There they go again!

To paraphrase former President Ronald Reagan: "There they go again!" And I would add, "Again and again and again." Attacks on gays and lesbians and on those who would recognize their rights go on and on and on--in homes, in schools, in churches, and in the community. Fortunately, some sane voices speak out in support of gay causes. Judging by what has been occurring during its first seven months, however, 1999 is becoming another year marked by continuing hostility toward any expression of gay rights or support for homosexuals.

January 6. The Arkansas Child Welfare Agency Board passed a resolution banning gay, lesbian, bisexual, and trans-gendered people in Arkansas from becoming foster parents. After public hearings, the ban will prohibit the placing of a child with anyone who has engaged in same-sex sexual behavior or anyone sharing a household with someone who has engaged in same-sex behavior. Similar laws are in effect in Florida and New Hampshire.

January 8. In Atlanta, Georgia, members of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered community held a rally with friends from the Jewish community to demand that two paragraphs on persecution of gay men in the Holocaust, which had been removed by the Georgia Commission on the Holocaust from a teacher's guide, be reinserted. The two deleted paragraphs read:

   German male homosexuals were targeted and arrested because they would not
   breed the master race: they were an affront to the Nazi macho image.

      The doors of the third [cattle] car open and the homosexuals spill
   forth, males only, because as Himmler concluded, "lesbians can give birth."
   The taunting jeers, and blows of the guards stun the men. They will stay a
   night and then be rerouted to Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald to be with their
   kind. The pink triangle they will soon wear is a result of a judgment that
   they have broken Article 175A, by sexual act, by kissing, by embracing, by
   fantasy and thought. Some will be given an opportunity to recant by
   successfully completing sexual activity with a woman in the camp brothel.
   Most others will find themselves tormented from all sides as they struggle
   to avoid being assaulted, raped, worked, and beaten to death.

They also requested that a resource booklet on gays in the Holocaust, published by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, be distributed to middle-school teachers along with the guide.

January 15. In Sacramento, California, ninety-two clergy from the United Methodist Church participated in a "holy union" celebration for two lesbians in defiance of the church rule against same-sex ceremonies.

January 26-27. A unique group, composed of more than forty religious leaders from Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, and Protestant traditions, representing thousands of people of faith, met at a National Religious Leadership Roundtable in Washington, D.C., to affirm that religious belief and acceptance of gay, lesbian bisexual, and transgendered persons don't stand in contradiction.

February 3. The Wyoming State Judiciary Committee voted down two bills. S.F. 84--which would have established enhanced penalties for bias-motivated crimes committed because of the victim's race, religion, color, disability, sexual orientation, national origin, or ancestry--was similar to a bill voted down by the full state house a week earlier. S.F. 91 would have established enhanced penalties for bias-motivated crimes committed because of an individual's membership in a group.

February 12. The second annual National Freedom to Marry Day was celebrated in seventy cities across the nation. In Hollywood, California, members of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, holding hands--woman with woman, man with man--strolled down a white runner, tied lavender ribbons on a green trellis (tying the knot!), and took their vows. Their intent was to spur dialogue about same-gender marriages.

February 13. In San Mateo, California, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican's chief doctrinal watchdog, finalized a three-day conference with Canadian and American doctrine committee members by restating Roman Catholic opposition to homosexuality and abortion. The consensus of the meeting was that homosexual acts cannot contribute to the "authentic good of the human person." Ratzinger went further and rejected the blessing of same-sex unions, even when the vows spoken contain the promise to love and be faithful and monogamous in a long-term committed relationship:

   Blessing is a recognition that this is a way of good and a confirmation in
   this action [of an] underlying internal goodness. So if it is true what we
   say that this is not a contribution to human good, [to] confirm as a
   blessing this way would not be helpful for these persons.

What is clear is that Roman Catholic doctrine is going to continue to follow hard-nosed theological thinking.

