April 1975 [HTML]

INTEGRITY

GAY EPISCOPAL FORUM

c Integrity 1975 ISSN: 0095-2184

Vol. 1 No. 6 April 75

INTEGRITY: GAY EPISCOPAL FORUM is the official newsletter of INTEGRITY, Inc., a national organization of Gay Episcopalians and our friends. Memberships/subscriptions/$5/10 issues. Offices at 701 Orange Street, No. 6, Fort Valley, GA 31030. Copyright 1975 by INTEGRITY, Inc. Unsolicited manuscripts must be accompanied by a stamped return envelope. Signed articles are the views of the contributors. INTEGRITY, Inc. is a nonprofit religious, charitable, educational, and literary organization.

Copies of INTEGRITY will be mailed in a plain envelope upon request at a small extra fee.

Editor..................................... Louie Crew, Ph.D.

Associate Editor......................... Ellen Barrett, M.A.

Associate Editor.................. Ernest Clay, Cosmetologist

Associate Editor......................... Dan Fee, Seminarian

Associate Editor................ The Rev. Michael G. Koonsman

Associate Editor.................... Br. Thomas Williams, LPN

Consultant......................... The Rev. Robert W. Cromey

Consultant........................... Norman Pittenger, Ph.D.

for 10 years

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An Easter Message

from the Presiding Bishop

The Easter message proclaims the good news of the conquest over sin and death. Sin separates. Death destroys. Sin separates us from one another. Sin separates us from God. Sin is the sting of death.

The source of Christian faith is the power of the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ. The keynote of Christian faith is that God raised Christ Jesus to life after death by crucifixion. Separating sin was overcome by reconciling love. Destructive death is displaced by love renewing life. The barrier of final separation has been breached. God, through Christ, has opened the way to life and reunion to all who faithfully follow the Christian way.

Christian conversion, the turning from sin and death, occurs to those who believe Jesus was raised to life again after his death on the cross.

The need to be loved and the fear of separation and annihilation are powerful dynamics in human experience. Humanitarian sympathies and appreciation of human potential are strong motives. The concept of human dignity and the ideal of justice do stimulate human endeavors for good. Lacking the hope rooted in the faithful witness of the Easter message, however, and with no experience of the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ, there is insufficient motivation to live each day with the promise of eternity. Lacking an experience of the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ, eternal existence becomes a devastating threat. The peace of annihilation at least offers an escape from despair and loneliness, from frustration and conflict even if potential is never fulfilled nor justice realized.

The Easter message is that Jesus Christ offers to all who believe him the way to truth and life wherein fulfillment and acceptance, justice and peace are found. Believing him and in him, is to respond to him, to obey him, to follow him, to grow in his love, to experience his power. By his power comes the motivation to let our sinful ways die and be reborn, regenerated, converted to him and in him. Jesus Christ would gather all into communion with God and would empower us to share that blessed community with God and would empower us to share that blessed community wherein the hopes of eternity are fulfilled and the threats of isolation and destruction are forever removed.

This is the hope the Easter message proclaims. He who was dead is alive again. Hear! Believe! Respond! Be filled with hope and know his love and peace now. Those who know his love and peace are prepared for eternal life.

JOHN M. ALLIN

Presiding Bishop

CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE by Anon.

[Written for the General Ordination Examination, 1975]

There is a Conspiracy of Silence which surrounds homosexual issues and the Church. The conspiracy of silence is not the fact that bishops or seminary deans do not say who is Gay; it is important that authorities who have pastoral relations with seminarians or priests do not EXPOSE THEM to people who would threaten their jobs. Neither is the silence the fact that priests who are Gay do not openly state their orientation. The climate of opinion in the Church is so anti-homosexual that there are very few places where a self-identifying Gay priest could survive in a ministry. There is no need to demand that priests identify themselves until they have a milieu to open up in, which is not hostile to their existence. It is the nonGay part of the Church which must be responsible for creating this safe place, not the Gay priests. It is not an issue of honesty for either the priest or the authorities which is at the core of the Conspiracy of Silence.

The Conspiracy of Silence is the refusal of people, Christian and nonChristian, to admit that they have homosexual feelings and participate in homosexual acts. It seems to be assumed by most people that homosexual behavior is practiced by only some small lunatic fringe. It may be a surprise to some, but nonGay people do have homosexual feelings and acts; in fact, some have claimed that homosexual feelings, at least, are experienced by all people. People in general are totally unaware that nonGay people, other than themselves, do have such feelings. Some have told me about themselves privately, but no one I know personally has said this publicly. It is time that many people talk about their feelings and behavior publicly so that the whole society will know that Gay people are not the only ones who have such experiences and feelings. Therefore, the "coming out" process should not be the responsibility of Gay people; for the Conspiracy of Silence is perpetrated by those who are hiding their feelings and behavior, and Gay people are the ones who get hurt.

