Please
know that I am deeply sorry. I am sorry for the pain and hurt many of you have
experienced. I am sorry that some of you spent years working through the shame
and guilt you felt when your attractions didn’t change. I am sorry we promoted
sexual orientation change efforts and reparative theories about sexual
orientation that stigmatized parents. I am sorry that there were times I didn’t
stand up to people publicly “on my side” who called you names like sodomite—or
worse. I am sorry that I, knowing some of you so well, failed to share publicly
that the gay and lesbian people I know were every bit as capable of being
amazing parents as the straight people that I know. I am sorry that when I
celebrated a person coming to Christ and surrendering their sexuality to Him
that I callously celebrated the end of relationships that broke your heart. I
am sorry that I have communicated that you and your families are less than me
and mine.
Chambers
was head of the largest “ex-gay” group, Exodus International, which promulgated
the theory that gay people could change their sexual orientation through a deep
personal relationship with God. That, coupled with “reparative therapy”
would be enough. And if didn’t work? You weren’t trying hard enough, or the
demon was too strongly attached to your soul.
To call it
“reparative therapy,” however, is to legitimize barbarity.
So Chambers
has apologized, and gone further: he
has shut Exodus International down. And that leads to the question: how to
forgive?
“Sorry is
the cheapest coin in the vocabulary,” said a character in one of my favorite
books, and I knew immediately what she meant. The amount of damage that the
ex-gay movement has done is enormous; people exposed to reparative therapy are
eight times more likely to attempt suicide; six times more likely to be
severely depressed; three times more likely to use illegal drugs.
So sorry is
not enough. What has to be done?
Two things.
I heard a
TED talk recently by a South African who discussed what happened after
apartheid. How was the nation to heal? How do you get over wounds like that?
The
solution was a nation-wide series of reconciliation meetings, where blacks and
whites, abusers and abused, came together, shared their stories and pain,
listened to each other. Chambers started that process three months ago, when he
sat with the people he had harmed in a church basement in Los Angeles. The
event was filmed, and will
be aired tonight on Lisa Ling’s “Our Americas.”
The
question in my mind is whether that’s enough. For many, many years I refused to
go into a church—making one exception only for St. John the Divine in New York City.
Now, after years of movement, effort, and work by the Episcopalian Church, I
could enter their places of worship. But I can’t think of any other church I
could say that about.
Nor was I
particularly harmed by the church—my parents were only nominally religious, I
never took the thing seriously enough to care what they taught about
homosexuality. But I had many friends who did, and who suffered gravely at the
hands of organized religion. And if coming out was one of the five hardest
things I’ve done in my life, I place some of the blame on the church. So yeah,
I was affected; we all were.
So
Chambers, you’re gonna have to do much more. You’re going to have to apologize,
decry reparative therapy, travel the country giving speeches welcoming LGBT
people into your church, stand up for marriage equality, start organizations,
raise money for victims—in short, do a lot of actions that tell gay people,
yeah, you’ve changed. We can trust you.
That was
number one.
Number two?
There are
people in religion who get it, and whom we should support. On of them is an
Episcopalian priest, the Reverend
Albert Ogle. Gay himself, he spent a lot of time advocating for marriage
equality in California, where he lives, when the thought struck him: all the
work he was doing in a developed country was simply making it more difficult
for people in undeveloped countries.
There are
76 countries where homosexuality is still a crime. And increasingly, those
countries are becoming more repressive, not less so. Why? Ogle likens it to big
tobacco: as the market declines in the developing world, businesses look to new
markets.
Remember
the family, the super-secret organization that organizes the National Prayer
Breakfast? Remember Scott
Lively, the guy who went down to Uganda and spoke to members of parliament,
giving them the news that the Nazi and Rwanda genocides were caused by
gay people?
In
addition, there’s been a flood of money given to religious groups under George
W. Bush’s
“faith based initiative” program.
So Ogle
makes the point—is this simply a stunt, shutting down Exodus International?
There’s still Exodus Global,
and that’s where the real work is going on.
Ogle has
set up a foundation, the St. Paul’s Foundation
for International Reconciliation; here’s what he has to say:
The Foundation was created in 2010 as an
IRS 501 (c) 3 non-profit corporation and is a registered California charity.
Our focus
has been on the intersection of human rights, health, education and faith, by
providing resources for emerging grass roots organizations and leaders in the
Global South. Local organizations are given assistance to create innovative HIV
education and prevention programs, women’s development and self employment
programs and providing training and education projects to build sustainable communities.
Educational programs in Europe and North America seek partner congregations,
foundations and donors to provide funds, technical assistance and advocacy, so
that marginalized groups can be included more deliberately in their own larger
communities.
In addition
to the foundation, Ogle has created a
website, 76crimes.org, which focuses attention on repressive countries
around the world. I didn’t know that Jamaica—two islands away—is scheduled to
have a mass protest against repealing the anti-buggery law on Sunday, and that
the event was organized by the island’s churches.
So yes, we
have to keep up the fight. And yes, we have to reach out and help the millions
of people who have it worse.
