As someone who identifies as gay and Christian, I see parts of myself reflected in the world around me. When I turn on the television, I get caught up in the drama of gay and lesbian students on 'Glee.' I can laugh with a gay couple raising a child and trying to relate to the rest of their relatives on 'Modern Family.' I can cheer on a Chaz Bono, the first transgender man to 'dance with the stars.'
When I sat in Easter worship this last Sunday, I was surrounded by many lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people, as well as supportive and affirming straight people. I heard an Easter sermon that acknowledged my existence and affirmed my faith in the Easter message.
However, I still long for the day that those two realities, my representation in the media and the affirmation from my faith, would become one reality. My desire to hear an affirming message of faith being broadcast over television or printed in a newspaper grows stronger as I see both increasing representation in the media and growing affirmation in religious communities. And I am not alone. Thousands of us want to see the LGBT-affirming voices of faith lifted up in the mainstream media. But so far, the media has done little to reflect the new religious reality in America.
In recent years, several denominations, such as the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, The Episcopal Church, and the Presbyterian Church (USA) have updated policies to be more inclusive of gay and lesbian people. Beyond policy change, a majority of Mainline Protestants support equality for gay and lesbian people when it comes to non-discrimination, marriage, and adoption. Jewish people are the most supportive of any religious group in the United States, now at 81%. And the vast majority of pew-sitting Roman Catholics are highly supportive of marriage equality and adoption for gay and lesbian couples, despite the messages from Roman Catholic hierarchy. In fact, the organization Catholics in Media Associates, an organization of Catholic media professionals, recently gave an award to the ABC comedy Modern Family, which features a gay couple raising an adopted child together.
With all this support among religious people, why don't Americans get to hear LGBT-affirming messages from some of them? They are crowded out by the same extreme voices over and over again. The voices who claim to represent the religious viewpoint on LGBT people, especially Christianity, are the voice and faces that we see have seen for years on news television - local, national and especially cable.
According to a recent survey by the Knight Program in Media and Religion at USC and the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron, journalists, producers and bookers are far from experts when it comes to religion, which makes them return to the same voices that they have used for so long. They tune to "Christian" television to find what the "Christian" viewpoint is on LGBT people. Anti-LGBT groups use their PR operations and sell spokespeople as representative of the religious voice - when in reality they speak for a very narrow viewpoint that is becoming progressively narrower within religious circles. Add in the fact that the media suffers from a conflict addiction and tends to put stories about gay and transgender people in terms of controversy, and we have a recipe for only extreme religious voices being given platforms in the media to reach millions of Americans.
GLAAD has long recognized the lack of faithful affirming voices in the media among the sea of anti-LGBT rhetoric. We commissioned an independent study by the University of Missouri Center on Religion & the Professions entitled, 'Missing Voices: A study of religious voices in mainstream media reports about LGBT equality'. The study analyzes religious voices and their message messages in national news outlets when covering gay and transgender equality.
The findings confirm that despite growing public support for LGBT people across faith traditions, the media highlight a disproportionate number of anti-LGBT religious voices in the media. Three out of four religious messages about gay or transgender people come from religious groups that have formal policies, decrees, or culture opposing equality. Unsurprisingly, messages from those sources were overwhelmingly negative. Mainstream media uses far fewer voices from the gay-affirming, or even moderate, religious traditions. The vast majority of gay or pro-LGBT sources are presented without any religious affiliation whatsoever.
We have, for example, Tony Perkins, the head of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins has been featured in GLAAD's Commentator Accountability Project, which educates the media and the public on the extreme beliefs and messages held by anti-LGBT activists. Perkins has called gay people "pawns of the enemy" and wrote that the anti-bullying "It Gets Better Project" is "immoral," "disgusting," and promotes "perversion." These statements don't happen when Perkins appears on MSNBC or in the Associated Press, but do happen regularly on FRC's own site. Perkins uses his Christian identity as a cover for his harmful message.
At the same time, where is the voice of Matthew Vines, a young Christian theologian who uses Jesus' test for teaching that "you will know them by their fruit" and finding that teachings like Mr. Perkins only leads to despair, and self-destruction for those who have followed it? Where is James Alexander Langteaux, the former 700 Club producer who discovered that "the truth shall set you free" and was freed from the closet that he lived in for so many years? Where is the Rev. Jacqueline Lewis, who leads a vibrant, caring Christian community that welcomes all people and continues to grow? These are the missing voices of faith.