The Kinsey Report supports the claim that homosexual feelings in men are more universal than people thought, and (at least possibly) present in everyone. Fifty per cent of the population studied said that they had thought of having sex with some man sometimes in their life. Thirty-five per cent of the population (included in the 50%) had had one or more homosexual acts leading to orgasm at some time in their life. If 50% of the men admitted to homosexual feelings, may we not assume that many more had them but were ashamed to admit them? And why not similarly for women? It would seem that the only reliable survey we have says a great deal about the universal occurrence of homosexual feelings; it is not conclusive, but indicative.

The real problem of the Conspiracy of Silence is that it lays all the burden of dealing with homosexual feelings on Gay people. Gay people are the scapegoats for the rest of the human race. The culture lays the burden of dealing with what it cannot handle on Gay heads. Gay people have to deal with both good and evil aspects of undifferentiated homosexual feelings. They have to hassle with their own feelings and life problems as well as the effects of the refusal of the rest of society to deal with its own feelings. Then society says, See, you are sick and sinful: look at your promiscuity, your lack of responsibility, your perversion. On top of all the accusations, the Gay person has to live with a guilt feeling that her or his very nature, very innermost self, is evil, because the culture equates evil and heresy with homosexuality.

The real evil is that the Conspiracy of Silence creates fear, terror, violence, and dread for Gay people and for many nonGays. The evil does not come from Gays, but to them. Most people face homosexual feelings with fear and trembling. And for what reason? The feelings are a part of the created order. It is only by the Grace of God working within Gay people and through various people in the Church and society that Gay people are saved from being totally overpowered and possessed by the evil aspects of their feelings and the evil of the culture.

The problem from the Christian historical point of view can be summed up by a comment made by Dr. Edward Whitmont at a recent lecture (Dr. Whitmont is a Jungian analyst). The problem in the past was not homosexual behavior; it was sexual expression, period. Until recently, sexual expression was not permitted -- only procreation.

Why should we say homosexual behavior is not evil or sinful? Why should we accept homosexual people as we accept others? As Norman Pittenger has said in Time For Consent, today we have new information. Dr. Pittenger cites cases which show that neither the feelings nor the behavior of Gay people are in and of themselves expressions of evil or sin. Not all homosexual behavior is sinful, any more than all heterosexual behavior. Gay people's lives demonstrate that they are no more idolatrous than anyone else. Their lives express faith, hope, and love, which makes them partakers of the Kingdom of God along with other Christians. Their lives give evidence that they are witnesses to the word of God, and sometimes they are martyrs.

It is this kind of evidence -- the life stories of Gay people -- which forms the basis for negating the whole anti-homosexual attitude of the Judeo-Christian tradition. The evidence is valid as an apology against the tradition because it shows how God has acted in Gay lives.

One traditional basis for rejecting Gay people was natural law. Homosexuals were considered unnatural. This philosophical system cannot be used to justify anti-homosexual attitudes today, because its basic presupposition is that sexuality is almost evil. Sexual feelings are on the nonspiritual end of the hierarchy. The philosophy is not only anti-homosexual, it is anti-sexual. If we accept the unnatural act category, we will have to use the system to judge other sexual acts as well. It would be discriminatory to use the system only for Gay people. After all, the tradition which brought us "homosexual = heretic" also brought us "heretic = burning." It also brought us a celibate priesthood, and chastity as the highest vocation. If people want to go back to these categories as well, at least they would be consistent. It has to be said that the intellectual/abstract/metaphysical/idealistic notions of philosophy cannot be used to discount the evidence of God acting in people's lives.

It is the Church's own spiritual health which is at stake, not Gay people. For if the Church deems us sinful for God's works, the Church is liable for judgment. As Paul says, Therefore you have no excuse, O man, whoever you are, when you judge another: for in passing judgment on him, you condemn yourself because you the judge are doing the very same things.

It might seem that the legitimate evidence against homosexual behavior is the Bible. Romans 1:20-26 seems to be the only place where homosexual acts are condemned. However, was Paul attempting to answer the question, "Is homosexual behavior sinful or not?"? No! Nowhere in the text is that question even posed.

What Paul was dealing with was, first of all, a particular situation in the Greco-Roman world. He was not answering the abstract intellectual question about homosexual behavior. He wrote about a whole list of perversions which people do. These are people who know God's revelation yet turn away from Him. The people Paul is talking about are those who reject God. Homosexual behavior is mentioned as only one perversion of these people. As a good Pharisee, Paul sees idolatry as the source of all perversions.

