Sunday Citar

“Equal­ity under and before the law is a solemn promise con­veyed to all our cit­i­zens in the Con­sti­tu­tion itself.“
~~ John Shelby Spong ~~

This essay was posted on Face­book and attrib­uted to for­mer Bishop John Shelby Spong. I have not been able to sub­stan­ti­ate that he drafted it. No mat­ter, because it is bril­liant. So I am shar­ing it because I agree wholeheartedly.

A Man­i­festo! The Time Has Come!

I have made a deci­sion. I will no longer debate the issue of homo­sex­u­al­ity in the church with any­one. I will no longer engage the Bib­li­cal igno­rance that emanates from so many right-wing Chris­tians about how the Bible con­demns homo­sex­u­al­ity, as if that point of view still has any cred­i­bil­ity. I will no longer dis­cuss with them or lis­ten to them tell me how homo­sex­u­al­ity is “an abom­i­na­tion to God,” about how homo­sex­u­al­ity is a “cho­sen lifestyle,” or about how through prayer and “spir­i­tual coun­sel­ing” homo­sex­ual per­sons can be “cured.” Those argu­ments are no longer wor­thy of my time or energy. I will no longer dig­nify by lis­ten­ing to the thoughts of those who advo­cate “repar­a­tive ther­apy,” as if homo­sex­ual per­sons are some­how bro­ken and need to be repaired. I will no longer talk to those who believe that the unity of the church can or should be achieved by reject­ing the pres­ence of, or at least at the expense of, gay and les­bian peo­ple. I will no longer take the time to refute the unlearned and undoc­u­mentable claims of cer­tain world reli­gious lead­ers who call homo­sex­u­al­ity “deviant.”

I will no longer lis­ten to that pious sen­ti­men­tal­ity that cer­tain Chris­t­ian lead­ers con­tinue to employ, which sug­gests some ver­sion of that strange and overtly dis­hon­est phrase that “we love the sin­ner but hate the sin.” That state­ment is, I have con­cluded, noth­ing more than a self-serving lie designed to cover the fact that these peo­ple hate homo­sex­ual per­sons and fear homo­sex­u­al­ity itself, but some­how know that hatred is incom­pat­i­ble with the Christ they claim to pro­fess, so they adopt this face-saving and absolutely false statement.

I will no longer tem­per my under­stand­ing of truth in order to pre­tend that I have even a tiny smidgen of respect for the appalling neg­a­tiv­ity that con­tin­ues to emanate from reli­gious cir­cles where the church has for cen­turies con­ve­niently per­fumed its ongo­ing prej­u­dices against blacks, Jews, women and homo­sex­ual per­sons with what it assumes is “high-sounding, pious rhetoric.” The day for that men­tal­ity has quite sim­ply come to an end for me. I will per­son­ally nei­ther tol­er­ate it nor lis­ten to it any longer. The world has moved on, leav­ing these ele­ments of the Chris­t­ian Church that can­not adjust to new knowl­edge or a new con­scious­ness lost in a sea of their own irrel­e­vance. They no longer talk to any­one but themselves.

I will no longer seek to slow down the wit­ness to inclu­sive­ness by pre­tend­ing that there is some mid­dle ground between prej­u­dice and oppres­sion. There isn’t. Jus­tice post­poned is jus­tice denied. That can be a rest­ing place no longer for any­one. An old civil rights song pro­claimed that the only choice await­ing those who can­not adjust to a new under­stand­ing was to “Roll on over or we’ll roll on over you!” Time waits for no one.

I will par­tic­u­larly ignore those mem­bers of my own Epis­co­pal Church who seek to break away from this body to form a “new church,” claim­ing that this new and big­oted instru­ment alone now rep­re­sents the Angli­can Com­mu­nion. Such a new eccle­si­as­ti­cal body is designed to allow these pathetic human beings, who are so deeply locked into a world that no longer exists, to form a com­mu­nity in which they can con­tinue to hate gay peo­ple, dis­tort gay peo­ple with their hope­less rhetoric and to be part of a reli­gious fel­low­ship in which they can con­tinue to feel jus­ti­fied in their homo­pho­bic prej­u­dices for the rest of their tor­tured lives. Church unity can never be a virtue that is pre­served by allow­ing injus­tice, oppres­sion and psy­cho­log­i­cal tyranny to go unchallenged.

In my per­sonal life, I will no longer lis­ten to tele­vised debates con­ducted by “fair-minded” chan­nels that seek to give “both sides” of this issue “equal time.” I am aware that these sta­tions no longer give equal time to the advo­cates of treat­ing women as if they are the prop­erty of men or to the advo­cates of rein­stat­ing either seg­re­ga­tion or slav­ery, despite the fact that when these evil insti­tu­tions were com­ing to an end the Bible was still being quoted fre­quently on each of these sub­jects. It is time for the media to announce that there are no longer two sides to the issue of full human­ity for gay and les­bian peo­ple. There is no way that jus­tice for homo­sex­ual peo­ple can be com­pro­mised any longer.

I will no longer act as if the Papal office is to be respected if the present occu­pant of that office is either not will­ing or not able to inform and edu­cate him­self on pub­lic issues on which he dares to speak with embar­rass­ing ineptitude.

I will no longer be respect­ful of the lead­er­ship of the Arch­bishop of Can­ter­bury, who seems to believe that rude behav­ior, intol­er­ance and even killing prej­u­dice is some­how accept­able, so long as it comes from third-world reli­gious lead­ers, who more than any­thing else reveal in them­selves the price that colo­nial oppres­sion has required of the minds and hearts of so many of our world’s population.