The media needs to stop promoting the false notion that being religious is synonymous with being anti-LGBT. By contrasting anti-LGBT religious voices against pro-LGBT voices with no identified religion, the media has reinforced a misleading and dangerous 'religion versus gay' frame. This frame is misleading because it gives media consumers the false impression that to be religious, particularly Christian, is to be inherently anti-LGBT. Experiences like the one I had in Easter worship are not reflected in the media. The frame ignores religious people who increasingly support equality and discounts the thousands upon thousands of LGBT people like me whose faith play central roles in our lives.
The media has a responsibility to be fair and accurate in how religious voices are represented in our public discussion on equality. Journalists often cite a need for balance, and the time has come to balance with LGBT-affirming religious voices who have been silenced for too long. Disproportionately favoring the negative message from anti-LGBT voices is neither fair, nor accurate, nor balanced coverage.
Follow Ross Murray on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@inlayterms
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Ultimately, if you are in favor of gay equality, marriage, etc. it ends up being something that has to be done outside of and against religion.
Same sex relationships are a great deal more than lust.
We all learned well. It is too bad we do not remember well. The pain inflicted by the very religious groups you state accept me. Is that not human of them. I have long decided I do not need to seek their approval or their acceptance. Many gays and lesbians are still trying to prove they are the "same" and they are "good". In some of the mentioned groups..that will NEVER happen. Though we, as a group, will hope and some will pray to make this all better.
You want a religious group that truly accepts you...develop one...write a Book...translate it to your needs...invite gays, lesbians, transexuals, bisexuals...and preach equality...make it YOUR religion...perhaps it is time to stop fitting into theirs.
We are 20,000,000+ and we are NOT going away.
This article actually proves a point. Gays are just like any other people out there. They are capable of being as stupid as the next straight person.
Romans 1:24-28 - 24: Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25: They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. 26: Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27: In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error. 28: Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done.
However, what I will never do is tell them a lie and say God loves you for living in sin. That would be a lie. God hates sin and hates when we engage in it. However, He still loves us to give us the freedom to escape the wages of our sins through Jesus Christ.
So to answer your question...No. I do not leave out parts about love and fidelity and not judging, however, I also don't leave out the part of calling sin a sin and letting people know what is sin and what cost sin has. And you will find most believers follow the same ideals and paths.
Think of it like this...Your parents Persuter. Or teachers or bosses or friends or what have you...Do/did they show you love and respect and honor and treated you right when you were good? And do/did they not do the same even when you were wrong? Yes they may have punished you, but did they throw you away because you were bad?
The passages have nothing to do with homosexuality as its understood today. Just people having sexual rituals, some of which at the time involved same-sex interaction. Nothing to do with same-sex attractions.
If Paul had wanted to condemn it, there were MUCH better words to use than the original words used in 26-27 (some words which were only used there alone, and the exact translation is still unknown to this day) , and he wouldn't have written it as such an out-of-nowhere tangent. It would have gotten its own explanation and a much lengthier passage than this random blurb.
Nowhere in the Bible will you see anything about actual homosexuality, much less an explanation as to why it's sinful.
Romans 1:16-23: 18: For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; 19: Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. 20: For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: 21: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22: Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, 23: And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.
In short that bit of passage is saying that this is why God is angry. That despite all the things we see in this world to prove why most of the things we do is sinful, we still do it and ignore it. And though the 23 talks about idols it is not the reason that follows. "Werefore" encompasses all of verses 16-32.
P2: Verses 16-32 has everything to do about every miss deed humankind does. It has to do with every abominable act we engage in. It has to do with every ill-gotten gain we have. It has everything to do with our sexual habits. It has everything to do with our actions towards each other. It has everything to do with our seeing the effects of our sins and instead of rebuking in, we change it so that it is acceptable.
P3: Paul used the words God wanted him to. And the reason why he probably used those words are because of whom he was dealing with.
P4: No. You will see about man laying down with man as if a woman. What is homosexuality? And now the New Testament also makes it clear that women laying down with women is not natural either. It is a sin because it is not how God created the world. He created male and female for all species, even those some animals like frogs can switch genders, their is a clear gender line. Or bodies are temples. They house the spirit that should be pure for return to God.
The media is not really liberal, except perhaps for MSNBC and Pacifica. They are generally fairly neutral with a small bend toward liberal (Like a 6 or 7 on a 10 scale). The "liberal press" is a myth except for the smaller group. The media is not likely to do a big story on a small group that does not make a national impact.
Media is about profit--what's there is what pays the bills.