The question to be asked is, why is this passage used to support the view that homosexual behavior is sinful or evil? How can people apply a first-century interpretation to a 20th-century world? The 20th century is not the same as the first. Typically, homophobic readers choose to use this particular passage fundamentalistically. That is very interesting, because when the Church faces divorce, the Church is willing to discriminate different kinds of divorce. Yet Jesus, not Paul, very clearly says that divorce is not permitted. By what logic do people use Romans 1 fundamentalistically and use the Gospel passage hermeneutically? By homophobic "logic," of course.

What is needed is a 20th-century hermeneutic for homosexual behavior and relationships. The hermeneutic is the Pittenger formula of new evidence.

After realizing what tradition says and what people generally accept about Gay people, and after knowing that many Gay people are driven to depression and suicide, how is it possible for a Gay persons to have hope today? The hope is in Jesus Christ. Gay people have the hope of His love open to them, NOW. He died and rose again for us, too. He vanquished all the evil which we face today, 2000 years ago. No evil which people do to us can keep us from being Children of God; we are free right here and now, to live comfortably with ourselves. Although people hate us, beat us, imprison us, kill us, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous, and He is the expiation for our sins. In time, our hurt will be known to all people. We are supported by God right now. We can be freed of our depressions and our suicides. Through Jesus Christ we have overcome the evil of this world. We have changed from the faggots who burned the martyrs to the ones aflame with the Word of God. We are becoming what we were created to be.

INTEGRITY CHAPTERS

INTEGRITY/Atlanta. Convenor Steve Matthews (404-996-1853)

INTEGRITY/Boston. Convenors Dan Fee (Box 51 Brattle Street, No. 99, Cambridge, MA 02138) and Joe McCauley (62 Upland Road, Winthrop, MA 02152)

INTEGRITY/Chicago. Convenor Jim Wickliff (P.O. Box 2516, Chicago, IL 60690). Meets weekly.

INTEGRITY/Minneapolis. Convenor Frank R. Eggers (26 Arthur Ave., Box 203, Minneapolis, MN 55414)

INTEGRITY/NYC. Convenor The Rev. Michael G. Koonsman (31 Stuyvesant St., NYC 10003)

INTEGRITY/North Central Rural Pennsylvania. Contact through the Georgia office.

INTEGRITY/Philadelphia. Convenor The Rev. John Lenhardt (4711 Baltimore Ave., Phila, PA 19143)

INTEGRITY/San Francisco and Bay Area. Convenor Jim Frooks (1256 Page St., #1, SF, CA 94117; 415-621-0182)

INTEGRITY/SW OH and N. KY. Convenor Bob Hurles (P.O. Box 24096, Cincinnati, OH 45224)

INTEGRITY/District of Columbia. Contact through the Georgia office.

Isn't it time for you to initiate a local chapter?

A GAY COLLECT - EASTER

oh God, our eternal lover, as you have overcome even death itself, so fill us your Gay children with your power and love that we may not fear any adversary and that we may be a glorious witness to your coming again.

Be especially with those of us who have learned to think of ourselves more lowly than we ought to think. Teach us to respect our inheritance as heirs with Christ.

Be with all Gay young people and give them a vision of your mission for their lives. Comfort them when their families desert or otherwise abuse them. Strengthen them to resist the devilish views of themselves promoted by our culture. Awaken them to their potential for full and holy relationships with one another.

Be with all Gay elderly people and give them the joy of being allowed to see the promised land.

Oh fairest of ten thousands, we praise you for your beauty and we thank you for your sacrifice, through Jesus Christ our Lord and only mediator.

AMEN

editorial

ARMED WITH LAUGHTER

Humor is indeed a saving grace. Christ's sparkling insight celebrates it in the Beatitudes: "Happy are you when persecuted for righteousness sake." Last week after the banner headlines in our regional conservative paper THE MACON HERALD (see page 2), our friend Mrs. Barbara L. Carson called: "You two get on over here and kiss in my garden so my greens will grow! If you have as much power as Dees says you have, it's more convenient to call you than to call God." Dees had said that we caused the tornado here earlier.

We have been buffered with the knowledge that scores of people are praying for us. We have been blessed with many, many friends and neighbors, nonGay as well as Gay, who have warmly responded to us as full human beings, who have respected the holy sacrament of our marriage before God and the community. We have had colleagues who have quietly expressed their appreciation for our being here. We have been especially blessed to have each other. But most especially, we have been blessed to have the Comforter, the ever-present Holy Spirit.

Being an outsider to hateful persons is no new experience to Ernest Clay, and he has taken the threats with quiet equanimity. He has been a beautiful refuge. I feel that I have aged many years in the last six weeks, and I am particularly grateful for the lessons that have been given me. But fear is an ugly experience, and a desire for martyrdom is an abomination. All of our Gay energies are very much needed for the living, not for the dead.

