermon in Canterbury Cathedral.
Tatchell, supported by members of OutRage!, the militant gay pressure group, climbed into the pulpit and told the congregation of 2,000 that Archbishop George Carey supported discrimination against homosexuals and opposed equal rights for them. “This is not Christian teaching,”said Tatchell before being led out of the cathedral.
The tiny fine reflected the fact that Tatchell was charged under the 1860 Ecclesiastical Courts Jurisdiction Act, which penalizes”riotous, violent, or indecent behavior”in any church.
In a statement, Carey said the views Tatchell attributed to him were totally without foundation.”The archbishop is publicly and wholeheartedly committed to a continuing dialogue with homosexuals, individually and in groups, both within and outside the Church,”the statement said.
Quote of the day: Avrahm Ravitz, leader of Israel’s United Torah Judaism Party.
(RNS)”We don’t believe in this pluralism business. Why should we let in the Reform and the Conservative? To us, it’s like if a Lutheran or a Baptist would to the Vatican say, `Hey, we’re all Christians.’ They would be thrown down the steps.” _ Avrahm Ravitz, leader of Israel’s United Torah Judaism Party, quoted in The New York Times on Wednesday (Dec. 2) reacting to court orders that Reform and Conservative Jews must be placed on the currently all-Orthodox, taxpayer-financed religious councils that wield enormous religious influence in every town and city in Israel.
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