Anglican ex-gay group Zacchaeus Fellowship is demanding its say when the General Synod of the Anglican Church of Canada meets to vote on whether to allow same-sex blessings. At last year’s Synod, a motion to include “those who identify as ex-gay or lesbian” in the 2007 debate was defeated, to which the Fellowship responded with the following plea (in a statement signed by Mario Bergner, among others):
Our voices have been silenced and not heard in the Anglican Church of Canada; you have not paid heed to us. Today, we ask that you would not betray us by passing these motions allowing for the blessing of same-sex unions within the Anglican Church of Canada without first hearing our voices and weighing our stories. We ask that you would not pass these motions and commit yourselves instead to listening to our voices before making any move as a Church. Let us all acknowledge the love and lordship of Christ who makes all things new.
In an open letter to this year’s Anglican Synod, which begins meeting today in Winnipeg, the Zacchaeus Fellowship continues to press for a hearing, this time with a frankly outrageous attempt to discredit gay voices in the debate:
But we also consider it necessary to ask if you are aware of the gay activist handbook After the Ball, published in 1989. It shamelessly describes manipulative tactics such as its Principle 6, “Give Potential Protectors a Just Cause,” which recommends “casting gays as society’s victims and inviting straights to be their protectors.” It explains, “For this to work, however, we must make it easier for responsive straights to assert and explain their new protective feelings. Few straight women, and fewer straight men, will be bold enough to defend homosexuality per se. Most would rather attach their awakened protective impulse to some principle of justice or law, some general desire for consistent and fair treatment in society” (p.187).
Just what is being implied here? Don’t trust the gays because they are simply part of a political conspiracy? The Anglican proponents of gay blessings are learning “manipulative tactics” directly from a 1989 manual? The shameless manipulation is in Zacchaeus’s attempt to malign and dehumanize gays with such tenuous links. The open letter continues:
The apostle Jude warned against “malcontents” who indulge their own lusts; “they are bombastic in speech, flattering people to their own advantage.” Many of us in the Zacchaeus Fellowship were gay activists and played that card ourselves in our unreformed lives.
Manipulative, lustful, shameless: With such slanderous attacks on Canada’s gay Anglicans, the Zacchaeus Fellowship excludes itself from the debate.
This is beyond reprehensible. What, precisely, do self-described “ex-gays and lesbians” have as an interest in the Church allowing same-sex nuptials unless they are still clinging to the belief that all gay and lesbian citizens should be subjected to religious torture until they are transformed into happy heterosexuals?
If you had let us marry when we were gay we might have had more stable relationships. If you hadn’t condemned us then, we might have found peace. And then, horror of horrors, we might have had an exemplary and happy life.
And we wouldn’t have left that horrible degenerate happy productive life.
So for the sake of all the others who might well be happy, we’ve got to stop them. Don’t let them think that you accept them on equal terms. Listen to us. We were there.
If you had let us be happy and encouraged our relationships within the supporting and loving arms of the church then we wouldn’t be the struggling people of chastity desperately hoping for reorientaion that we are.
And that would be just horrible.
WOW – what kind of liars and hypocrites belong to this Zacchaeus Fellowship anyway?
Not only do these people not deserve to be heard at the Synod, but they really don’t deserve to have space on this thread – Geesh!
oh….EXCUSE ME?
I am BOLD ENOUGH!!
I will go the ends of the Earth to defend gay folks AND homosexuality!
Where are they….?! I’ll get them TOLD!
The earrings are comin’ OFF!!!
Believe me people, I’ve gotten some guff from folks like this as if, because I’m a straight person, I’m somehow immoral, stupid…or unforgivably naive about who and what I defend!
Note: who runs and who stays….
Joseph Nicolosi and a few others I can name, refuse to talk, or answer or deal directly with the people they suspect could tear them a new one. Maybe they already know the limits of their situation and avoid people with the brains and tenacity to challenge them.
A lot of forums now that used to have more diversified and balanced representation, no longer have pro gay supporters as part of the discussion or mediation.
It’s not that hard to toast these folks…really, it’s not that hard.
The hard part is direct confrontation in a way that enough people will witness how weak they are.
Who runs, who stays…and who pretends they don’t hear you?
Not me…
It’s truly sad, how ex-gay activists often (unintentionally) describe themselves when they attempt to describe the people against whom they wage cultural and political warfare.
well said, mike
What bothers me is the idea that one activist book somehow authoritatively speaks for every GLBT person on the planet. I’m prettynew to accepting myself as a gay man, so maybe I just never heard of “After the Ball”, but I can’t see how any one book can be said to speak for everyone.
I read After the Ball many years ago. And at the time I thought that a lot of it made sense. It was good advice about not letting our community be defined by its fringes and being willing to find allies where we could and on the terms we could.
But of course there are those who would think the advice “treat your neighbor the way you want to be treated” is nothing more than a nefarious attempt to manipulate your neighbor.