What troubles me most is my awareness that many thousands of Gay people are not so fortunate as we have been. Many have not been allowed the blessed knowledge that Christ is the sustaining savior, not the condemning judge they have had described. Many more have not found the space in which to develop whole Gay relationships with respect to their personhood. Many more have not had the benefit of an education that would help them more easily to see the context of fear and self-doubt that control phobic persons such as a Dees or a Hitler. Many more have not learned to take their own responsibilities for searching out Scripture and attending the witness of the Holy Spirit rather than that of persons like Bishop Duncan or The Rev. Mr. Glen Smith. Too many have no access to strong Gay sisters and brothers who can so well witness to sustaining powers in the face of oppression.

One of the biggest needs of the Gay community is the right to educate our own people. When parents discover that they have Gay children, typically the last persons they would consult would be Gay adults; yet because by natural law most children are born to NonGay persons, those parents and their nonGay peers are the most ill-equipped to provide the loving acceptance and life examples so desperately needed for survival by Gays in this very hostile culture.

In the many who have joined ranks with INTEGRITY in our now almost six months of existence, we have had very few nonGays indeed, certainly very few who are confident enough in their own identity fearlessly to call us sisters and brothers. "The Conspiracy of Silence" is one seminarian's term for it in this issue.

Interestingly, as a college professor I have found far less hostility to open Gay scholarship than as a Christian I have encountered to open Gay Christianity. I pray that Integrity and Dignity will be of increasing interest to all people. [L.C.]

From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Sunday, 23 March, 75

Homosexuals Opposed In Minister Role

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y.

--- The president-elect of the Council of Bishops of the United Methodist Church says "there is simply no way" homosexuals will be allowed to become ministers in his religion.

Bishop W. Ralph Wa__ made the announcement.

The church's legislative body will meet in Portland, Ore., in 1976 and will discuss a proposal that "sexual orientation shall not be a ban to the ordained ministry."

FORUM

I may say that I may be a minority on the committee [of the House of Bishops, on the Homophile and the Ministry] but I do not believe that overt, practicing homosexuality can be tolerated within the Christian priesthood. I believe we can work with the gay, we can accept him [sic], but when his [sic] action becomes overt it becomes fornication. I think we have to accept this as fact.

I know that many people do not agree with this point of view but I would certainly hope that the gay community will face this as a reality and realize that God is calling them to be as chaste as He is any heterosexual priest who is unmarried.

--The Rt. Rev. James L. Duncan

Bishop of Southeast Florida

* * *

Your visibility and courage are a gift to all of us. As an Episcopal lesbian, more in than out of the closet, I thank you.

However, I infer from your phrase ["Note whether your oppressor requires a plain wrapper"] an intolerance for those of us who are still in the closet -- that if I have an oppressor it must be because, though a lack of courage, I allow myself to have one.

Most of us were once in the closet, and emerging from the closet is a matter of growth through several stages. I agree that the closet is an evil thing, but I know you do not presume to speak for my conscience. If you did, you would be a Baptist instead of an Episcopalian. I hope that each step I take from the closet will be with integrity of purpose and motivation and without the factor of a guilt-trip laid on me by those who are more visible. Some of your readers may have taken the most courageous step so far, for them, simply by seeking to obtain a copy of the newsletter, even with the plain wrapper.

Secondly, I don't want to be distracted from pursuing my "pearl" of Christian experience by doing battle with the "swine" who seek to invalidate it. According to Leo Tolstoy, the verse "Eschew evil and do good" is best translated, "Ignore evil and pursue good." I am not so much interested in persuading others by my point of view, as much as I am interested in letting my light shine with enough brilliance that it will seem ludicrous for them to deny it.

It is because I am so thrilled in general that I feel so strongly my disappointment in these two areas. May the Holy Spirit continue to use you as a vehicle for Her grace.

--K.N.

[Thank you. We agree that whether, when, or how one moves out of the closet is a personal matter and we join you in affirming ALL Gay people. Rosa Parks was not necessarily the most courageous, but in ripeness she moved to the front of the bus. Ed.]

* * *

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to respond to your review [See "Media," March 75, p. 10]. I offer these points:

Rather than dealing with my article, you have created a non-womb straw man, labelled it "Fr. Ingalls," and slung outrageously spurious verbal slings and arrows. Your non-review is not even a clever adumbration of my article.

You call me a "Bible Thumper" and write that while "I do not require women to sit in outhouses during their periods" (I made no comment or illusion [sic] to this), I "soundly believe all Scripture quite literally about Gays," another statement which I did not make either explicitly or implicitly. Why have you so very unethically accused me of writing statements that I did not. My Biblical references were Romans 1 and 2 and I Timothy 1:8-11.

