A Discussion of
“Progressive Moral Values”

with the Rev. Dr. Mel White
Founder, Soulforce, Inc.

January 22, 2005
Suquamish United Church of Christ

My favorite line from an election long past came from a person being interviewed on the street by a reporter who asked, “What’s the biggest problem of this election year: is it ignorance or is it apathy?”  And the person replied, “I don’t know and I don’t care.” 

We laugh and yet just four weeks ago American tourists in elegant resorts on the beaches of Thailand reminded us again of the terrible consequences of ignorance (not knowing what is going on just beneath the surface of the sea or beneath the surface of church and state) and of apathy (believing that whatever happens couldn’t possibly affect us.)

When the Indian megathrust pushing down and out against the island of Sumatra shattered at 7:58 AM on Sunday, December 26, 2004, tsunamis raced across the Bay of Bengal at the speed of a jet aircraft and left death and destruction in their wake.

Most religious leaders of every faith rushed to their pulpits urging their members to support the victims of this natural tragedy with prayers, food, clothing, medicines and money. 

Churches, synagogues, mosques and temples were too busy organizing waves of aid to the survivors to play the blame game, a favorite pastime that media savvy extremists play when nature or human kind wreck havoc on the planet.

Who can forget the words of “my favorite extremist” Jerry Falwell just days after terrorists brought down the World Trade Center?  On a broadcast with Pat Robertson, my second “favorite extremist,” Falwell said:

“...I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who try to secularize America”...I point the thing in their face and say you helped this happen." [Seconds later he called that long list of enemies “Christ haters” and and warned his listeners that “God is not mocked.”}

Just days after the Sumatra quake sent tsunamis surging around the world, a Muslim extremist, Sheik Fawzan Al-Fawzan, declared this disaster too was caused in part by homosexuals.  According to a January 6 bulletin from PlanetOut-UK, the Sheik included people who took part in "fornication, homosexuality, usury" and "corruption" in his damning diatribe, calling on people across the world to "atone for their sins."

Although Falwell explained the quake as “God’s hiccough,” anyone with the most basic education in geology knows the real cause of the 9 point earthquake in Sumatra and the tidal waves that followed.  And it doesn’t take a genius to understand that terrorists hijacking and crashing freshly fueled aircraft into the World Trade Center caused their collapse.  

Fundamentalists, however, understand natural and human catastrophe as signs from God or Allah.  Giving God at least indirect credit for the Trade Center collapse, Fundamentalist Falwell explained, "What we saw on Tuesday [9/11], as terrible as it is, could be miniscule if, in fact, God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve."

Fundamentalist Sheik Fawzan Al-Fawzan was even more direct in blaming Allah for the earthquake and tsunami.  He said that the timing of the disaster -- just a day after Christmas -- was a "sign from Allah…It happened at Christmas when fornicators and corrupt people from all over the world come to commit fornication and sexual perversion."

Who are these “fundamentalists?”  The Trade Center collapsed during an attack by terrorists who were Muslim Fundamentalists.  Right now we’re spending $4.5 billion a month trying to end that Muslim Fundamentalist threat.  Should we be equally concerned about the threat that Christian Fundamentalists pose to our nation and the world? How are Fundamentalists alike?  What “moral values” do they share?  And what in the world has it all to do with us?

At the heart of every Fundamentalist movement is the URGE TO PURGE. The Fundamentalist Christian preacher and the Fundamentalist Muslim sheik both see themselves as instruments of God sent to cleanse, flush out, purify their nations from anyone whose behavior  may “cause God’s wrath.”  As a gay man I am at the top of the list of those to be purged by Muslim and Christian Fundamentalists alike. Thanks in large part to the Fundamentalist avalanche of anti-homosexual TV, radio, print and direct mail pieces, this hatred of homosexuality and fear of homosexuals permeates the wider culture of the Roman Catholic and most mainstream Protestant Churches as well. 

And though the mission statement of Soulforce is to Stop Spiritual Violence against Sexual and Gender Minorities, this is no longer a matter that concerns just Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Americans.   Now, all the democratic values enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and every understanding of justice, mercy, and truth on which the Christian Church was built seem up for grabs.    I have spent the last ten years warning about the danger of Fundamentalism to sexual and gender minorities.   Now, that danger threatens us all.

The historic foundations of both church and state are being pressed down and out by megathrusting Christian Fundamentalists and their “moral values” like the Island of Sumatra was pressed down and out by the Indian Megathrust.  And as the old song goes, “When an irresistible force such as you, meets an immovable object such as me, something’s gotta give.”

I am not a prophet.  In fact, given the state of the economy, I am barely a non-profit, if you know what I mean.  But in spite of the risk of crying wolf we have to look at the possible consequences to each of us just from the stress of these two great plates currently pressing against each other: the “moral values” of Fundamentalism pushing, demanding, threatening long held traditions of both  church and state. And we need to think about what could happen if or when one side or the other breaks, gives way, is overwhelmed.  What are the waves of consequence that might wash over us all?

So, we’re back to that person on the street who answered, “I don’t know and I don’t care.”

At least, we are beginning to realize the power that ignorance has gained over both church and state. And we are beginning to admit that apathy is no longer an option when it comes to defending ourselves against the war that Christian Fundamentalists are waging against long held values of both church and state.  

Until this last election I would say a majority of “progressive” or “liberal” or “mainstream” voters (Democrat and Republican alike) believed sincerely that Falwell, Robertson, Dobson and the other Christian Fundamentalist leaders and their campaign to superimpose their “moral values” on the entire nation were not to be taken seriously.  Now the mood has changed.  

In that spirit, we gather today to talk about values, the “moral values” of Christian Fundamentalism that drew a plurality of America’s voters to the polls, the possible consequences of those same “moral values” as they gain supremacy in church and state alike, and how we can respond to their “moral values” with what this evening’s planners called “Progressive Moral Values” of our own.

If ever we needed to search for real “moral values” to guide us in making our decisions about church and state, the time is now.

A few weeks ago I was riding with friends to a Christmas concert at an isolated monastery in Minneapolis.  The husband, who was driving, was certain he could find the place but his wife disagreed.  Tension grew and during a moment of awkward silence the wife asked the husband if he knew why it took a million sperms to make a baby.  “No,” he replied. “I don’t.” “Because,” she continued, “not one of them stops to ask for directions either.”

