Steven E. Webster
06-04-2007, 07:39 PM
Friends,
Below is a very interesting interview with Jim Wallis (progressive evangelical editor of Sojourner's magazine). In it Wallis talks about confronting Focus on the Family's homophobia. The whole interview is found at http://www.powells.com/authors/wallis.html
Wallis: Well, there are two energies fueling the anti-gay, I would say, hysteria. One is very ugly, homophobic, prejudicial. More than that, it's hateful. The Matthew Shepard energy. It's ugly and violent. And that's just got to be opposed as a justice issue. A human rights issue. There'll be no toleration for that kind of hateful behavior. The other is a concern about the family, and that it's being undermined.
Farley: Few would disagree that the family has changed radically in the past few decades.
Wallis: And so it became a surrogate in the election. The anti-gay marriage became a surrogate for caring about family. But it's just the wrong surrogate for that issue. But we should care about family.
Now, most of my gay friends would agree with me that we need a critical mass of healthy heterosexual families to have a good society. Most people are heterosexuals, and so if their family relationships are not healthy, it's bad for society. If they are healthy, it's good for society. But you shouldn't scapegoat or penalize gay and lesbian people for not fitting the majority pattern. And they should feel safe; they should feel protected; they should have equality under the law. But I've never run into some sort of anti-heterosexual-family feeling among gay people.
Farley: The religious right, though, regularly claims that the "gay agenda" wants to destroy the family. That's where the hysteria comes in.
Wallis: But I've not found that. My gay friends are also friends with my family. And they're glad that we have a healthy heterosexual relationship and a healthy relationship with our kids. But they want to be respected too—their rights, their relationships—and not be scapegoated for things that have nothing to do with them.
I had this conversation with Focus on the Family, and I said I agree with you that family breakdown is a huge crisis, a serious crisis. And I don't think the Left talks about that enough. My neighborhood is eighty percent single parent families. You can't overcome poverty with that, with eighty percent single parent families. But how do we reweave the bonds of marriage, family, extended family, and community, to put our arms around the kids? And it's not just in poor neighborhoods. Kids are falling through the cracks of fractured family in all classes and neighborhoods. So I said to them, I want to rebuild family life and relationships, but explain to me how gay and lesbian people are the ones responsible for all that? which is what their fund-raising strategy suggests. And after about an hour and a half they conceded the point. They said, Okay Jim, we concede that family breakdown is caused much more by heterosexual dysfunction than by homosexuals. But then they said, We can't vouch for our fundraising department, which says a lot, I think.
Interesting, huh?
Steven Webster
Below is a very interesting interview with Jim Wallis (progressive evangelical editor of Sojourner's magazine). In it Wallis talks about confronting Focus on the Family's homophobia. The whole interview is found at http://www.powells.com/authors/wallis.html
Wallis: Well, there are two energies fueling the anti-gay, I would say, hysteria. One is very ugly, homophobic, prejudicial. More than that, it's hateful. The Matthew Shepard energy. It's ugly and violent. And that's just got to be opposed as a justice issue. A human rights issue. There'll be no toleration for that kind of hateful behavior. The other is a concern about the family, and that it's being undermined.
Farley: Few would disagree that the family has changed radically in the past few decades.
Wallis: And so it became a surrogate in the election. The anti-gay marriage became a surrogate for caring about family. But it's just the wrong surrogate for that issue. But we should care about family.
Now, most of my gay friends would agree with me that we need a critical mass of healthy heterosexual families to have a good society. Most people are heterosexuals, and so if their family relationships are not healthy, it's bad for society. If they are healthy, it's good for society. But you shouldn't scapegoat or penalize gay and lesbian people for not fitting the majority pattern. And they should feel safe; they should feel protected; they should have equality under the law. But I've never run into some sort of anti-heterosexual-family feeling among gay people.
Farley: The religious right, though, regularly claims that the "gay agenda" wants to destroy the family. That's where the hysteria comes in.
Wallis: But I've not found that. My gay friends are also friends with my family. And they're glad that we have a healthy heterosexual relationship and a healthy relationship with our kids. But they want to be respected too—their rights, their relationships—and not be scapegoated for things that have nothing to do with them.
I had this conversation with Focus on the Family, and I said I agree with you that family breakdown is a huge crisis, a serious crisis. And I don't think the Left talks about that enough. My neighborhood is eighty percent single parent families. You can't overcome poverty with that, with eighty percent single parent families. But how do we reweave the bonds of marriage, family, extended family, and community, to put our arms around the kids? And it's not just in poor neighborhoods. Kids are falling through the cracks of fractured family in all classes and neighborhoods. So I said to them, I want to rebuild family life and relationships, but explain to me how gay and lesbian people are the ones responsible for all that? which is what their fund-raising strategy suggests. And after about an hour and a half they conceded the point. They said, Okay Jim, we concede that family breakdown is caused much more by heterosexual dysfunction than by homosexuals. But then they said, We can't vouch for our fundraising department, which says a lot, I think.
Interesting, huh?
Steven Webster