NEWS STORY: Gay supporters in Maine take on anti-homosexual bias in name of faith

c. 1998 Religion News Service LEWISTON, Maine _ When Sally Lowe Whitehead’s husband Michael came out of the closet after 21 years of marriage and the birth of six sons and announced he was gay, she realized that it was only in telling her story that she could survive. Today, six years after her divorce, […]

c. 1998 Religion News Service

LEWISTON, Maine _ When Sally Lowe Whitehead’s husband Michael came out of the closet after 21 years of marriage and the birth of six sons and announced he was gay, she realized that it was only in telling her story that she could survive.

Today, six years after her divorce, Whitehead and her ex-husband maintain their”covenant relationship,”she says proudly, and their respective new families work together to raise the six boys.


Whitehead, whose 1997 book,”The Truth Shall Set You Free: A Family’s Passage From Fundamentalism to a New Understanding of Faith, Love, and Sexual Identity”(Harper Collins) chronicles her journey, was a featured speaker at a two-day conference in Maine this past weekend (Sept. 19 and 20).

The conference, called”Reclaiming Our Faith,”sought to use narratives such as Whitehead’s to open the public’s minds to issues of discrimination facing homosexuals.

Over the past year, gay rights has proven to be a contentious issue in this New England state, propelled by a February referendum that made Maine the first state to repeal an existing gay rights anti-discrimination law.

The referendum overturned a law banning discrimination based on sexual orientation in matters of employment, housing, credit, and public accommodations. Support for the referendum, which was voted on in a special election, was mobilized mainly by conservative Christian groups such as the Christian Civic League and the Christian Coalition.

This past conference, sponsored by the Maine Council of Churches and the Maine SpeakOut Project, seeks to counter what they see as discrimination carried out in the name of Christianity.”We’re not interested in name-calling,”said Jonathan Lee, executive director of the Maine SpeakOut Project. But Lee said many people of faith were troubled by the power of the religious conservatives.”Many people were very upset that this repeal happened, and many people were upset that it happened in the name of Christianity,”he told the group of 80 clergy, parents, and community members who gathered September 19 at St. Mary’s LePage Conference Center in Lewiston.

Lewiston, the second largest city in Maine and predominantly Roman

Catholic, has consistently voted against gay rights legislation. Lee said he hoped the conference’s presence will spark new discussion on the issue.

But the event, which Lee _ himself a Reform Jew _ hoped would reclaim Christianity for the cause of gay rights in Maine, has prompted protest from conservative Christians who believe gay rights legislation implies social approval of homosexuality.”It’s important for people to be able to tell their stories in a safe context,”said Michael S. Heath, league executive director of the Christian Civic League, which is a family policy council associated with the national organization Focus on the Family, in a press release.”It’s misleading and irresponsible, however, for leaders to suggest to the public that Christianity affirms homosexuality,”Heath said.”Christianity clearly does not affirm homosexuality.” Gay rights is not a cut-and-dry issue for most Americans, according to sociologist Alan Wolfe, university professor at Boston University. Wolfe, who addressed the second day of the conference, recently published a book documenting the attitudes of middle-class Americans on a variety of social issues.”I found Americans to be pretty tolerant _ except on this issue of homosexuality,”Wolfe said.


Nevertheless, the Christians who gathered in Lewiston on September 19 and Somesville, Maine, on September 20 insist that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is wrong. They aim to invigorate a campaign to get a gay rights law back on the books in the year 2000, when the number of voters is expected to be higher than the 31 percent turnout the February referendum received.

But the conference’s organizers said they are worried that religious progressives are more difficult to mobilize than religious conservatives because of the very nature of their liberal philosophy.”It’s counterintuitive in the liberal tradition for me to tell people what is right or wrong, what they must do,”said Tom Ewell, executive director of the Maine Council of Churches.”I cannot do that; I can only reason with people. I can only tell my story.” Ewell, whose organization is comprised of more than 600 congregations from seven Protestant denominations and the Roman Catholic Church, said that if an anti-discrimination law is to pass in 2000, liberal people of faith must learn a new vocabulary for addressing head-on the objections of religious conservatives.”We need to practice,”he said.

Lee, whose organization regularly sends out volunteers to help congregations divided over the issue resolve or work through their differences,encouraged participants to share their stories with small break-out groups _ an exercise he said he hopes will spark a sense of urgency and a call to action.”Where lack of zealotry slides into complacency, there’s a problem,”Lee said.

Participants reported feeling energized by the conference.”The stories that people tell are love stories,”said the Rev. Gil Healy of First Congregational Church, a United Church of Christ congregation in North Yarmouth.

Healy said he believes these stories will be the answer for religious progressives.”The Bible is a love story to me, it’s a story about how God loves us, about how Jesus loved us, and if we could appreciate the Bible as a love story instead of a law code, then it seems to me we could make some progress.”

DEA END LEBOWITZ

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