On Thursday, we watched President Bush take his oath of office.  He placed his left hand on a family Bible and his right hand in the air and made the simple promise: "I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

A political cartoon in the current Newsweek shows the President editing his oath by promising to “…preserve, protect and defend PARTS of the U. S. Constitution.”  That is too real to be funny.

As a gay man who once thought we were well on our way to full acceptance, little by little I have watched Fundamentalist Christians undermine our advances and turn church and state against me.  Now, it is very possible that the President’s agenda for the next four years might NOT be shaped by the great democratic traditions enshrined in the Constitution but primarily by the demands of his most powerful support base those 30 million (soon to be 40 million) Christian fundamentalists .  What are their demands and what are the “moral values” that they would superimpose upon the rest of us?  

Parenthetically, I’m hoping that President Bush, a lame duck President with no need to kowtow to his constituents might not be overly influenced by the “moral values” of the Fundamentalist who claim responsibility for re-electing him.  There is already growing evidence to the contrary. 

Early this weekend, a Washington Post article suggested that President Bush may not push the Federal Marriage Amendment (at least not until the Defense of Marriage Act is tested in the courts).  An avalanche of press releases warning the President to keep his promise flooded the media from James Dobson, Tony Perkins, Gary Bauer and the others.  Fundamentalists play power politics. While we wait for polite dialogue that leads to peaceful resolution, they blitzkrieg across their enemies in church and state leaving intolerance and injustice in their wake.

On Sunday, the President’s spokesman was all over the media, making sure the Fundamentalists knew his promise would be kept.

Democrats have no more luck in standing against the well organized and devoutly determined  Fundamentalists. Bill Clinton promised to end the ban on gays in the military but during his first week in office the Fundamentalist media machine generated millions of calls, faxes and letters to the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon, effectively closing down the President’s ability to govern.  We don’t need a Republican President to remind us of the power Fundamentalist Christians have in enforcing their “moral values”.

I’ve been studying the religious right (another name for Christian Fundamentalists) for the past 12 years.  Before that when I still believed that my homosexuality was both a sickness and a sin, I was employed as ghost writer to write the biographies of their leaders including Falwell, Robertson and several others.  I know these men.  They are sincere.  They believe God has called them to save the nation and the church and they are determined to place Fundamentalist leaders into places of power in both institutions until their “moral values’ prevail.

Two years ago, my partner Gary Nixon and I moved from our home in Laguna Beach, California, to a four room cottage across the street from Jerry Falwell’s massive church in Lynchburg, VA.  It’s hard to do justice with a beach just blocks away.  We wanted to be on the frontlines of this campaign being waged by Christian fundamentalists not just against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Americans, but against women’s rights, against the rights of Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, agnostic and atheist Americans, against national and international measures that would preserve and protect the environment, against sex education that includes safe sex information, against affirmative action, against the poor, the homeless, the retired. 

And if you think I’m exaggerating, give me a moment to prove my point that just below the surface of Fundamentalist “moral values” are what others would call their “immoral values” – often based on their literal interpretation of Scripture – that often slip by unnoticed and un-confronted.  

I am convinced that after James Dobson (who is not a pastor) Jerry Falwell is the most powerful of the Fundamentalist Christian leaders.  And if you think him a buffoon or an idiot (or worse) you are wrong and you have terribly underestimated your enemy’s strength.  During this last election, six days a week, Jerry spent jetting across America organizing 100,000 pastors to support George W. Bush.  Those same Fundamentalist pastors who teach Fundamentalist “moral values” in towns and cities across America are tuned in to Jerry Falwell.   Today I want to use him as example to understand the “moral values” of Christian Fundamentalism.

I wish you could spend just one weekend with us in Lynchburg, Virginia, long enough to visit Jerry’s Liberty University, one of the fastest growing schools in America where this year he turned away “13,000 qualified freshman” for lack of space while building dorms to handle 3,000 new students a year just trying to keep up.  I wish you could hear him preach on Sundays to his congregation of 38,000 members broadcast live across the US and in 75 other countries.

It is rumored that Jerry wears TV makeup all day because he is available thru a satellite hookup on his campus to be a guest even at the last minute to the networks and to networks around the globe.  Larry King told me that Jerry has been on his program 5 times more than the next most popular guest and hardly a day goes by that his words are not broadcast to the nation on the evening news, talk programs, specials and even entertainment reviews.  

On Sunday mornings we still attend services at Jerry’s Thomas Road Baptist Church.  Whenever Pastor Falwell misuses Scripture to caricature and condemn God’s Transgender, Bisexual, Lesbian and Gay people we stand and bow our heads in silent protest. 

In a recent gathering of more than 6,000 ministers in his campus arena, one of Jerry’s associates encouraged the clergy from across the US to preach a stronger gospel  “until you, too, have visitors standing in protest.”  Jerry is self-educated, but he is sly as a fox and can take almost any criticism and turn it into a compliment, almost any loss and turn it into victory.

Why am I so focused on Jerry?  Our new pastor at First Christian in Lynchburg, the Church we attend for our own spiritual welfare at 11AM after Jerry’s 9:30 service asked me the same question.

I invited him to go with me to Wednesday chapel at Liberty University to hear Jerry address his students.  Just walking into that huge arena jumping with 6,000 to 10,000 students was a shock and surprise. 

In Karen Armstrong’s magnificent study of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Fundamentalism, the author credits Jerry Falwell and his Moral Majority as the pioneer Fundamentalist at the early stages of this round of Christian Fundamentalism in America.

Let’s take a second to make sure we all understand what I mean by Christian Fundamentalism.

Ed Carnell, while the President of Fuller Seminary, said, “Fundamentalism is orthodoxy gone cultic.”  That’s why so many of our friends and neighbors are taken in.  On the surface Fundamentalists may sound like every other Evangelical Christian preacher we’ve heard but below the surface something else is happening entirely. 

Rather than summarizing the differences, I’m going to quote Jerry and other Fundamentalist Christians in their own words.  You decide for yourself why they are different from the pastors and priests (and even rabbis) of your childhood.

I was sitting in my usual fourth row center seat in the sanctuary of Jerry Falwell’s Thomas Road Baptist Church on October 31, 2004, three days before the election when he said this:

“This election is clearly light against darkness.”

“Vote Christian…and it doesn’t take of lick of sense to know what that means.”

