“They know God’s justice requires that those who do these things deserve to die, yet they do them anyway. Worse yet, they encourage others to do them, too.”
It was the Bible verse heard round SLO County. The passage from the book of Romans was part of a lengthy letter to the editor by former SLO High School teacher Michael Stack in response to stories about LGBTQ students in the school’s student newspaper, Expressions.
“I love the staff and students at SLOHS,” Stack wrote. “My students know that. But I love God more, so in obedience to Him, I am writing this letter.”
The letter set off a firestorm of controversy both on social media and in the community, ending with Stack’s resignation from the district and prompting a vocal, visible response from the local LGBTQ community and its allies.
The incident was a flashpoint for the issue of gay youth, and it touched on the complex and often tense relationship between LGBTQ individuals and religion. That tension isn’t lost on local religious leaders like Rev. Jason Sisk-Provencio, a gay man and senior pastor with the United Church of Christ in SLO.
“It’s troubling to see what is essentially the good news about God’s inclusive love being twisted into a kind of weapon to hurt people,” said Sisk-Provencio, who changed the sign outside his church to read, “We believe that God loves all students,” in the days following the public furor over Stack’s letter.
“The Bible is a record of God’s inclusive love for humanity,” he said.
The complicated relationship that many LGBTQ Americans have with religion appears to be borne out in recent research into the topic. A 2013 survey of LGBTQ adults by the Pew Research Center found that the majority of respondents felt that the world’s major religions were unwelcoming to their community. According to the study, more than 70 percent of the respondents considered the evangelical and Catholic faiths as unwelcoming to LGBTQ people, and more than 80 percent said the same of the Mormon and Islamic religions. The Jewish and non-evangelical Protestant faiths fared slightly better, with more than 40 percent of respondents finding them “unwelcoming,” according to the Pew center’s research.
Trying to reconcile faith with sexuality, particularly for people raised in a church that is unwelcoming to the gay community, can be an extremely difficult and painful experience. The Rev. Caroline Hall, senior pastor at St. Benedict’s Episcopal Church in Los Osos, said she’s dealt with those challenges firsthand.
“It was a very difficult time for me in my teens and early adulthood as I realized that not only was I gay, but that it wasn’t going away,” Hall told New Times. “My attempts to pray it away and my attempts to be a good Christian, which at that point meant being heterosexual, were not working for me.”
Hall said she was eventually able to come to a belief that God loved her for who she was, and that understanding only grew as she discovered an LGBTQ-friendly church where she felt welcomed and didn’t have to leave her sexual orientation “at the door” in order to be a part of a Christian community. Eventually, she began the process to become ordained.
“I felt that I was celebrated with the whole of me, that there wasn’t some part of me that was left outside the service,” she said.
Further Pew research has shown that while there are many LGBTQ Americans who identify as Christians, there are far fewer of them than their heterosexual peers. A 2014 survey on religion found that 59 percent of LGBTQ respondents said they were religious affiliated, but just 48 percent of them said they belong to a Christian denomination, compared with 71 percent of the general public.
Hall said she understood the reluctance of some LGBTQ people to come back to Christianity, particularly in light of the anti-gay rhetoric that swirled around hot-button issues like California’s Proposition 8, which some major Christian churches supported.
“Many gay people got very hurt by the church or by Christianity because they heard such negative preaching, and because the Republican Party got the right-wing evangelicals into the Moral Majority and that type of thing.” Hall said. “So many of us grew up with some really hateful rhetoric coming out of the Christian church, and it still comes out of the right wing. It hasn’t gone away.”
Daniel Pfau experienced a similar struggle when he came out as a gay teen in SLO County. Pfau, who now lives in Michigan, was placed in faith-based “restorative therapy,” a program that has since been banned in California, with the hopes that he could become straight through prayer.
Pfau wrote an op-ed to New Times in the wake of the incident at SLO High School. Pfau said he struggled for a year, and even contemplated suicide before learning to “love [himself] completely.”
“After going through ex-gay therapy with a Christian counselor, many situations relating to religion became difficult to endure,” Pfau wrote in an email to New Times. “I have, at times, avoided religion to prevent unwanted emotions.”
Hall said many individuals looking for an inclusive church can sometimes be reticent to once again engage with Christianity and participate in services.
“Some people have theological questions because they’ve been told for so long that you can’t be gay and love God, or that you can’t be gay and be a Christian,” Hall said. “Other people have questions and concerns about how they are going to be accepted by the church members.”
Hall said she tries to get across her belief that God’s love is unconditional and that everyone, including those in the LGBTQ community, were made in God’s image.
“It’s important to say, ‘God created me the way I am, and that’s gay,'” she said. “I guess from a spiritual perspective, God made each one of us uniquely the way we are and loves us unconditionally. So the question is: Where can we best express who we are in the service and worship of God?”