February 14 marks St. Valentine's Day--a commercially sponsored day for the expression of love and affection. The Christian church set aside the day to honor a Christian Roman priest and physician who was put to death on February 14, 269, on the order of Emperor Claudius II Gothicus, who persecuted Christians. Humanists know that originally the date practically coincided with the Lupercalia. In this Roman spring fertility festival, celebrated on February 15, two young men wearing the skins of recently slain goats ran about the Palatine hills striking women with strips of goat skin to render them fertile. It has been suggested that this spring rite originated as a purification ceremony to protect flocks and herds and to promote fertility in crops, animals, and humans. The church simply co-opted the celebration and gave it a new expression with a Christian overlay.

During this same week, the Reverend Jerry Falwell, one of the founders of the late, unlamented Moral Majority movement (which some of us recognized as the Immoral Minority), published in the National Liberty Journal an article entitled "Tinky Winky Comes Out of the Closet." Falwell, who was just recovering from his stupid and insensitive announcement that the anti-Christ is Jewish, argues that Teletubby television character Tinky Winky indoctrinates children into homosexuality. While he was at it, Falwell accused the Walt Disney Company of infusing subliminal sexual messages into three popular movies: The Rescuers, The Little Mermaid, and The Lion King. Just how a psychiatrist might evaluate Falwell's sexual obsessions I can't say, but once again the anti-gay cleric has provided entertainers, cartoonists, and columnists with fodder for amusing comments.

February 18. One thousand students, staff members, and faculty walked out of San Marin High School in Novato, California, as a statement of support for Adam Colton, a student who had been beaten for the second time because he is gay. The first beating occurred in September 1998, after Colton announced he was gay and was forming the Gay-Straight Alliance. After the second beating, Colton, having been knocked unconscious, woke cut and bruised in the hospital, unable to remember what had happened. There could be no question concerning the cause of his injuries, because the letters FAG were scratched with a pen on his arms and abdomen. Novato is a mostly white town just thirty miles north of San Francisco, a city well known for its support of a large gay population.

March 18. In Bakersfield, California, the Rio Bravo-Greely Union School District agreed to permit eighth-grade school teacher James Merrick to return to work--but not as a teacher, only as a planner for new elementary school science curriculum. What is the problem? Merrick, who is sixty-one years old and has been a teacher for forty years, is openly gay. He is the father of four grown children, is close to his wife of forty-five years, but lives with his partner in Bakersfield. During the fall semester, at the request of parents, ten boys and five girls were removed from his classes.

Merrick, who was hired by the district in 1994 and was once recognized as Teacher of the Year, has been on paid leave since January. He will retire at the end of the year. Because a state labor commissioner ruled that the school district had discriminated against Merrick, the trustees issued a statement declaring that there had never been any question about Merrick's ability as a teacher and that the district will apologize to him. Merrick has agreed not to sue the school district, and the school district will follow a nonbigotry, tolerance-oriented policy of nondiscrimination on the basis of race, religion, or sexual orientation in placement of students.

March 21-27. "Equality Begins at Home"--a first-ever national campaign of actions to focus attention on efforts to establish gay rights in state legislatures--was celebrated. In Hartford, Connecticut, the rainbow flag--the symbol of equality for the state's gay community--flew over the state capitol. Major events were held in Texas, California, Alabama, Massachusetts, and Washington, D.C.

March 24. Bishop Melvin Talbert, head of the 375-church California-Nevada Conference of the United Methodist Church, filed a complaint against sixty-nine of the ninety-two ministers who officiated en masse at the "holy union" of two lesbians on January 15--in particular against the Reverend Don Fado of Sacramento who presided at the celebration. The lesbians whose relationship was recognized in the ceremony were Jeanne Barnett, a sixty-eight-year-old retired state unemployment administrator, and Ellie Charlton, a sixty-three-year-old divorced great-grandmother. It's interesting to note that Talbert acknowledged that the church's ban on ceremonies recognizing gay relationships is an "act of injustice," nevertheless church law required him to act on a complaint brought by two United Methodist pastors.