I see no way that igno­rance and truth can be placed side by side, nor do I believe that evil is some­how less evil if the Bible is quoted to jus­tify it. I will dis­miss as unwor­thy of any more of my atten­tion the wild, false and unin­formed opin­ions of such would-be reli­gious lead­ers as Pat Robert­son, James Dob­son, Jerry Fal­well, Jimmy Swag­gart, Albert Mohler, and Robert Dun­can. My coun­try and my church have both already spent too much time, energy and money try­ing to accom­mo­date these back­ward points of view when they are no longer even tolerable.

I make these state­ments because it is time to move on. The bat­tle is over. The vic­tory has been won.

There is no rea­son­able doubt as to what the final out­come of this strug­gle will be.

• Homo­sex­ual peo­ple will be accepted as equal, full human beings, who have a legit­i­mate claim on every right that both church and soci­ety have to offer any of us.
• Homo­sex­ual mar­riages will become legal, rec­og­nized by the state and pro­nounced holy by the church.
• “Don’t ask, don’t tell” will be dis­man­tled as the pol­icy of our armed forces.

We will and we must learn that equal­ity of cit­i­zen­ship is not some­thing that should ever be sub­mit­ted to a ref­er­en­dum. Equal­ity under and before the law is a solemn promise con­veyed to all our cit­i­zens in the Con­sti­tu­tion itself. Can any of us imag­ine hav­ing a pub­lic ref­er­en­dum on whether slav­ery should con­tinue, whether seg­re­ga­tion should be dis­man­tled, whether vot­ing priv­i­leges should be offered to women?

The time has come for politi­cians to stop hid­ing behind unjust laws that they them­selves helped to enact, and to aban­don that con­ve­nient shield of demand­ing a vote on the rights of full cit­i­zen­ship because they do not under­stand the dif­fer­ence between a con­sti­tu­tional democ­racy, which this nation has, and a “moboc­racy,” which this nation rejected when it adopted its con­sti­tu­tion. We do not put the civil rights of a minor­ity to the vote of a plebiscite.

I will also no longer act as if I need a major­ity vote of some eccle­si­as­ti­cal body in order to bless, ordain, rec­og­nize and cel­e­brate the lives and gifts of gay and les­bian peo­ple in the life of the church. No one should ever again be forced to sub­mit the priv­i­lege of cit­i­zen­ship in this nation or mem­ber­ship in the Chris­t­ian Church to the will of a major­ity vote.

The bat­tle in both our cul­ture and our church to rid our souls of this dying prej­u­dice is fin­ished. A new con­scious­ness has arisen. A deci­sion has quite clearly been made. Inequal­ity for gay and les­bian peo­ple is no longer a debat­able issue in either church or state. There­fore, I will from this moment on refuse to dig­nify the con­tin­ued pub­lic expres­sion of igno­rant prej­u­dice by engag­ing it. I do not tol­er­ate racism or sex­ism any longer. From this moment on, I will no longer tol­er­ate our culture’s var­i­ous forms of homo­pho­bia. I do not care who it is who artic­u­lates these atti­tudes or who tries to make them sound holy with reli­gious jargon.

I have been part of this debate for years, but things do get set­tled and this issue is now set­tled for me. I do not debate any longer with mem­bers of the “Flat Earth Soci­ety” either. I do not debate with peo­ple who think we should treat epilepsy by cast­ing demons out of the epilep­tic per­son; I do not waste time engag­ing those med­ical opin­ions that sug­gest that bleed­ing the patient might release the infec­tion. I do not con­verse with peo­ple who think that Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina hit New Orleans as pun­ish­ment for the sin of being the birth­place of Ellen DeGeneres or that the ter­ror­ists hit the United Sates on 9/11 because we tol­er­ated homo­sex­ual peo­ple, abor­tions, fem­i­nism or the Amer­i­can Civil Lib­er­ties Union.

I am tired of being embar­rassed by so much of my church’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in causes that are quite unwor­thy of the Christ I serve or the God whose mys­tery and won­der I appre­ci­ate more each day. Indeed I feel the Chris­t­ian Church should not only apol­o­gize, but do pub­lic penance for the way we have treated peo­ple of color, women, adher­ents of other reli­gions and those we des­ig­nated heretics, as well as gay and les­bian people.

Life moves on. As the poet James Rus­sell Low­ell once put it more than a cen­tury ago: “New occa­sions teach new duties, Time makes ancient good uncouth.” I am ready now to claim the vic­tory. I will from now on assume it and live into it. I am unwill­ing to argue about it or to dis­cuss it as if there are two equally valid, com­pet­ing posi­tions any longer. The day for that men­tal­ity has sim­ply gone forever.

This is my man­i­festo and my creed. I pro­claim it today. I invite oth­ers to join me in this pub­lic dec­la­ra­tion. I believe that such a pub­lic out­pour­ing will help cleanse both the church and this nation of its own dis­tort­ing past. It will restore integrity and honor to both church and state. It will sig­nal that a new day has dawned and we are ready not just to embrace it, but also to rejoice in it and to cel­e­brate it.

- John Shelby Spong

To see the list of other Sun­day Citar par­tic­i­pants and read the quotes they are shar­ing today, visit Fresh Mommy.

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