In a society still filled with unrepentant homophobes, and in a culture where all too many people—including people belonging to evangelical Christian faiths—try to marginalize (or worse) GLBT folks, comes a story from San Francisco that, to me, suggests the tide may be turning in favor of GLBT tolerance and acceptance. No, the fight is far from over, but join me below the fold for a culture war victory definitely worth celebrating.
For you dear kossacks who know the the Bible better than I, I'm sure quotes from the Good Book will come to mind as you read the exciting news from yesterday: seven gay/transgendered ordained ministers, known as the Bay Area Seven, were reinstated into the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) after having been given the boot by the nation's largest Lutheran denomination. In doing so the ELCA reversed its position that sounded quite progressive by evangelical standards: gay men and women could be ordained as Lutheran pastors, but they had to take a vow of celibacy (and we all know how well celibacy is working out for the Roman Catholic church).
That policy was ignored by two San Francisco Lutheran churches. One of them ordained Jeff Johnson, a non-celibate gay man, and the other church ordained a lesbian couple. These loving actions led the ELCA to expel the two ordaining San Francisco churches from its membership—the First United Lutheran Church in the city's Tenderloin district and the St. Francis Lutheran Church located just off Market Street in the Lower Haight section of town. This expulsion is the equivalent to having an entire church excommunicated. Undeterred, the two churches carried on, and over the years they ordained five more openly gay/transgendered pastors. These actions have been part of a 20-year movement that have included "more than a dozen pastors nationwide" being ordained as openly gay/lesbian and non-celibate Lutheran ministers in defiance of the ELCA policy. It has been a painful process, as the fight for equal rights always is. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, three of these ordained ministers were removed by church trial.
Then this turn of events happened to the Bay Area Seven:
The pastors were welcomed [back into the ELCA] almost a year after the national assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America - the largest Lutheran denomination in the country - voted to allow gay men and women, with partners, to serve as clergy members, making it the latest Protestant church to allow such ordinations.
With the ELCA having officially welcomed back seven openly gay/transgendered pastors with fewer strings attached, the healing process has begun:
In an extension of that spirit of reconciliation, on Sunday the St. Francis congregation also overwhelmingly voted to return to the national Lutheran church.
Like I said, it's a victory worth celebrating.