“Any dummy knows what it means to vote Christian”

“Until this year, the Amish haven’t voted.  This year, they will vote for George Bush”

“I’m taking my plane immediately after this service and picking up Sean Hannity, George Bennett, Ollie North and Zell Miller.  Together, until midnight tonight, we will do Pennsylvania for George Bush.  For the past weeks we’ve done Ohio and Florida.”

“May God bless America one more time.”

“Since this church TRBC was founded, you’ve allowed me five out of seven days on the road but always back on Sunday.  I’ve traveled 400,000 miles a year rallying this nation to righteousness.  As a result of the Moral Majority and the organizations that have flowed out of the MM, like the Christian Coalition, Concerned Women for America, and the Rutherford Institute, I have, we have rallied 1/3 of the total number of people who will vote on Tuesday.  We, you and I, the people of TRBC may be God’s instrument for saving America.”

“On Monday night, tomorrow, [election eve],” Falwell continues, "I’ve mobilized 100,000 pastors to gather their people to pray.  We can sow and water, but only God gives the increase [meaning the election of George Bush].”

“I will spend the rest of my life mobilizing Christians to be light and salt.  It is my goal that before I die, every national, state, local, school board or board of supervisor election will elect and re-elect men of God into positions of authority."

”We must be pro life, pro family, pro strong defense and pro Israel.”

“Shame on America for killing unborn babies and for recognizing same sex marriage.”

“America’s future will be determined on election day.”

 “If we lose on Tuesday, I will spend the next years raising up another extra million voters to guarantee that Hillary will not get it.”

“We must elect the righteous into office who will see that righteousness prevails.”

After the election reporters rushed to see how much influence Jerry and the other Fundamentalist Christians had in re-electing the President. Here’s one review by the Associated Press: 

In battleground states such as Ohio, [where Jerry spent so much time], scores of clergy members attended legal sessions explaining how they could talk about the election from the pulpit. Hundreds of churches launched registration drives, thousands of churchgoers registered to vote, and millions of voter guides representing their “moral values” were distributed by Christian and antiabortion groups.  

What are these “moral values?”

The rallying cry for many social conservatives was opposition to same-sex marriage. But concern about the Supreme Court, abortion, school prayer and pornography also motivated these ‘values voters.’ Same-sex marriage, said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, was "the hood ornament on the family values wagon that carried the president to a second term…

Without question Bush's conservative Christian base was essential to his victory. According to surveys of voters leaving the polls, Bush won 79 percent of the 26.5 million evangelical votes and 52 percent of the 31 million Catholic votes. Turnout soared in conservative areas such as Ohio's Warren County, where Bush picked up 18,000 more votes than in 2000, and local activists said churches were the reason.

But the “moral values” Jerry and the others use to get people to the polls are only the beginning.  I want you to tell me what “moral values” are set forth in the following statements by Christian Fundamentalist leaders Sunday morning after Sunday morning I have heard Jerry explain in sermons broadcast on his own Liberty Cable Network that God appointed George W. Bush to the Presidency and that to disagree with President Bush is to disagree with God. 

Falwell said on CNN that the answer to the terrorist threat is “to blow them all away in the name of the Lord” even if it means the loss of hundreds of thousands of innocent lives and the bankrupting of the nation in a war that has no moral basis.

Another leading Fundamentalist, James Watts the Secretary of the Interior under Ronald Reagan believes that there is no need to support treaties, protocols and agreements intended to protect the air, the seas, wildlife and forest preserves or to limit the use of irreplaceable resources because "we don't know how much time we have before Jesus returns."

Benny Hinn and Kenneth Copeland popular Fundamentalist televangelists believe that wealth is a sign of God’s blessing and that the poor have only their lack of faith to blame for their poverty.

Tim LaHaye the Fundamentalist author of the Left Behind series, the books more Americans purchased last year than any other, believes that there is no use to work for peace in Israel because peace demands compromise and Jesus can’t return until the Jews control the entire area even if blood flows saddle-deep across the region.

James Dobson the Fundamentalist psychologist heard by tens of millions everyday, believes that life begins at conception, that abortion in any stage is a sin and that it is a Christian’s duty to overthrow Roe v. Wade effectively ending a woman’s right to make certain choices about her own body.

Pat Robertson, another powerful Fundamentalist, believes that homosexual relationships are “sick and sinful” and that a Federal Marriage Amendment must be affixed to the US Constitution even if it demeans same sex relationships (like my 23 year marriage to my partner Gary Nixon) and uses the highest law of the land to make OFFICIALLY second class citizens of millions of lesbian and gay Americans.

Fundamentalist Christians believe that America is a Christian nation and that they and their fellow Fundamentalist Christians are the only ones capable of ruling the nation guided, not by the US Constitution and the democratic process it protects but by their literal and simplistic understanding of biblical truth.

Fundamentalist Christians have spent the last thirty years gaining the political clout that would enable them to superimpose their “moral values” on the nation and in this next four years with the help of Fundamentalist Christians in the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of the US and state governments they just might succeed.  In the process Christ is dishonored, his Church is demeaned, and millions leave the faith.

In 1994, in the paperback edition of my autobiography, Stranger at the Gate: To be Gay and Christian in America, I added these words: “Read about Germany in the early thirties.  On their way to gaining power over that great nation, see what Hitler and his henchmen did to marginalize the Jews and other helpless minorities including homosexuals.  The religious right is doing it again, this time straight out of Hitler’s book, (p285).”  “What could happen next if the shrill, strident, still surging cry of the religious right wins the day?  What could happen to us if their leaders take the field? (p286).”

 

You can imagine how friends and foes alike responded to my words.  “You are an hysteric,” they said, “…a pessimist, an alarmist.  What happened in Germany could never happen here!”

And yet it there are respected historians who think it may have already begun.  Just two weeks ago the New York Times quoted the words of Dr. Fritz Stern, himself a refugee from Hitler’s Germany and a leading scholar of European history. 

 

Chris Edges, a Times reporter helps us understand Dr. Stern’s background:  “…Since escaping Nazi Germany in 1938 at 12 years old Fritz Stern wanted  to grasp how democracies disintegrate, to uncover warning signs that other democracies should heed, to write about the seductiveness of authoritarian movements…”

 

 

Early in January, 2005, after receiving the Leo Baeck prize for his lifetime of research and writings on the history of Hitler’s rise to power, Dr. Stern, a professor emeritus at Columbia University, startled his audience with words that sound to me like a prophetic warning to all Americans.

