Not so long ago, Christians who were homosexual devoted much of their energy to cloaking that fact. Today not only have many of them come out of the closet, but they are also staging rallies, disrupting worship services and aggressively demanding church endorsement of their life-styles. For gay liberationists, nothing would better epitomize moral acceptance than for the churches to ordain open, practicing homosexuals as clergy. The result is a bitterly fought battle over the acceptance of gay ministers now being waged in both the Roman Catholic Church and mainline Protestant groups.
The latest skirmish erupted last week in San Francisco, as parishioners of St. Francis Lutheran Church voted 46 to 5 to call a lesbian couple as assistant pastors: Ruth Frost and Phyllis Zillhart, both graduates of Luther Northwestern seminary in Minnesota. Bishop Lyle Miller refuses to approve them as ministers because they will not commit themselves to sexual abstinence. The congregation, half gay, will have to ordain the women on its own, defying both the ordination rules of the 5.3 million-member Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and its policy against "homosexual erotic activity" among ministers.
In the Episcopal Church, numerous bishops openly oppose the denomination's official stand against ordination of "practicing" homosexuals. Some clergy are promoting more radical opinions. Carter Heyward, one of the Episcopalians' pioneer female priests, is now an enthusiastic lesbian and a theology professor at the Episcopal Divinity School in Massachusetts. In a new book, Touching Our Strength: The Erotic as Power and the Love of God (Harper & Row; $12.95), Heyward says that for gays "fidelity to our primary relational commitments does not require monogamy." She even allows for some sadomasochism.
In the 8.9 million-member United Methodist Church, ecclesiastical legislatures have wrestled with several cases involving gay clergy. Though some national church agencies have advocated toleration of gay clergy, grass- roots conservatives have fended off any such policy change. The latest round of the 17-year battle involves a committee that is re-examining the church's approach to homosexuality. The Presbyterian Church too is restudying sexuality, raising the prospect that its stand against gay behavior could be changed.
Some Protestant denominations have landed on the liberationist side. The Unitarian Universalists openly welcome gay clergy. The United Church of Christ, which in 1972 became the first major denomination to ordain an avowedly homosexual clergyman, subsequently stated that homosexual orientation is no barrier to ordination, leaving open the matter of ministers' active sexual behavior. The United Church of Canada is in an uproar over a similar policy issued last year.
Perhaps the most emotional debates are those now occurring within the Roman Catholic Church. Father Andrew Greeley, the irrepressible sociologist and novelist, complained in a recent article that regard for priestly celibacy is being undermined by a "national network" of actively homosexual clergy. "In some dioceses, certain rectories have become lavender houses," he grumbled. Theologian Richard McBrien of the University of Notre Dame contends that homosexuality is so widespread that "heterosexual males are deciding in ever increasing numbers not even to consider the priesthood."