Gay Rights Champion- William Sloane Coffin

[Daniel]

From www.gaycitynews.com

Reporter: Andy Humm

William Sloane Coffin, Champion of Gay Rights, Dead at 81

Reverend Bill Coffin was known and celebrated for his frontline participation in many social movements, from the fight against the Vietnam War to the civil rights and anti-nuke movements. But the former chaplain of Yale and pastor of New York’s Riverside Church was also one of the most outspoken clergy on behalf of lesbian and gay rights, joining with his late contemporaries Bishop Paul Moore of the Episcopal Church and Rabbi Balfour Brickner of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue as well as the still living Father Bernard Lynch of Dignity in a press conference for the city’s gay rights bill in 1986 to counter the opposition of conservative Catholic and Jewish leadership.

Coffin, a minister in the pro-gay United Church of Christ, preached decades ago that homosexuality was going to be the single most divisive issue that the religious establishment would confront, arguing that that gay people should be welcomed and affirmed. “For Christians,” he said, “the problem is not how to reconcile homosexuality with scriptural passages that condemn it, but how to reconcile the rejection and punishment of homosexuals with the love of Christ.” Coffin died at 81 in Stafford, Vermont.