 

“Hitler,” Dr. Stern said plainly,  “saw himself as the instrument of providence [the instrument of God] and fused his racial dogma with a Germanic Christianity…Some people recognized the moral perils of mixing religion and politics,” he said of prewar Germany, “but many more were seduced by it.  It was the pseudo-religious transfiguration of politics that largely ensured Hitler’s success, notably in Protestant areas.” 

 

 “There was a longing in Europe for fascism before the name was ever invented,” Sterns said. “There was a longing for a new authoritarianism with some kind of religious orientation and above all a greater communal belongingness.  There are some similarities in the mood then and the mood now,” he added, “although also significant differences.”  (NYT 1/6/05)

 

He warns especially of the dangers in an open society of “mass manipulation of public opinion, often mixed with mendacity [dishonesty, deceit, lies, falsehoods] and forms of intimidation [threats, pressure, bullying, fear].”

 

John R. MacArthur whose book on Hitler’s Third Reich titled “Second Front” examines wartime propaganda, said, “The comparison between the propagandistic manipulation and uses of Christianity, then and now, is hidden in plain sight. No one will talk about it. No one wants to look at it.”

 

After noting that President Bush will not meet with representatives of mainstream Christian denominations, Fritz Ritsch, pastor of Bethesda Presbyterian Church here in Washington writes:

“Contrary to popular opinion, the religion that Bush supporters espouse is Triumphalism, not Christianity. Theirs is a zealous form of nationalism, baptized with Christian language.  Bonhoeffer, the German theologian, martyred by the Nazis, foresaw the rise of a similar view in his country, which he labeled ‘joyous secularism.’...If, as I believe, this worldview is really American triumphalism, Christianity has taken a backseat to ‘joyous secularism’ [i.e. Nazism].  Pastor Ritsch warns that Bush: “…asserts a worldview that most Christian denominations reject outright as heresy: the myth of redemptive violence, which posits a war between good and evil…God versus Satan…Christians have held this view to be heretical since at least the third century.  In contrast to the ‘fundamentalists’ view the Judeo-Christian worldview is that of redemption.”

 

Dr. Wayne Floyd, the American Chairman of the Bonhoeffer Project says, “There are tendencies in Bush that are hauntingly reminiscent of what we see in the years at the rise of the Nazi regime.  Many of these have to do not so much with Bush himself, but with the people and the policies he has surrounded himself with, and the things he has allowed to go on “behind the scenes.”

The question for Dr. Floyd is “Will we read and understand Bonhoeffer in time to help us in the present to discern and understand our own context in a way that helps us to recognize these dangers before it’s too late to do anything about them?  And even then, will we see them clearly enough and find the moral courage to witness to their destructiveness even if we will be destroyed in the process?”

In October, 2004, Bill Moyer, Press Secretary to Lyndon Johnson and the prophetic and prize-winning author and PBS Television producer who is also a Baptist Progressive, said it this way: 

“For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington.  Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a world view despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality.  When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind.  And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.” 

The danger is simple:  The Fundamentalist Christians who control considerable power over the Executive and Legislative Branches of Government (and will soon have similar influence in the Judicial Branch as well) wish to superimpose their “moral values” on the nation.  While they are waging war against Fundamentalist Muslims in the Middle East, Fundamentalist Christians are at work in this country undermining the very heart of democracy and they are doing it in Jesus’ name.

The questions that follows are not simply, “What should we…what can we do about it?  We must also ask, “What are our values and how do they effect the ways we respond to theirs?”

Early members of the Cathedral of Hope MCC in Dallas, Texas, a predominately Lesbian and Gay congregation, tell the story of that fateful Sunday morning when members of the Ku Klux Klan decided to pay a visit.  Apparently, several dozen men dressed in white gowns and white hoods with their beady little eyes sticking out, filed into the pews followed by the media and the police.  Needless to say, worshippers were relieved when the service ended and the KKK, the media, and the police filed out again.  In the silence of that moment, a 70 year old grandma who had adopted the lesbians and gays of that congregation as her own said quietly: “You could sure tell they weren’t gay.”  The entire congregation turned toward her waiting for an explanation.  “Well no self-respecting man would wear that much white after Labor Day.”

 

We laugh but that woman was a sage.  She warned us to look past the fearful sheets to see who might be wearing them. Don’t get dragged into hatred by the haters for once we hate as they hate there is no option but violence, bloodshed and death.

 

Before we respond to Fundamentalist Christianity, we must remember that Fundamentalist Christian are our families, friends, and neighbors.  They are as sincere as we are and as vulnerable to error as the rest of us.  They are victims of misinformation as are we. And though we must speak frankly of the consequences of their Fundamentalist views to church and state, we must not demonize them as they demonize us or hate them for the tragic consequences of their teachings and actions in our lives.

 

One of you choose the title for this event: “Progressive Moral Values.”  And you described my task in these words: “Rev. Dr. White will discuss the principles of justice in our modern society and the progressive moral values that we are called to defend and promote.”

 

OK.  There are three “Progressive Moral Values” that we must agree to defend and promote immediately.   Wherever you are on your own journey of faith - Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Seik, Atheist, Agnostice, Pagan, or just a happy wanderer - these three Progressive Moral Values are a must for every American and they are directly in conflict with the “moral values” of Fundamentalist Christianity.  If you disagree with anything I say, write it down. We’ll have plenty of time to argue when my presentation ends.

The first Progressive Moral Value (somebody ring the gong) is the moral value summarized in the President’s oath of office. “I promise to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States of America.”

Whether you are a Christian or not, we dare not BEGIN our search for “moral values” with the Bible. As Americans – progressive or fundamentalist or somewhere in between - we must begin our search for “moral values” with the U.S. Constitution.

When I speak, I carry in one pocket a copy of the Bible and in my other pocket a copy of the US Constitution.  The US Constitution MUST ALWAYS trump the Bible because the Constitution protects our rights to disagree about what the Bible says.  It would be fatal to our freedoms if one religious party, like Christian Fundamentalism, ever gains enough political power to shape democracy by its own literal understanding of the Scriptures.

Dig out your copy of the Constitution.  Rediscover its purpose to promote and preserve justice, tranquility, defense, the general welfare, the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity.