In my counselling, I have had multiple experience of counselees' projecting onto me their own emotive drive and guilt. Why is that some militant homosexuals are convinced that everyone has the same homophile compulsion. Is it because self-justifying homosexual psychiatrist or priest says that everyone is as s/he is?

You also diagnose me as having "epidemic homophobia." My only fear is that we shall so transgress the immutable laws of our Holy God and confuse secular lust with sacramental love that the creedal judgment will be as cataclysmic as our Lord forewarned.

We work for civil rights for all people for whom Christ came to earth to seek out and save. It was some God-fearing heterosexuals who saw that the Pentagon gave honorable discharges to the homosexual officers and enlisted personnel in 1945; but I do not want to see Rectories occupied by the sexual-union prototype of The Reverend Father Adam and Mr. Evie. In the Name of Christ,

--The Rev. Richard W. Ingalls

Detroit

* * *

I greatly favor Fr. Richard's idea [March 75] of doing a thing of our own instead of horning in on the heterosexual marriage in its decadent days. Alternatives include legal adoption. All that is necessary is for one partner to be older, and they can be legally joined for purposes of sharing property, with other legal gimmicks.

Spiritual alternatives also abound. There is a great strength in taking a vow daily rather than permanently. It emphasizes the truth that there is no security in this life on this earth. In a day when marriage is "a custom more honored in the breach than in the observance" (Hamlet's phrase) it would seem that we might be making a serious mistake to get into it -- even if there were no resistance. Speaking as one who has been into both a heterosexual marriage and a Gay alliance, I vastly prefer the latter and find it more wholesome before God and in the Church. I also agree that they simply are not "the same."

--Matthew

* * *

Jesus! What a good thing you have gotten together. Until less than 2 yrs. ago I concealed from myself the meaning of my affectional interests and was unaware of parallel sexual interests, with the help of family, friends and my analyst of 6 yrs., not really hard to do here where I grew up, and when -- I'm 54.

Between pediatric practice and psychiatric residency I was a year in seminary. Since I began practice, I have been involved in a lot of environmental and social change things -- abortion, the war, etc., so nothing was more natural than for me to become a gay activist when I knew I was gay.

I am much in favor of gay people (re)duplicating history of 200 years ago, our own Continental Congress and Declaration of Independence in 1975-76. I believe in physical non-violence, but I think we have to do violence to "their" beliefs and prejudices.

--Bob

* * *

With regard to your report about the niggardly decision of the Minnesota Diocesan Council to "support" the local law in Minneapolis regarding Gay rights, I register my own personal complaint, as a Gay resident of the Diocese who has tried to work with our nonGay Christian sisters and brothers. My experience has been very disillusioning. I used to think that the goal of the Church was to serve God, which includes serving people. I have learned, however, that the Church is first and foremost a political organization, with all that that implies. Many of the clergy are apparently sincere servants of God, but they are hamstrung by the political system they are caught in. Other clergy are politicians whose principal purpose seems to be to enhance their power and prestige. This is especially true of those in an administrative position. They say that people are not ready to accept changes, such as permitting women to be priests, accepting Gays, etc. However, they will not offer any suggestions for changing people's attitudes so that they will accept change, nor will they accept any suggestions. Controversy must be avoided at all costs. It could threaten their power and prestige.

The Church, by refusing to take a public and realistic position on human sexuality, has completely lost its position of moral leadership. The Church has been studying human sexuality for many years, but the effort and expense have been totally and completely wasted since the studies have had absolutely no impact on the person in the pew.

--Frank R. Eggers, Jr.

26 Arthur Ave., Box 203

Minneapolis MN 55414

* * *

I really do not know whether the Episcopal Church is changing its view of the Gays. Perhaps we in Canada are much freer than Gays in the States, but in many parishes here it is one of those things you just don't talk about, although Norman Pittenger's pamphlet "Christian Words for the Homosexual" is on sale at the Church House bookstore and a few parish tract racks. One high church here has many Gays, but again, Gay people are respected in counseling. It [seems to be] all right [to be Gay] as long as you don't talk about it. Gay laypersons and Gay clergy are afraid of scandal, as our bishop is very straight and will not ordain a clergyman who is Gay. My own church has many Gays, but an antiGay rector.

--Pete

* * *

Wow -- did we ever need you! I was introduced to your publication by one of your subscribers from issue one, and I'm really glad. I've never had much trouble accepting my sexuality, but it's about time someone came along and made people really proud to be Gay. It's about time we had an informative, intellectual, and most of all Christian periodical, both to keep us informed and to give us a means of speaking.

