Monday, May 9, 2011

John Aravosis on Sojourners' "Progressive" Stand on Gay Issues



John Aravosis at AmericablogGay weighs in on Sojourners' refusal to support the "Believe Out Loud" campaign, about which I blogged yesterday:


I also get a kick out of how Sojourners sees itself as "progressive," but then adds that they don't take sides.  That's like calling yourself a Democrat, but then adding that you don't vote.  And in any case, how is it taking sides publishing an ad that simply welcomes everyone to church?

Smells an awful lot like religious homophobia.

I think Sojourners is going to be surprised at the push-back it's going to get for this nasty bit of fence-sitting.  Things are changing rapidly in American culture, when it comes to awareness of the humanity and human rights of LGBT persons.

It's time for people of faith to grow up and recognize these changes, just as they have had to do in the case of other movements for human rights, including the Civil Rights movement and the feminist movement.  It's time to stop the fence-sitting, which is really a way of siding with those we imagine have power, while we pretend to be objective.

(At the end of my first post about this topic, to which  there's a link above, see Judy Brown's comment, with helpful information about an online petition campaign to ask Sojourners to reconsider this discriminatory nonsense, and an email campaign to ask Utne to reconsider an award it has proposed to give Sojourners.)

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