Then before it is undermined completely, memorize and personalize the First Amendment of the US Constitution:

Vow to support NO politician or preacher who wants to establish a national religion or in any way wants to prohibit the free exercise of anyone’s faith or lack of.  Vow to support NO politician or preacher who wants to abridge or limit anyone’s freedom of speech or anyone’s freedom of the press or anyone’s right  to assemble or anyone’s right to petition/appeal/confront the Government if it fails in any of these rights and protections. 

 

When President Bush supports the Federal Marriage Amendment, he is not protecting the US Constitution.  He will in fact be undermining the U.S. Constitution which was created to protect minority rights from the will of the majority. 

 

And he will be aiding and abetting Fundamentalist Christians in their drive to superimpose their will upon the nation by way of the Highest Law in the Land.  If you support the F.M.A. you will be  perverting, undermining, helping to destroy this great instrument of Democracy by denying me the 1,047 rights and protections that go with marriage and by making me permanently a second class citizen, an outcast, an alien in the land of my birth.

 

The second Progressive Moral Value we must support (ring the gong again) is a negative – what we DO NOT believe – a terrible affront to our Fundamentalist sisters and brothers.  Repeat after me: This… is… NOT… a… Christian… nation… Robertson, Falwell, Dobson and their fundamentalist colleagues proclaim endlessly on TV, Radio and in print that this country was founded by Christians (like themselves, I might add) and that for the first 150 years we were a Christian nation.

 

In fact, during those first 150 years of our history, we weren’t even a nation, let alone a Christian nation.  We were 13 very different colonies and though most settlers had Christian roots, even in New England there was only one church member to every eight settlers.

 

 It is true that early in the 1600s, Anglican leaders in Virginia and the Puritans in Massachusetts saw themselves as “the agents of Christ come to the new world to set up a new Christian Israel.”  And in His name they established state churches that ruled over the religious and the civil lives of believers and non-believers alike.

But what Fundamentalists don’t say is that during those same ‘Christian years,’ a new tyranny replaced the old. 

 

 

 

 

Only members of the state churches could hold office or even vote but everyone was taxed to pay for pastors and for church property.  Any those who disagreed with teachers of the established churches, even fellow Christians, were often forced to flee the state or face trial and even hanging.   If you want to see what the Fundamentalists mean by a Christian nation, learn from the past.

 

I’m a Christian, but I love and support this Democracy because here in this nation we are guaranteed (or at least promised) one nation with liberty and justice for all.  Here we have the equal opportunity to believe in God or not to believe in God without interference by church or state.  I don’t want to live in a Christian nation, in a theocracy ruled exclusively by “Christians” as defined by anyone especially by the Fundamentalist Christians who are pushing us in that direction. 

That leads us to a third Progressive Moral Value. (Ring the gong a third time.)  Fundamentalists believe that the separation of Church and State is evil and that the Founding Fathers were against it.   Whatever they say, we must maintain at any cost the Separation of Church and State.  That doesn’t mean that my own personal beliefs will not influence my decisions as a voter or as a President, a Congressperson or a Judge.  But when one religious view has power over the rest, freedom ends.

We must encourage Fundamentalists who want to dissolve the wall between church and state to look at the 1st Amendment again, this time more closely.  

What does the First Amendment mean when it says: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”?

What does Article VI of our Constitution mean when it reads: “…no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any office or public trust under the United States”?  

What does Thomas Jefferson mean when he writes that is the intent of our forefathers was to include within the mantle of protection, “…the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and the Muslim, the Hindu and the infidel of every denomination.” (Don’t you love that last phrase: “The infidel of every denomination”?)  What a leveler. Separation of church and state is at the heart of this great democracy. It makes it safe for all of us to believe or not to believe freely.

In 1994 when Stranger at the Gate was released I appeared on a 50,000 radio station right here in Seattle, Washington.  The other guest, an independent Presbyterian minister, asked me if I had read Leviticus 18 or 20 which states clearly, “A man who sleeps with another man is an abomination and should be executed (or is worthy of execution).”  I asked the minister what that text means to him.  He said, “It means you should be killed.”  Swallowing hard I asked him, “Who should do the killing, you church folk?” He said, “No, that’s the job of civil authorities.  That’s why we must get more good men of God elected into government.”  I was shocked into silence.  Most literalist stop at calling me an abomination.  They leave out – at least for now – the words that condemn me to death.  “I know this must disturb you, Dr. White,” the minister continued, “But God said it first and it’s simply our job to obey.”

Most Christian Fundamentalists do not call for my death, not yet.  These literalists stop at calling me an abomination and ignore for now the words of Moses that say I should be killed.  But now that they have set up Lesbian and Gay Americans as the primary threat to children, to marriage, to families, to the traditions of this country and to western civilization itself, what could happen if a terrorists sets off that suitcase bomb, martial law is declared and the ultimate will of Christian Fundamentalism prevails? 

The only hope we have is for thoughtful, progressive, liberal Americans to come together to protect and defend the US Constitution, to insist that this is not and must not become a Christian nation and to demand that the wall of separation between church and state be kept in place.

Now, you must be wondering are those three Moral Values based on the US Constitution the only values we progressives can agree on.  Quite frankly, I don’t believe there are Progressive Moral Values that compare in any way to the “moral values” of the Christian Fundamentalists.  When anyone even implies there are “moral absolutes” I begin looking for an exit.  The more certain a person is about what is right and what is wrong, the more apprehensive I become.  The more confident a person is about God’s will for my life, the less trust I can muster.

Fundamentalists make lists.  They know exactly what is right and what is wrong.  Take the Fundamentalists of Jesus day.  Working from the Ten Commandments they developed 248 positive moral values and 365 negative ones, 613 in all and they described in detail how each of these laws could be kept. 

Misusing the Bible, Fundamentalist Christians have created similar lists of laws opposing homosexuality, abortion, stem cell research and supporting tax breaks for the rich, protections for multinational corporations, and a massive military budget to defend the nation against terrorism and wage war against our enemies.

OK, so why don’t we use their book to establish just three other Progressive Moral Values to which we can subscribe?

When I was young we joked about the rules:  “I don’t smoke and I don’t chew and I don’t go with girls who do.”  The third part was for me the easiest. 

Fundamentalists imprison people with long lists of rules and traditions of their own they have most effectively called moral values.  But if we know anything about the God of Moses and of Jesus it is this.  These prophets came to set us free.