--Paul

* * *

God does not want homosexuals in His kingdom. Repent of your sin! You will find that homosexuality is an opression [sic] of Satan. Anyone who is homo needs deliverance! Unless, that is, if you enjoy it -- enjoy sinning. Your organization is not uplifting Christ, only your Gay group. I will pray for your clear understanding.

--[courageously unsigned]

* * *

May our Lord Jesus reveal his perfect will for you.

--Elmore Hudgens, Gen. Sec.

The Brotherhood of St. Andrew

* * *

The Gay Confession for Lent is so beautifully, sensitively written. I am grateful to you for your courage and affirmation.

--John

* * *

I am in the "senior citizen" category, but have several young friends who are homosexuals. I do not condone their practices, but try to be understanding and to accept them as people.

However, I object to some of their terminology, especially the word gay. According to the dictionary, the meaning in no way applies. "Dissolute, immoral, living by prostitution, showy" (Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English) are words they'd resent if we used them. Also, why "gay liberation"? Liberation from what? Certainly not their condition!

--Martha E. Pollard

1511 W. Roma Avenue

Phoenix, AZ 85015

* * *

My pastoral ministry in several parishes before retirement was forced by multiple sclerosis was a rich one, and I wish to keep my mind alert, as well as my prayers intelligent, during retirement. I shall look forward to your publication, especially for the pastoral implications examined therein.

--Robert

* * *

Your note regarding a Lesbian issue is of great interest to me, although I am in no position to help. Part of the problem is that as a teacher I must remain in the "closet." Aside from general support, I see no way of helping just now. Sorry.

--Sonja

* * *

As you well know, there is great need for the Church to reach out to Gay Christians, and I thank God for the publication, without having yet seen an issue. One of the things that has appalled me most in talking with Gay students is the extent to which they are turned off by religion. Gay people, as well as everybody else, need the Good News of Christ. I hope and pray that your publication will help bridge the gap.

--Keith

* * *

I regret somewhat my being uptight about visibility at this point. As you know, however, it can be difficult in a small community. Having been the subject of much gossip, I am rather sensitive. It's not that I object to others thinking or knowing I am a Lesbian that disturbs me. It's that they see the relationship in what I feel is a vulgar way. My love relationship to me is good and holy, and I thank God for it! It hurts to have people make a farce of something that is sacred to me.

I do hope the Church will move ahead in its view towards the Gay person. That it is even studying the subject is quite a move to stir hope.

-- Alyce

* * *

I enjoyed the March issue more than any of the previous ones.

I am truly worried about the attacks on you from Bishop Dees, the people, and the police. It is truly a shame that those people are so full of hate and cannot see that they themselves are the sick ones. I cannot agree with you on your deep beliefs in the Bible. That book you hold so highly was only written by men and we've been brought up to accept it as truth from childhood. I try to keep an open mind, but like Thomas, I too am a doubter. I believe in justice, fairness, goodness, kindness, my woman, our love, our kids, my sisters, my brothers, and the good things I can see and hold in my arms.

I don't believe a so-called man of God should be allowed to be a priest when he is so obviously filled with hate and bitterness.

--Jo Box

* * *

I am an indigent, neglected and rejected Black gentleman writing from a correctional institution in hope of contact with the free world. I have no family nor friends to relate with, and my life needs a purpose besides what it is now. I find I don't turn to anyone for answers because no one has the concern to share.

My interests and hobbies are multitudinous. In addition, I am uninhibited, sincere, ambitious, and 28 years old.

--Jerry Shields, #137-004

P.O. Box 68

London, OH 43140

* * *

Re the Sons of Levi [City priest, Dec. 74, p. 6] and Fr. Herrick's negative response (Jan., p. 3], it seems to me that an S & M group with a sense of humor is a rare flower, to be carefully nurtured and for which we might all give thanks.

I have no personal knowledge of the group, and I have some quite serious reservations about S & M and the view of sexuality which it seems to hold. On the other hand, S & M tends to be the step-child of gaykind and hidden in the attic when straights come to call so that we can impress them with how respectable we are, and how much like all the other average, normal, natural people out there. With all my reservations, I think that S & M has some important and useful things to say about fantasy, play, body-awareness, and physical sensitivity as enhancements to sexuality; and it might be worth our while to listen rather than to dismiss them out of hand.

--City priest

* * *

[Re the Sons of Levi, as above] I don't like the ambiance -- a matter of personal taste and preference. I believe most Episcopalians would be turned off by this and wouldn't be interested in a magazine which features these specialties. Such letters put ammunition in the hands of enemies of INTEGRITY

--Professor Thor

* * *

I have the feeling that the coming convention is NOT the right time for the Gay question to be brought up as an issue. It might be that a well-stocked, well-documented information booth, showing all our Communion has done in this field, notably in England and Canada, rather than a down and out confrontation would do more good at that time. There is no doubt that the next convention will be one of the most explosive, divisive, and stormy meetings the Episcopal Church will ever hold. I don't think anyone in her right mind would make a first official approach on such a vital subject in an atmosphere like that.

