MARRIAGE WARS (PART TWO): THE GAY RIGHTS MOVEMENT VS. THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH

PART TWO: THE RISING CONFLICT BETWEEN THE GAY RIGHTS MOVEMENT AND THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH

According to Paul Lee Tan, “Saving the life of President Ford brought Oliver Sipple an unwelcome kind of fame that may have destroyed family and personal relationships, the former US marine said.  Sipple, 32, is credited with deflecting the gun of a woman accused of trying to kill Ford.  With the story of his heroics have come published reports that he is homosexual.  Shaking and red-eyed, Sipple appeared before reporters and television cameras and said:  “I want you all to know that my mother told me today that she cannot walk out her front door even to go to church because of the pressures she feels,” Sipple said.  He added that the conversation ended with his mother hanging up on him.  He also claimed that the news media had “destroyed 32 years of family life enjoyed with his mother and father and other personal relationships with friends.”

There are thousands of men and women who have suffered discrimination and ridicule for their sexual orientation.  Even though the media was the cause of Mr. Sipple’s suffering, many others have suffered terribly from people in the Christian Church.  For possibly thousands of years, homosexuals have been persecuted and harassed by the very organization that God put on this earth to evangelize them and offer them the same gospel message of love and redemption that was offered to everyone else. In recent decades, the Gay Rights Movement has struck back.

Since the Stonewall rebellion, some people in the Gay Pride and Gay Rights Movement have engaged in violent and offensive activities toward churches.  According to an article in the Detroit Free Press, The Annual Conference of the Diocese of Michigan was disrupted by members of the Gay Liberation Front.  Two of them spit out communion wine near the alter.  Others began hugging and kissing in the aisles and pews of St. Paul’s Cathedral.  At the same time twenty of them marched to the podium shouting slogans and carrying signs.  The conference was forced to adjourn.  The reason that the conference was attacked was because conference leaders did not allow Gay Liberation Front representatives to speak in favor of a resolution encouraging Episcopal churches to lend their facilities to homosexuals.

Christianity Today reported the following, “The Washington, D.C. chapter of the Gay Liberation Front did its thing after a religious conference chairman, Dr. John Cavanagh, began a treatise on homosexuality as a cause of marital discord.  While his companions embraced on stage, a fuzzy haired spokesman read from a pink mimeographed sheet: “As members of the Gay Liberation Front, we deny your right to conduct this seminar.  The spokesman demanded that the conference members stop examining homosexuality and begin practicing it instead.  The demonstrators paraded a pink flag around the room several time before leaving.”

These are only some examples of the feuding that has occurred in the past few decades.  There have been numerous attacks on both sides.  Christians have often organized and disrupted “Gay Pride” events as well.  But protests and harassment was not the only way the Gay Pride Movement was willing to take on the Christian Church.  They were also working within the Christian Church seeking to change the way Christians viewed Homosexuality.  This will be discussed more in the next part of the series.