And the values they passed on to us through our Judeo-Christian heritage can be summarized quite simply.

Rabbi Tom Gutherz of Agudath Sholom Synagogue in Lynchburg tells a story from Jewish tradition in which a prospective convert to Judaism wants the Torah summarized in a nutshell.  The rabbi responded simply, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor.  All the rest is commentary.”

On the night he died, Jesus boiled down the ultimate “moral value” to what he called A New Commandment:  Love one another as I have loved you,” he said.  Notice, he left off the Great and First Commandment, “to love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength,” because, his special friend, John, explained later,  “If you don’t love your neighbor whom you can see, there’s no way that you can love God whom you can’t.”

There is is from the Torah, “What Is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor.”  From Jesus, “Love one another.” 

Both the Jewish prophets and Jesus give us clues as to what loving our neighbor looks like.  My favorite passage in Isaiah Chapter 61:1-2 was one of Jesus’ favorites too.   The day Jesus took the oath of office publicly in the synagogue at Nazareth, he read these words:  “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me: To help the poor and brokenhearted, to bring deliverance to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised and to announce the acceptable year of the Lord.

When we’re wondering about God’s “moral values” the first is very clear.  Stop hating and start loving. And both Testaments are very clear about whom God would have us love.  It isn’t the rich and powerful that God cares about.  God’s heart goes out to the poor, those in prison, the blind, and the oppressed, the homeless, the hungry, the widow and the orphan, the alien and the outcast, the street person and the bag lady.  

From the US Constitution three moral values and now we begin a similar list of three Progress Moral Values from the Fundamentalist Christian’s own book.   The first is LOVE and LOVE is clearly defined as HELP THOSE WHO SUFFER.

Remember Charlie Brown on Christmas morning seeing poor Snoopy lying on the top of his dog house almost covered in snow, freezing cold and waiting for his dish of dog food?  Charlie, too sleepy and cold to take food to Snoopy raises his hand in blessing and says from the window, “I love you, Snoopy.  Be warm and be fed.” Then Charlie brown jumps back to bed.  That look on Snoopy’s face reflects the feelings of disappointment and anger that anyone feels when he or she hears talk about “loving thy neighbor or thy brother or thy enemy” by those who refuse to do anything substantial to actually HELP THOSE WHO SUFFER.

So there’s a Progressive Moral Value for us from their Book.  HELP THOSE WHO SUFFER.  And we must NOT just talk about it.  We must organize to get food, clothes and medicines to those in need.   We must find ways to provide low cost housing.  We must spend a little of our own time volunteering at a hospital, a hospice or a free clinic.  Some can tutor underprivileged kids or coach their basketball or soccer teams.  Others can visit forgotten seniors, men, women, and children with Aids, prisoners locked away.   This moral value, to HELP THOSE WHO SUFFER is at the heart of their book. 

But HELPING THOSE WHO SUFFER isn’t enough for the Jewish Prophets or for Jesus.  There is a second moral value that permeates both Testaments revered by Christian Fundamentalists:

Their prophet Isaiah (1:10-18) says:  “What good are your sacrifices to me?...I am offended by the noise of your solemn assemblies.  Quit doing evil and learn to do good.  What is good? Seek justice.

Their prophet Micah (6:8) says  “What kind of worship does God want from me? do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.”

Their prophet Jeremiah (7:22-23) says “In the days I rescued your fathers out of Egypt, I didn’t ask for burnt offerings or sacrifices; but this thing I commanded them: execute righteousness & justice in the earth. In that day you’ll be saved.”

Their prophet Amos (5:21-24) says “I hate, I despise your feast days.  I will not smell the incense in your holy assemblies.  Shut up your noisy singing.  Instead, let justice run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.”

And the Jesus loved by Christian Fundamentalists (in Matthew 23:23) says: “Too bad for you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You know how to tithe the spices in your gardens, but you have neglected the weightier matters of the Law:  Justice, Mercy, and Good faith. 

And (in Mark 11:42) “Woe to you Pharisees for you tithe every herb, and neglect justice and the love of God…”

What is justice…For Gandhi, the Hindu, who read the Sermon on the Mount and determined to turn those principles into practice, justice has two sides:  First, Help those who suffer, but second, HELP CUT OFF THE SUFFERING AT ITS SOURCE.

What could it mean for each of us to act upon that second Progressive Moral Value from their Holy Book?  It is a lot easier to Help those who suffer than to help cut off the suffering at its source.

Deitrich Bonhoeffer, the young German pastor and theologian hanged by the Nazis for his work in the German resistance movement said it this way:  “It is not enough to drag people out from under the wheel.  We must put a spike in the wheel itself.”

What causes poverty, hunger, homelessness, war?  This second moral value from our Judeo Christian heritage says we are called to ask the hard questions, to be brave enough to find the source of suffering and work to end it.  

Does that mean protesting an unjust war or even refusing to finance that war with our taxes? 

Does that mean demanding that Congress end boycotts that prevent medicines and foodstuffs from reaching the poor and needy in other even hostile nations?

Does that mean insisting that our President sign the protocol banning land mines that go on killing women and children long after the war is over and ending their production in this country and abroad?

Does that mean taking our stand against the billions spent on the military to use at least part of that money to provide food, clothing, housing and medicines to those in need?

Does that mean working to make the court system more just and prisons more conducive to reform?  

Does that mean working actively against multinational corporations and refusing to buy the products they produce with workers who are treated like slaves?

Does that mean we sit down in front of the White House and refuse to budget until the President sign the international protocols and treaties that protect and preserve the fragile, wounded earth we call home? 

Does that mean we refuse to allow Fundamentalist Christians to go on using fear and misinformation to Amend the US Constitution to make Lesbian and Gay Americans into permanent second class citizens? 

Does that mean refusing to use up more than our share of the world’s resources, to cut back on the goods we consume that others might live?

Does that mean demanding justice for Palestinians as well as Jews and mercy for Muslims held without access to lawyers or contact with their families? 

Does that mean we stand against Christian fundamentalists who believe in “blowing away terrorists in the Lord’s name” and insisting that they examine the real reason most of the world hates us?

Does that mean that Condeleezza Rice is wrong.  It isn’t diplomacy we need.  It’s compassion.