--Fr. Bill

* * *

INTEGRITY is likely to want to have a big demonstration at the next convention; yet should not the focus be on women's ordination?

I feel myself the strange conflict of loyalties which must be common to many Gay women -- more support felt, often, from a group of Gay and/or straight women alone than from the mixed set Gay group. The consciousness-raising group to which I belong has only one woman who says she "used to be Gay" and one who has confided to me only that she once had a Gay experience; but straight women are a great support to me. The rub is, which is the deciding factor -- the "openly" or the "mixed"? As you can tell, I'm somewhat confused.

I was impressed with the article by "W.S., Awaiting Ordination" [Feb., pp. 6-7], especially its emphasis on reflecting collectively. I would add that a lesson might be learned from the women's movement; not only in "conventions, caucuses," and the like can this be done, but also in small groups, like women's consciousness raising groups. I am a believer in the Holy Spirit's power to act in this more feminine mode as well as in the traditional councils and decision-making bodies. I am in great hopes that INTEGRITY -- through lines of communication and through encouragement you give so well -- can help such groups to spring up. Thanks for being there.

--Kate

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[In INTEGRITY No. 4, February, p. 3, a young man named Richard wrote about his feeling "doomed to everlasting hell" and asked to "see how you have found peace with God." His husband is an Episcopalian, and he has been a Catholic and a part of the Jesus Movement. The letter below has been forwarded to this important young man.]

I have read your letter and I have been saying a prayer for you each day. Also, each day I remember you at Mass. Both you and your lover whose name is not included.

I am an Episcopal priest; many years ago I had to deal with the problem which you now have.

First of all, do you think you would feel just as guilty if you were living with a girl, without marriage? Would your background of Roman Catholicism and of the Jesus Movement make the one form of sex as wrong as the other? Have you thought about this? If you haven't, try and think about it.

In other words, Richard, is it SEX or only HOMOSEXUAL SEX which takes away your peace with God?

Have you ever had peace with God since you matured? Did you have guilt over masturbation?

Next ask yourself, "Who made me?" If like me you believe that God did, then you must know that he made ALL of you. God's responsibility doesn't stop at the navel and begin again at the knees. He made you; he gave you a penis; he gave you testicles; and for a while neither of them meant much to you. And then because he made you a male human being with your maturing you grew into the knowledge and use and power of sex.

God made your sex just as much as he made your ability to have memory, to reason, to laugh, to love. He also, in making you, gave you the great and wonderful ability to learn, to feel instinctively that there is a supreme being, a God to worship and love.

And because you are human he also gave you the power to love, to cherish and to find your fulfillment in companionship with another. A few people can find their highest form of this in accepting Jesus as their complete lover and they become religious Monks or Nuns and lead celibate lives. That is a struggle and gift given to few. Many others find that they have the power to love both men and women -- and by this I do not mean simply to be turned on sexually by both; I mean the ability to find happiness and peace and fulfillment with both; and some find that they are only complete when their companion is of the same sex.

The Episcopal Church is part of the Anglican Communion and every 10 years its Bishops from all over the world meet to discuss and formulate policy. One of the things that happened at a Post World War II Lambeth Conference was that our Church reformulated our faith and belief about sex. Up to that time we had more or less closely adhered to the Old Jewish belief that sex is meant only for the procreation of children. (The Victorians were shocked at the idea of anyone's enjoying it.) And the new formula states, sex is for the recreation and enjoyment of humankind as well as for the procreation of children. Once we believe that the main purpose of sex needs not be breeding, then it matters not with whom we enjoy it.

Now if you are still with me, let us go back to your question, "Who made me?" In Genesis, time and again as the various stages of creation became complete, the Bible says, "God looked at it AND IT WAS GOOD." God made us in his own image.

The development of our sex is part of our growth and the object to which our sex is attracted is also a part of that growth....

I do not know you. I would dearly love to talk with you face to face as I am certain it is difficult for you completely to enjoy your love with your husband if you feel that those very acts keep you apart from God.

Will you try something for me and for you and your lover? The next time you have sex, when it is over, quietly say to yourself, "Thank you, God, for giving me someone who loves me and whom I can love." Each time -- even when you greet one another with a kiss when you meet at the end of the day's work -- begin the practice of silent "thank you"s for the beauty of the love you have in your life.

Bless you, Richard.

--Father Bill

[Amen. Ed.]

