c. 2005 Religion News Service

CLEVELAND _ The Vatican may be on the verge of delivering a stunning setback to homosexuals in the Catholic Church, but a ban on celibate gay seminarians cannot stop the momentum for gay and lesbian rights among the nation’s religious groups, advocates for change say.

Members of a national interfaith coalition on gay rights in religion concluded a two-day strategy meeting Tuesday (Sept. 27) in Cleveland, condemning a proposed Vatican document that they say links homosexuality with pedophilia.

However, leaders seeking change in faiths from Catholicism to Islam to mainline Protestantism said the decision of the Episcopal Church to stand behind its election of a gay bishop and the United Church of Christ’s vote to endorse same-sex marriages is part of a “great awakening” on gay rights issues.

“Collectively, we have to feel good about progress that is being made,” said Debra Weill, executive director of DignityUSA, an independent Catholic gay-rights group. “Some of the churches have taken amazing steps.”

The National Religious Leadership Roundtable met at the Cleveland headquarters of the United Church of Christ as a national debate heated up over reports of rules proposed by the Vatican’s Congregation for Catholic Education that would bar even celibate gay men from entering the priesthood.

The rules, based on Catholic teaching that homosexuality is an “objectively disordered” condition, are not new. But church observers say older regulations barring even chaste gays from seminaries have been selectively enforced, or in many cases, discreetly ignored.

In interviews with roundtable members, many said the Vatican was trying to make gays the scapegoat for clergy sexual abuse of children.

“The Vatican didn’t get it when they tried to shuffle (abusive) priests around. And they don’t get it now,” said Dave Noble, political director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

Robert Tayek, spokesman for the Cleveland Catholic Diocese, said it was unfair to speculate before the document is released.

Tayek also noted the U.S. bishops have been clear in their teaching that Catholics must reach out with respect, compassion and sensitivity to gays and lesbians.

“God does not love someone any less simply because he or she is homosexual,” the bishops said in a 1997 document entitled “Always Our Children.”

If gay activists are concerned about what the upcoming Vatican document might say, they remain upbeat about the direction of gay-rights issues in religion.

The Episcopal Church has come under fire from other churches in the worldwide Anglican Communion and many of its own members for approving the election of an openly gay bishop in New Hampshire.

“What is also clear is the American Episcopal Church is not … turning back,” said the Rev. Jay Johnson of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, Calif.

At a noon discussion of the state of gay-rights efforts, roundtable members also praised the United Church of Christ for becoming the largest Christian denomination to back same-sex marriages.

Activists said they are seeing gays and lesbians taking hope from such actions, and many are coming back to religion.

“It’s almost like a great awakening, I would say,” Johnson said.

Change is even taking place in the Islamic community, said Imam Daayiee Abdullah, a gay imam from Washington.

Al-Fahita, the group for gay and lesbian Muslims, now has eight chapters in the United States and is setting up a dialogue among gay and non-gay Islamic scholars, he said.

Among the upcoming events planned by religious gay-rights activists are a “freedom ride” bus tour of schools such as Brigham Young University and West Point that ban sexually active gay men.

The issue is not going away, activists said.

“Real social change … happens when the United Church of Christ takes its stands and when we stand up to the Vatican,” Noble said.

But there always will be Christians ready to defend the authority of Scripture, which in several places condemns homosexual practices, said the Rev. James Tasker of St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Bay Village, one of a group of Cleveland area churches considering separating from the denomination over the issue of the ordination of the gay bishop.

“As far as the Episcopal Church goes, as far as the Anglican Communion goes, there will be a split,” Tasker said. “I would predict eventually there will be a split in every denomination.”

MO/JL END RNS

(David Briggs writes for The Plain Dealer of Cleveland.)

Editors: To obtain a file photo of Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson, go to the RNS Web site at https://religionnews.com. On the lower right, click on “photos,” then search by subject, designating “exact phrase” for best results.