Does that mean President Bush is wrong.  That it isn’t bullets, bombs and bayonets that light the flame of liberty, but love and truth and compassion that sets people free.

Does loving our enemy include long, loving conversations with the fundamentalists in your life?

Does it mean that your church or SS Class might consider adopting, or at least getting acquainted with a fundamentalist pastor and congregation in your neighborhood?

Does it mean inviting a fundamentalist to your next church dinner and a long quiet chat following dessert over a glass of wine, or if you’re a Baptist, a Diet Coke? 

Always remember that fundamentalists, too, are victims of misinformation.  They are our friends and families, our moms and dads, our uncles and aunts.  To love them means to take risks, to reach out, to refuse to give up on them…even on those Fundamentalist Christians who threaten the future of the church and the state alike.

OK.  Two Progressive Moral Values from their book: Help those who suffer and help cut off the suffering at its source.

If the questions those moral values bring into your life don’t overwhelm you, they certainly overwhelm me.  Where do we start?  How do we even begin to HELP THOSE WHO SUFFER let alone to HELP CUT OFF THE SUFFERING AT ITS SOURCE?

Let’s go back to the words of the prophets and of Jesus for one more Progressive Moral Value.

“You know the Laws by heart,” Jesus said, “but you have forgotten the heart of the law.  And the heart of the law is Mercy (Helping those who suffer) and Justice (cutting off the suffering at its source) and truth.

There’s the third Progressive Moral Value from their Book that I would suggest today.  Progressives cannot get caught up in spin, sound bite, word games, TV spots or cross fires with one side shouting down the other.  We must value TRUTH.  And we must take the time and energy to dig it out for ourselves.

What newspapers do you read?  What radio programs do you listen to or television programs do you watch?  If you limit your news intake to the thirty minute evening news, you get the equivalent word intake of just one column on one page of a newspaper.  What recent book, article, weblog, columnist, commentator, radio or TV special has you thinking?

Seriously, for the Progressive, for you and me, the future hangs on seeking and finding the TRUTH.  What’s the biggest problem of this election year, ignorance or apathy? The response “I don’t know and I don’t care” just will not do.  The people of Germany didn’t know and didn’t care until it was too late to know and too late to care.

By the way, as you might suspect I am a Christian, though when you define Christian by the examples of Falwell, Dobson, Robertson or the others I prefer to call myself “a mediocre follower of a first century Jewish carpenter from Nazareth.”  But as a Christian, a part of my Jewish/Christian tradition is the belief that I am not alone in my search for truth, that the Spirit of Truth, God’s Spirit is at work within me and that if I pay attention, that if I take time to listen that Spirit will guide me to truth and will in the process give me strength both to Help Those Who Suffer and to Help Cut Off That Suffering at its Source.

Like the Pharisees, Fundamentalists believe they own an exclusive franchise on truth.  Instead they are misled, confused, and angered into action by the half-truths, hyperboles and lies of their leaders.

For 35 years I was a victim of these Fundamentalist lies about homosexuality.  I spent tens of thousands of dollars on useless Christian therapy, exorcism and electric shock trying to get over being gay.  It took me decades to realize the TRUTH about homosexuality that God had created my sexuality as a gift, that God wanted me to accept my sexuality, to celebrate it and to live it with integrity. 

Then I fell in love with Gary Nixon and together we began to monitor the Fundamentalist Christian lies about sexual orientation and gender identity.  James Dobson has built a $150 - $200 million dollar a year media empire out of Colorado Springs in large part on his anti-homosexual campaign.  These are his words:

“For more than 40 years, the homosexual activist movement has sought to implement a master plan that has had as its centerpiece the utter destruction of the family. . .” [i]

“[If the homosexuals win the rights of marriage] …barring a miracle, the family as it has been known for more than five millennia will crumble, presaging the fall of Western civilization itself.” [ii]

This is an issue America has got to wake up to.  The homosexual agenda is a beast. [It] wants our kids . . . And the only thing that’s standing between them and that agenda . . . are those of us who believe in the Judeo-Christian values of this country.” [iii]

“Communities do not let prostitutes, pedophiles, voyeurs, adulterers, and those who sexually prefer animals to publicly celebrate their lifestyles, so why should homosexuals get such privileges?” [iv]

“How about group marriage, or marriage between relatives, or marriage between adults and children? How about marriage between a man and his donkey? Anything allegedly linked to ‘civil rights’ will be doable. The legal underpinnings for marriage will have been destroyed.” [v]

“What do we know about this disorder?  Well first, it is a disorder, despite the denials of the American Psychiatric Association”  [vi]

“There is no such thing as a homosexual . . . we are all heterosexual, but some heterosexuals have a homosexual problem.” [vii]

“Like many other adult problems, homosexuality begins at home. Mom and Dad are key players.” [viii]

“We advise parents to use clear and consistent messages: ‘We do not accept your effeminacy.  You are a boy.  God made you a boy.  Being a boy is special.’ When parents do this, especially fathers, they can turn their boys around.” [ix]

“There is other evidence of the desire to gain access to boys.  It is seen in the worldwide effort to lower the age when a child can legally give consent for intercourse with an adult.” [x]

“Moms and dads, are you listening? This movement is the greatest threat to your children. It is a particular danger to your wide-eyed boys, who have no idea what demoralization is planned for them”  [xi]

For ten years, Gay and I monitored the anti-homosexual rhetoric of Dobson, Falwell, Robertson, D. James Kennedy, Beverly LeHaye, Phyllis Schafley, Gary Bauer, Lou Sheldon, clergy of all stripes, Presbyterian Moderators, Methodist Bishops and even Pope John Paul II.  We created a huge archive collecting their lies about us.

Then in 1994 I wrote Stranger at the Gate: To be Gay and Christian in America and it was then we began to learn the tragic consequences of those lies in the lives of our sisters and brothers in the US and around the world.  Their lies lead directly to terrible intolerance, discrimination, suffering and death.  Their lies led to wasted lives, broken families and ruined relationships.  

The letters poured into our home until we had read and answered tens of thousands of them.  With every tragic, true story our anger grew.  But at the height of our anger M. K. Gandhi, a Hindu, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a Baptist Christian, reminded us of the Jewish prophets and of Jesus who called us to love our enemies. 