March 26-27. In Palm Springs, California, "Dinah, the Women's Weekend" was celebrated by hundreds of gay women from around the world. These mostly affluent women from the United States, England, Italy, France, and Switzerland are welcomed annually by the city, which has about two dozen "gay hotels" and eleven gay bars. The women chose Palm Springs because of the quality of accommodations and because they feel safe from public censure in hotels that cater to women.

March 27. In a church trial in Downers Grove, Illinois, a jury of thirteen United Methodist Church pastors voted ten to three that the Reverend Gregory Dell, who had been a pastor for thirty years, was guilty of disobeying church law when he presided over the "holy union" of Karl Reinhardt and Keith Eccarius in September 1998. Eccarius had been a member of the church for eight years. The Methodist church had officially banned same-sex unions in August after the Reverend Jimmy Creech of Omaha, Nebraska, was tried for performing a lesbian "wedding." Creech was acquitted when a jury decided that, at that time, the church's position on same-sex unions was only "advisory," not "law." Although Creech was not defrocked, he was placed "on leave."

Dell was "suspended" beginning July 5, placing the fifty-three-year-old's career as a Methodist minister on hold. He expressed disappointment in the ruling, saying it was based on "moralistic rigidity and legalism that shuts people out." The ecclesiastical jury said the suspension could be "lifted" if Dell would promise to obey the church's ban on same-sex unions. Dell, whose congregation is about one-third gay or lesbian, refused: "I will not abandon the gay, lesbian, and transgendered persons in my pastoral care." He said he will find another job.

April 4. In Palm Springs, California, homosexual males gathered for their annual spring festival. Once again, safety and acceptance helped to make Palm Springs the chosen location.

April 5. In Laramie, Wyoming, Russell Henderson, one of two men accused in the beating death of Matthew Shepard, changed his plea to guilty and was sentenced to life in prison without chance of parole. The second man charged, Aaron McKinney, would go on trial in August, while his girlfriend, Kristen Price, would stand trial in May. Henderson's girlfriend, Chasity Pasley, pleaded guilty in December 1998 to accessory. Shepard was lured from a bar, savagely beaten, then lashed to a fence, where he was left to die. Why? Because he was gay.

April 21. The New Hampshire Senate passed H.B. 90, which repealed a 1988 ban on adoptions by families in which one or more of the adults is a homosexual. Governor Jeanne Shaheen pledged to sign the bill.

May 8. This Mother's Day, the film Truth in Love, produced by the Coral Ridge Ministries and the Center for Reclaiming America, hit the media market. The film, which features a mother of an alleged "ex-gay" recalling her son's struggle with his homosexuality, supports the contentions of the so-called ex-gay movement that gays can be "converted" to heterosexuality by embracing fundamentalist religious doctrine or through "reparative therapy."

May 15. In Boston, the Unitarian Universalist Association entered into a compromise with the Boy Scouts of America that enables the UUA to once again present its Religion in Life award to scouts. The badge designates a scout's proficiency in the tenets of his faith. The UUA agreed to remove from its award manual any reference to its concerns about the BSA's "homophobic and discriminatory attitudes"--language the Scouts objected to. Instead, the message will be contained in pamphlets mailed with the manual. Obviously, because the UUA entertains a more liberal view of homosexuality than the BSA, the two groups will remain divided on the issue. According to BSA spokesperson Greg Shields, the Boy Scouts' traditional teachings about "family values" imply that "an avowed homosexual wouldn't be a role model for those values."

May 17. A San Francisco court ruled that inasmuch as two women had biological ties to a baby named Max, he would be born having two mothers: Linda McAllister, whose egg produced her son, and Leslee Subak, who carried him to term. The sperm came from an anonymous donor.

May 20. U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilkin in San Francisco ruled that United Airlines must provide the same non-health benefits to domestic partners that employees' spouses receive, including bereavement, family leaves, and flight discounts. The judge left in place a preliminary injunction preventing the city from enforcing the ordinance until United has a chance to seek a stay or file an appeal. The question as to whether airlines are required to provide health and pension benefits was left open because, according to Wilkin, those matters can only be dictated by the federal government.