LUTHERANS

Minneapolis. In a pamphlet Lutherans Concerned for Gay people has called for active support from national Lutheran membership:

"No one has counted the number of gay Lutherans. A STUDY OF GENERATIONS (1972) did ask a sampling of Lutheran congregations how many 'had homosexual intercourse.'

"Some 1 per cent said Frequently, 3 per cent said Occasionally, and 7 per cent gave No Response, which may include some gay people. There was no count of the proportion of gays who are celibate, or who have left the church.

"Still, projected to a national Lutheran membership of 8.5 millions, a total of at least 338,900 gay Lutherans becomes apparent -- 125,420 in the LCA, 98,600 in the ALC, and 114,960 in the Missouri Synod."

Lutherans Concerned For GAY PEOPLE adopted a statement in Minneapolis on June 17, 1974 which stated: "We ask our church to seek to remove discrimination against gay women and men wherever it exists.

"We ask our church to receive and welcome us as it receives and welcomes others."

INTEGRITY NOMINATIONS

In accordance with the Constitution of Integrity, Inc., as ratified in February, the trustees of the organization, Ernest Clay and Louie Crew have named the nominating committee to report a slate to the membership in June.

On this committee will be Ellen Barrett, a coeditor; Kate Nod, a member in California; James Wickliff, convenor of the Chicago chapter; and Richard York at Episcopal Divinity School. Members who wish to communicate with this committee are urged to write in care of the Fort Valley office.

NCC ENDORSES GAY RIGHTS

By Gary Lee Phillips

CHICAGO, March 6. The governing board of the National Council of Churches today passed by a vote of 86 to 17 resolutions backing equal rights for women and Gay persons. The resolutions endorse "full civil rights" for persons who might otherwise be deprived of them "because of their affectional or sexual preference."

However, the board declined to recommend that Gay people be allowed to serve as ordained ministers in the congregations of its 30 constituent Protestant and Orthodox denominations. It was pointed out that the resolutions were applicable only in the public and civil sector. They do not bind the churches to any positive action in their own ministries.

The Rev. William Johnson of the United Church of Christ, who is the only openly-avowed homosexual to be ordained by major denomination, was quoted in The New York Times, saying "It will be difficult for church bodies to support civil rights in the public sector and to avoid issues of discrimination in the churches."

In another action, the board urged ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which is still four states short of the number required to make it law.

the hetero perversion

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son that whosoever has heterosexual genital orientation should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent His son into the world to condemn all others.

INTEGRITY SEEKS WITNESSES

Ft. Valley, GA. Integrity, Inc. is committed to providing a wide range of educational, religious, charitable, and literary services. Much needed now is a roster of persons who would be willing to serve as Gay spokespersons across the country.

While some of the calls for such witnesses still require an openness that many may not be able to effect at the moment, other assignments call for Gay people who would be willing to speak for Gay needs to very private audiences of inquirers, often including bishops and priests. The degree of confidentiality required by the Gay person will, as in all our work, be completely respected. Interested persons are urged to write the Fort Valley office, with details.

INTEGRITY ATTACKED

Ft. Valley, GA. In spite of repeated threats of violence from various persons, INTEGRITY founders Ernest Clay and Louie Crew have continued to live peacefully in this small rural town.

At the instigation of apostate Episcopalian, the Rt. Rev. James Dees, to have the couple routed into jail and fired, no action has been served by civil or ecclesiastical authorities. The March 20th edition of the MACON HERALD carried a banner headline and front-page article attacking the couple and INTEGRITY. Dees was quoted therein: "I would like to call attention to the tornado which ripped apart Ft. Valley recently.... My immediate reaction to the news was, 'This is the voice of God.' The town of Ft. Valley is harboring sodomists. Would one expect God to keep silent when homosexuals are tolerated?"

INTEGRITY has learned that recently Bp. Dees fired one of his favorite assistants upon learning that he is Gay. Dees left the Church upon fearing it to be soft on Black people.

We have now learned that Bp. Dees is being joined in his battle by The Rev. Glen Smith in Delafield, WI, who is trying to organize a coalition of antiGays and Anglo-Catholics nationally.

Articles asked on priesthood and sexuality

Presiding Bishop John M. Allin's special committee on Priesthood and Human Sexuality has held its second meeting and has decided to invite anyone who wishes to submit articles for its publication, through the Seabury Press, of two books on priesthood and sexuality.

"The ultimate goal" of the committee, Allin explained at the meeting, is not "to publish two mosaic volumes" or "to determine the destination" of the church, but to provide a vehicle "to move the church forward toward its destination."

All communications concerning the volume on priesthood and the volume on human sexuality should be sent to the Rev. F. Reid Isaac, Seabury Press, 815 Second Ave., New York 10017.