The book, as I recall, also unappologetically advocated cleaning up our community and becoming more mainstream. It empowered those who had become disenchanted with extremist politics or outlandish street theater to speak up and hold accountable those within the community that sought to be heard by being the loudest.
Yes it did advocate for imaging and repackaging the community as more responsible. But I believe that in the process, the community did become more responsible.
I think perhaps that is what annoys and scares anti-gays the most. Not that the community is perceived as more mainstream, but that it has actually become so.
Jamie,
I had never heard of the book until now either and I’ve been out for over a decade.
Why would these ex-gays think that this kind of cynical, bitter and hateful tactic would even begin to persuade the Synod to invite them to the discussion?
Thanks for pulling together the update on Canada/Anglicans Dave. As we’d mentioned elsewhere, this type of tactic has been in open use since 2001. And it’s nasty.
(We’re hardly ones to accuse others of being cynical… — well, we can, but only ’cause we know it when we see it! — but the promotion of exgays at such times is an obviously blatant attempt to degrade the lives and drown the voices of other people. Feel the Love.)
And, of course, it’s also used by other people… [here] and [here]
these ppl sound like the Westboro Baptist church of Canada…
I attend an Anglican Church in Ottawa, Ontario Canada – St. John the Evangelist whose priest has been at the forefront of gay inclusion in the Anglican Church of Canada including introducing the resolution stating that the Anglican Church “recognizes the integrity and sanctity” of gay relationships, which passed in the 2004 Synod.
I don’t know whether the church will approve the local option for same sex blessings in this synod (and if not, the Bishops have already authorized churches to celebrate gay relationships through a communal Eucharist) but most of the pro-gay lay, clergy and bishops have been around the block a few times and know about ex gay ministries, their chequered history, their failures to affect change and the harm they can cause. These people may convince the already convinced but I don’t think they will have much of an impact on others. We have been having this debate for 30 years.
Dan – Gatineau, Québec Canada
Why is Mario Bergner’s signature part of this? When did Quincy, Illinois become part of Canada?
On the Zacchaeus website they note:
We see ourselves not as a political lobby group but as a voice of hope to those struggling with same-sex attractions…
…which makes me wonder why they have dug out an eighteen year-old, out of print book (which, looking at the Amazon entry, appears to be cited more by anti-gay proponents than pro-gay), to lobby those with a different viewpoint.
I am beginning to feel some sense of frustration here.
I feel like telling these people from the Zacchaeus Fellowship (a.k.a. The Fellowship of the X-ings in my new book)… OK! Go ahead and be that voice of false hope to those struggling with same-attractions! If they wanna come to you they will come… Just leave those who are NOT struggling alone!….
how exactly does including gays in the full life of the Angican Church of Canada harm ex-gays? It seems to me that they are the ones really reaching for the victim label.
I have been through the taunting of the ex-gay process in another Conservative view Christian background and i think that Jesus would accept us as we are, besides he made us, I still have a relationship with Christ today, but the straight Christians that agree with the ex-gay movement should step back a moment and see what spiritual confusion and damage that ex-gay ministies only produce, and look at how they can love the whole person including thier sexuality. Besides that I think that this is an exiting time for the Anglican church on the verge of a breakthrough of embracing and loving all individuals regardless of race, creed color or sexuality.
The Canadian synod opened debate to delegates from the floor who could come up and give they view.
During that time, the Zacchaeus Fellowship’s plea was read by one priest and another person got up and said that the APA’s removal of homosexuality from the DSM in 1973 was a “political move” and the “only” time they have done that for ‘unscientific” reasons. She also mentioned Spitzer’s study on changing sexual orientation and implied that anyone could change if they tried. But I don’t think these attempts had much impact.
Still, it looks unlikely that same sex blessings will be approved by the Anglican Church of Canada this time. I would say about 75% of the floor delegates were opposed mostly because they thought the church wasn’t united enough on it yet.
(Liberals may also vote it down because it seems like a weak response in the face of civil same sex marriage.) Work by the Primate’s Theological Commission (the commission set up to study this) may continue on finding a theological justification for changing the Marriage Rite to include same sex couples – but that takes a 2/3rds vote over 2 General Synods to happen – which means 2012 at the earliest.
The final vote hasn’t happened yet and I have been wrong before. You never know.
Dan
Gatineau, Québec Canada
The Anglican Church voted that Same Sex blessings do not violate core Christian doctrine, but did not affirm allowing dioceses to do it at this synod. It went down by only two votes.
The vote was taken in 3 houses:
Laity – 78 aye / 59 nay
Clergy – 63 aye / 53 nay
Bishops – 19 aye / 21 nay
So clergy and lay, who deal with gay people on a daily basis overwhelmingly passed it. Bishops who are probably worried about the international ramifications voted it down (but by only 2 votes.)
It’s the best result we have had so far and the statement that Same Sex Blessings does not violate Christian doctrine is a real step forward!
Dan
Gatineau, Quebec
Thanks for keeping us updated, Dan!