Wilkin also ruled that an Ohio-based business that lost a city contract when it refused to comply with the San Francisco ordinance was not entitled to the contract. She wrote, "The ordinance aims to fulfill in economic terms a promise long required in city contracts: that parties doing business with the city do not discriminate on sexual orientation or marital status." The suit against the San Francisco law had been filed by the conservative American Center for Law and Justice, founded by the Reverend Pat Robertson.

The same day, the Nevada legislature approved a bill to ban job discrimination based on sexual orientation. Governor Kenny Guinn pledged to sign it, bringing to eleven the total number of states with laws banning discrimination based on sexual orientation in categories including employment, housing, and public accommodations.

May 24. The Campaign for California Families produced full-page ads condemning "liberal Democrats in Sacramento" for promoting two bills (A.B. 1001 and A.B. 16.70) that would recognize the "civil rights" of homosexuals in business and in public school teaching about human sexuality. The ads warn:

   Don't listen to the politicians who say that the gay legislative agenda is
   about "discrimination," or that it's "harmless," "simple" or "necessary."
   These dangerous bills would punish people who disagree with homosexuality.
   The homosexual activists are intolerant of parental rights and persons of
   conscience. They want to equate homosexual "partners" with marriage between
   a man and a woman, and they don't like the Boy Scout pledge to be morally
   straight.

May 25. The California legislature approved S.B. 75, recognizing same-sex "domestic partners" as couples and providing them limited benefits. Democratic state senate sponsor Kevin Murray of Los Angeles said his bill would extend to "committed" same-sex couples limited benefits that long have been conferred on married couples, including hospital visitation rights, beneficiary rights in wills, and conservator rights in certain probate cases. (Tax breaks and community property advantages were not included.) The bill would also allow heterosexual couples to register as domestic partners. To qualify as domestic partners, a couple would need to share a residence, be responsible for one another's basic living expenses, be at least eighteen years old, be unmarried, and not be a member of another domestic partnership. Conservative Republicans argued that the bill would weaken the institution of marriage, open the door to gay marriages, and violate God's will. Republican Senator Richard Mountjoy of Arcadia said, "The bill is wrong. Men sleeping with men and women sleeping with women is wrong. It is wrong because God said it is wrong."

May 27. The California legislature passed A.B. 26, presented by Democrat Carole Migden of San Francisco, allowing domestic partners to register with the state and requiring group health care plans to include the same benefits for domestic partners as for spouses. Also passed was A.B. 107, presented by Democrat Wally Knox of Beverly Hills, authorizing state and local governments to include employees' domestic partners in their health plans. Government employers that already offered this option could contract for such benefits from the state employees' pension fund, which presently provides health insurance but not for domestic partners. Also passed was S.B. 118, presented by Democrat Tom Hayden of Los Angeles, adding domestic partners to family-care and medical-have provisions, which allow employees a leave of absence from their workplace to care for a family member who has a serious health condition.

May 28. In Morgan Hill, California, Alana Flores and five other former students of Live Oak High School sued the Morgan Hill Unified School District, claiming teachers and administrators ignored pervasive and anti-gay abuse. The lawsuit argues that the abuse violates Title IX, the federal law barring sexual discrimination in schools and colleges.

May 29. The Boy Scouts of America rescinded its offer to reauthorize the Unitarian Universalist Association to issue its Religion in Life award to scouts who are Unitarians. The basis for this decision, according to Lawrence Ray Smith, chair of the BSA religious relationships committee, is because the Unitarians plan to distribute their own materials on homosexuality and religious beliefs to Unitarian scouts working toward the award. The UUA argues mat me BSA is not entitled to place political or theological restraints on scouts who are Unitarians, a faith system that rejects most orthodox Christian tenets and allows members broad freedoms of belief.