Love Dobson?  Love Falwell?  Love Robertson?  From childhood I thought that loving your enemies was being nice to them, forgiving them, and tolerating their intolerance.  It was Gandhi who revolutionized my understanding.  Loving your enemies, he said, is a call to resist, to confront, to condemn their lies, to set them free from the consequences of those lies and to bring them into the beloved community.  I began to study those principles on the trail of Gandhi in India and of King in Atlanta, Montgomery, Birmingham, Selma and across the nation.

For five years now Soulforce volunteers have worked to negotiate an end of this avalanche of lies against sexual and gender minorities with individual fundamentalist leaders, denominational heads, Catholic bishops and Cardinals. 

When negotiations failed, thousands of us took to the streets to show our concern about the consequences of their lies in nonviolent marches, vigils, kneel ins, blockades.  Over 1,000 of us have been arrested in nonviolent Direct Actions aimed at changing the minds and hearts of those who hate us.

But we have lost the battle.  The anti-homosexual Fundamentalists were not satisfied to turn the churches against us.  They have now elected themselves a President and a Congress who will follow suit.   And James Dobson, the Fundamentalist Christian whose lies about homosexuality have mobilized millions of people and hundreds of millions of dollars to their cause, has inordinate power over that President and that Congress.

On January 5, headlines across the country read: James C. Dobson, the nation's most influential evangelical leader threatens to put six potentially vulnerable Democratic senators "in the 'bull's-eye' " if they block conservative appointments to the Supreme Court.  Dobson “promises "a battle of enormous proportions from sea to shining sea" if President Bush fails to appoint "strict constructionist" jurists or if Democrats filibuster to block conservative nominees.

On January 19, the night before the President’s inauguration, at a black-tie dinner for members of Congress and political allies to celebrate the election results, Dobson condemned the creator’s of Sponge Bob Square Pants for using him in a ‘pro-homosexual video’ to be used in elementary schools to promote tolerance for differences of ‘sexual identity.’ "We see the video as an insidious means by which the organization is manipulating and potentially brainwashing kids," a Dobson spokesmen said later. "It is a classic bait and switch."

We know what Dobson’s plans are for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Americans.

We know what Dobson’s plans are for the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Constitution.

Now, we even know what Dobson’s plans are for Spong Bob Square Pants.

What do you think Dobson’s plans are for you?

Dobson and his Fundamentalist Christian colleagues are no longer just a threat to Lesbian and Gay Americans.  They are a threat to the all the people of this nation and to the principles of tolerance, diversity and respect enshrined in the US Constitution.

On May 1, 2005, Soulforce will hold a Direct Action on the campus of James Dobson’s Focus on the Family in Colorado Springs, Colorado.  On Sunday afternoon MAYDAY we will close down the street leading up to his massive headquarters for a picnic celebrating our families and protesting the lies he tells that caricature and condemn us.  At 3PM we will block Focus’ main entrance and proclaim Dobson’s headquarters a “Toxic Religion Zone.”  With the media watching we will warn the nation that this place pollutes the nation and is dangerous to the psychological and spiritual health of the nation’s families.

Join us.  Stand with us.  Experience what happens to you when you take your stand for justice, mercy and truth.

If we ever needed to come together to form a movement that resists oppression, it is now.  I don’t know what our Salt March will look like.  I don’t know where our Birmingham will take place.  But I do know that we must demand justice in ways that will win hearts and change the minds of our fellow Americans who are now victims of the false prophets.  If we don’t take a stand, our rights and protections could be swept away. 

I’m not saying trying to tell you what your Progressive Moral Values should be.  I don’t know what principles you should build your life upon.   But I do know this.  Your moral values will be different from the moral values of a nation in the hands of our Fundamentalist Christian sisters and brothers.  And when you stand for justice, mercy, and truth as you know it, it will offend the rich and the powerful in the same ways that the words of the Jewish prophets and of Jesus offended the religious and political leaders of their day.  

DOBSON EVENT, MAY 1

We must confront those media figures who represent without knowing it the fascist option for the nation.

And every denomination that votes with the fascists should learn from German Lutherans whose leaders goose stepped with the Third Reich.

The Sheik sounds exactly like Jerry Falwell when he says,  “…We must atone for our sins, and for the acts of the stupid people among us… We must fight fornication, homosexuality, usury, fight the corruption on the face of the earth..."

Christian Fundamentalists believe sincerely that God “will not bless America,” that God in fact will punish this nation, if homosexuality is not condemned and homosexual practice eliminated.  We dare not ignore the warnings of the false prophets.  Fundamentalist Christians are longer at the fringe.

First the Fundamentalists took power over our communities of faith.  Now, they have taken power over the Executive, Legislative, and soon, the Judicial branches of our government.

Muslim and Christian Fundamentalists have millions of followers who hear their words and take them seriously.  Like the earthquake that sent tsunamis surging, their words too send waves of anger, fear and suspicion in our direction.  

We can believe that we are safe from the storm and lie in the sun until the waves tower over us.  Or we can move to higher ground.  I don’t know what that means exactly.   But I do know that we cannot remain silent and passive while false prophets turn the nations against us.  

The best guidelines I have found for defending our rights and protecting our freedom are the “soul force” principles of relentless nonviolent resistance as taught and lived in the past century by M. K. Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. 

One last word to Rev. Falwell and Sheik Fawzan Al-Fawzan.  Just eight weeks before the earthquake off Sumatra's Aceh Province, I was in Indonesia with my friend Dr. Kerry Sieh, the proud-to-be-gay geologist from Cal Tech who is known around the world for his skill at reading earthquakes.  Kerry was the man who predicted this devastating quake and just weeks before it hit was installing a rudimentary warning system on Sumatra 300 kilometers south of the quake's epicenter.  Consider this a warning, friends.  Your lies about homosexuality and homosexuals waste lives, destroy families and break the heart of God/Allah.  Struggling to defend ourselves against those lies is such a waste of time when in fact we were created to help heal our broken world and are eager to get on with it. 

 

Sources:

1-5 :  Dr. James Dobson, Focus On The Family Newsletter, April 2004

6 : Focus On The Family, Citizen Magazine, January 2003

7: James Dobson’s War On America, by Gil Alexander-Moegerle, Prometheus Books, 1997

8-10: Bringing Up Boys, by Dr. James Dobson, p.115

11:  An Ounce Of Prevention, by Don Schmierer, Focus On The Family website

12-16:  Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, Focus On The Family’s “Love Won Out” conference, Oklahoma City, 2003