Finding the right church can be a challenge, but recently several websites and other resources have become available for LGBTQ families and individuals looking for a welcoming and friendly church. One of those sites, gaychurch.org, contains a searchable database of accepting Christian churches. A search for San Luis Obispo shows a total of 13 churches, including Hall’s, within SLO County.
One of the website’s founders, the Rev. Elaine Sundby said that she, also, had a challenging journey to close the gap between her sexual orientation and her perception of her faith. Ironically, Sundby said it was the same Bible passage that Stack used in his letter to Expressions that helped her reconcile her feelings and marry her wife, Pam.
“While I’m not perfect, I can easily say I am a happier, more loving person because I listened to God and followed my heart to unite my life with another wonderful woman over 31 years ago,” Sundby wrote in a response to questions from New Times.
Welcoming the LGBTQ community into a church doesn’t just offer spiritual fulfillment to those specific individuals, but also a chance for the churches themselves to grow, according to Hall.
“I think it really opens people’s perceptions of diversity,” Hall said. “If you go to a church where everyone is the same as you, you don’t get challenged … having LGBTQ people in the faith community opens up other members in the community to new possibilities.” Δ
Contact Staff Writer Chris McGuinness at cmcguinness@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Pride 2017.
Hello !
It’s unlikely the Bible has anything but good stories to keep man in control. I find it hard to believe in the dogma of the Christian faith ,considering it arrived on earth and in mans minds hundreds of thousands of years after man arrived !
It’s time the Bible was read like you would read a Presidental Tweet !
Carol is a blessing and an asset to her church St. Benedict’s, her community…especially the Homeless communityl
Oh boy… My brain is telling me to stop typing and to delete this and walk away, but I can’t.
First of all – let’s set some things straight. God does NOT hate ‘fags’. Nope. God does not ‘send’ them to hell. Nope. God loves us all, that is a truth you can hang your sequin polka-dot hat on.
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I think this issue is fairly simple to break down if nobody tries to change anyone else. There is a truth for those of us who study and read the bible and its fairly clear that same sex relationships are not in favor with our God’s will. I won’t go into why. That is a different discussion. This one is based in why acceptance isn’t high in the church. When I go to church or bible study, I go in, sit next to and surround myself with people who all have one thing in common with me – we are all sinners. We all come as sinners and we all have the same book to guide us through this problem. The thing is that we (christians) are all going through our lives with a similar goal. Tighten our relationship with God and transform our hearts and minds to be free from sin. We let our love be the beacon of testament so that others will inquire, feel safe and be drawn to us so they can know more. They can make the same changes we have so they can feel the same love, joy and peace that many of us feel in a world of evil and dangerous times. I’ll sit next to a murderer in church and if he tells me he is so broken and sad and doesn’t want to kill anymore and wants to learn a different way to live, I will help him and I will love him. Adulterer, pornographer, prostitute, I don’t care, name the sin, and many of us there battle them daily. Unfortunately this ‘sin’ we are talking about is the same thing. I have seen people, homosexual men, changed. It’s not easy, and society can laugh all they want, but it can be done, and is happening. I can’t think of any homosexual friends or people I’ve known that would ever recommend the path they have been on. So many blame society for not accepting but many, when honest, expose a deeper more lonely pain. Here is the rub – if that same murdering christian friend came to church, sat with me and began to try to convince me that he was actually happy being a murderer. He’s been thinking and talking to his other murderer friends and they like our church and everything, and they know God loves them, but they feel like since god loves them they should be alright to continue killing. They want to have killer parades, and they want all the kids to know that killing is ok. They want a special Killer Day. This is what’s happening in the church with homosexuality, and I’m so very sorry but this is where we disagree. As for society – I don’t know what number you follow, but no matter what the percentage is, there are more of us straight people than you. Always will be. So you need to gain some ‘acceptance’ that maybe you simply aren’t going to ever be accepted as all the glossy brochures might tell you. We are human, and imperfect. The battle isn’t anymore important that we accept you than people that enjoy the of quiet sounds of nature accept a death metal concert in their front yard. Does this game end when the world is just a big gay bowl of jellybeans? I’m sorry, but you might need to begin to reset your own expectations. You’ve come a long way, and many of if not most all of us accept you socially and many ways we never did. You have may great strides. When do you look around and say… “ok, that’s better. Now I think I’ll just carry on with life like the rest of you.”
I know there are those homosexual ministers and churches that have made great paths to interpret Gods word to accept them into the positions and beliefs they are practicing. In this country, we have a freedom with our religions and I understand why some of them feel this is the best thing for them to do. You can follow any God you want it’s your freedom. But I won’t claim to know what price a person pays for that later, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t good. But you feel like it’s your only choice since you know asking us to change the bible so your sin isnt a sin, will never happen. but I tell you what – why don’t we put a pin in that one, you come on in to church anyway, grab some coffee and let’s help you to understand the bible. You open your heart and be open to some personal changes. Let’s change together and talk about it in a few years?