May 30. Dr. Laura Schlessinger used her "advice" column to take issue with a film entitled It's Elementary, designed for airing on PBS. She states, "The point of It's Elementary is to indoctrinate children with the belief that homosexuality is normal--not a deviant or wrong behavior, nor a personal or societal problem--but a totally benign and acceptable variation of heterosexuality, and its equivalent in every way." The tape she reviewed "features a boy who says that Christians believe homosexuality is a sin. `So they kill them,' he adds solemnly." According to Schlessinger, this scene was later eliminated from the film. She added:

Most Christians oppose homosexuality because they believe Scripture defines it as sin. They aren't motivated by hate; quite the contrary. Christians advocate love and redemption, not open season on homosexuals and lesbians.... All traditional religions view homosexuality as a sin. Thus, many Americans committed to a religious way of life do not accept the assertion that two men or two women constitute a family equal to the conventional relationship of marriage between a man and a woman ordained by God. So we don't want our children taught that it IS.

June 3. The California legislature passed A.B. 1001, presented by Democrat Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles, adding discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation to a list of causes of action under the state Fair Employment and Housing Act.

June 4. President Clinton appointed James C. Hormel, who is openly gay, as U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg. The sixty-six-year-old Hormel said his partner would not live with him in Luxembourg and he would not use the post to espouse gay rights causes.

The same day, the California Assembly rejected A.B. 222, presented by Democrat Sheila Kuehl of Santa Monica, that would have added sexual orientation to attributes for which discrimination is prohibited against students and employees in public schools.

June 5. The Associated Press reported that Methodist Bishop Mary Ann Swenson of Denver, Colorado, had been charged by the Methodist Judicial Court for her support of Methodist clergy who have performed same-sex unions within her jurisdiction. The charges center on the activities of the Reverend Toni Cook, pastor of St. Paul's United Methodist Church in Denver, who has performed several same-sex ceremonies. Other Methodist clergy have performed same-sex ceremonies in the Denver area but Cook is widely known for her stance. At the same time, more than 270 lay and clergy United Methodists from three states have shown support for Swenson.

June 9. The news that Pat Robertson pulled out of his association with Laura Ashley was greeted with jubilation by members of the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association. The association had urged the gay community to stop shopping at Laura Ashley after it was revealed in January that the homophobic evangelist had been appointed a director.

June 11. President Clinton issued a proclamation recognizing June as Gay and Lesbian Pride Month that in part reads:

   Thirty years ago this month, at the Stonewall Inn in New York City, a
   courageous group of citizens resisted harassment and mistreatment, setting
   in motion a chain of events that would become known as the Stonewall
   Uprising and the birth of the modern gay and lesbian civil rights movement.
   Gays and lesbians, their families and friends, celebrate the anniversary of
   Stonewall every June in America as Gay and Lesbian Pride Month....

   America's diversity is our greatest strength. But while we have come a long
   way on our journey toward tolerance, understanding, and mutual respect, we
   still have a long way to go in our efforts to end discrimination.... In
   1997, the most recent year for which we have statistics, there were more
   than 8,000 reported hate crimes in our country--almost one an hour. Now is
   the time for us to take strong and decisive action to end all hate crimes,
   and I reaffirm my pledge to work with the Congress to pass the Hate Crimes
   Prevention Act.

   But we cannot achieve true tolerance merely through legislation; we must
   change hearts and minds as well. Our greatest hope for a just society is to
   teach our children to respect one another, to appreciate our differences,
   and to recognize the fundamental values that we hold in common.

June 24. Steven Eric Mullins, one of two men accused in the beating death of Billy Jack Gaither, a homosexual, pleaded guilty to escape a death sentence. The second man charged, Charles Monroe Butler Jr., goes on trial August 2. Police say Gaither was beaten with an axe handle; then his body was burned atop a stack of old tires in Alabama's Coosa County.

July 1. Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan signed a hate crimes bill that includes sexual orientation, gender, and disability--the twenty-second state to have such a hate crimes law.

July 13. Sister Jeannine Gramick, a member of the Sisters of Notre Dame, and Father Robert Nugent, a priest in the Salvation order, who in 1977 founded the Maryland-based New Ways Ministry to offer pastoral care to gay men and lesbians, were ordered by the Vatican to permanently halt all work involving homosexuals and were barred indefinitely from holding any office in their religious orders. The disciplinary action by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, headed by Cardinal Ratzinger, was personally endorsed by Pope John Paul II.

Sister Maureen Fiedler of Catholics Speak Out, a suburban Washington-based organization, said, "The kind of message the Vatican has put out about homosexual persons ... frankly is part of the anti-gay rhetoric that ultimately undergirds violence."

Anti-homosexuality is a learned response. The textbook is the Bible. The classrooms are the church and the home. The teachers are clergy and parents. The potentials for political and social damage and for physical and mental hurt and violence are clear, and these dangers must be recognized and dealt with.

Killing homosexuals is endorsed by the Bible. Leviticus 20:13, which was composed by Jewish temple priests and exalted as a part of a divine revelation, states that male homosexuals should be put to death. Fundamentalists use the Apostle Paul's condemnation of homosexuality in 1 Corinthians 6:9 to prove that AIDS was predicted by Paul as a divine punishment for what he labeled "dishonorable passions" in Romans 1:27.

Despite protestations and denials, widely publicized religious condemnations of homosexuality as a sin against God fan fires of hatred that lead to violence. Homosexual put-downs can be as silly as Falwell's blustering about Teletubbies or as insensitive as Methodist persecutions of their clergy who respond to the human need of gays to make public their commitments to one another. In other words, violence against gays cannot be divorced from the anti-homosexual preaching and teaching by the clergy and columnists. Even the Unitarian Universalist effort at compromise sends a negative message. When Christian believers uncritically accept what they read in the Bible or what they are told by the clergy or informed by columnists and these hate-filled judgments are carried into the home, what is bred is a new generation of potentially violent anti-gay activities.

Humanists have a responsibility to confront hatemongering. They need to challenge the lack of integrity in the use of the Bible. When out of the hundreds of biblical rules and regulations Christians select only those that suit their personal political and social agendas, their selectivity needs to be made apparent. For example, while clergy turn to Leviticus for divine anti-homosexual utterances, they conveniently ignore sections of Leviticus that prohibit any contact with a male who has had an emission of semen because he is automatically rendered unclean. According to the book, if a couple has enjoyed sexual intercourse, they both are unclean; each month a menstruating woman is so befouled that everything she sits or lies on becomes so contaminated that even touching her bed defiles one. Ask these righteous Christians to read and respond to Leviticus 15.

Unfortunately, Laura Schlessinger--who once upon a time, when she taught classes on human sexuality at the University of Southern California, was more socially balanced and less righteous--has chosen to use her newspaper column and syndicated radio show to lend support to the likes of Falwell, biblically bound Methodist bishops and clergy, and other anti-gay individuals and groups. In appealing to the Bible as the divine authority for sexual values, neither she nor these other righteous individuals talk about menstrual uncleanness. They don't argue that divorce is permissible only on the grounds of adultery, as Jesus demands in Matthew 19:9. They don't attack males who, upon marrying a divorced woman, automatically become engaged in an adulterous relationship according to the teaching of Jesus in Matthew 5:32. They don't warn young men that Jesus taught that to even imagine sex with any woman is the equivalent of committing adultery (Matthew 5:27).

The reason for such selective preaching and teaching is clear: they know that public proclamations on any of these other controversial sexual issues would decimate their followings and affect the "bottom line." So they play it safe. If they were truly honest, they would admit that some biblical teachings are simply silly and are nothing more than products of long-dead clergy--from the Jewish temple, the synagogue, and the Christian church--that reflect ancient, long outmoded sexual norms. So long as such dogmas continue to be recognized as authoritative in the pulpit, church, schools, and home, they will continue to serve as cruelly judgmental, anti-humanistic, socially destructive weapons. Humanists must protest.

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Gerald A. Larue is professor emeritus of religion and an adjunct professor of gerontology at the University of Southern California, the author of several books, and the 1989 Humanist of the Year. For more information, see his pamphlet Homosexuality and the Bible, available for $1 from the Humanist by calling toll-free [phone].3