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Don't Ask, Don't Tell: The Hypocrisy of Liberal Episcopalians

Don't Ask, Don't Tell: The Hypocrisy of Liberal Episcopalians

News Analysis

By David W. Virtue
www.virtueonline.org
2/2/2010

According to liberal Episcopal Pittsburgh blogger and layman, Lionel Deimel, the military policy of "Don't ask, don't tell" has long been the policy of the Anglican Communion with regard to gays in the episcopacy. He described it as hypocrisy.

"With the consecration of Gene Robinson, The Episcopal Church began the dismantling of the policy in our corner of the Communion. By consenting to the consecration of Mary Glasspool, we have the opportunity to eliminate this particular hypocrisy once and for all in our own church and to become a beacon of light, albeit an unwelcome one, to the rest of the Communion."

Mr. Deimel protests too much.

The hypocrisy lies in those known Episcopal bishops who are gay and have not outed themselves or been outed by anyone else. Certainly there are a number of bi-sexual bishops including the late Paul Moore Bishop of New York, but he is certainly not the only one.

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori has publicly admitted on several occasions that she knows of partnered gay bishops in TEC, but has refused to name them. So why haven't they outed themselves in full public support of New Hampshire Bishop Gene Robinson? Why is Otis Charles the only other self-outed bishop to declare himself? Why not end the hypocrisy and tell us who you are so we can know just how long and deep the pansexual sewer in TEC really is. Why is Robinson the fall guy for pansexuality in the Episcopal Church?

We have a slew of priests who are openly homosexual, many of whom have partners. Two ran for Suffragan Bishop of Los Angeles; one won.

Peter Tatchell of "Outrage", Britain's leading gay advocate, opined that Cardinal John Henry Newman himself was gay because of his close friendship with Fr. Ambrose of St. John at Rednal, Worcestershire.

The Holy See was furious at the allegations made by UK gay activists that Cardinal Newman was a celibate gay man and invited a Dr. Ian Ker of Oxford University to investigate the charges. He found no evidence that Newman, who died in 1890, was gay.

Although he denounced suggestions that Newman could have been gay as 'quite horrendous' and 'absolute rubbish', Ker offered no evidence of the Cardinal's heterosexuality, only speculation and conjecture.

The Vatican says that having a gay orientation is not a sin. Ker claims that the Newman-St John relationship was typical of the "loving friendship" between two heterosexual men that often occurred in the nineteenth century.

Gay Activists charge that many of these platonic relationships were, in fact, expressions of latent homosexuality which never found physical expression because the men concerned lived in a homophobic culture where they either had no conception of the possibility of same-sex love or, for religious reasons, dared not express this love sexually.

The issue is not about whether Newman was or was not a gay man; the issue is, was he celibate? His desires, his same sex attractions are of secondary importance to how he lived his life. Apparently, it was impeccable enough for Rome to canonize him. Blaming a homophobic culture does do not do justice to the fact that this man, and many like him, live celibate lives because their vows and obedience to God and to Holy Scripture demand it.

World-renowned missiologist and author Bishop Stephen Neill struggled with homoerotic desires and saw them as a thorn in his flesh. He lived an anguished but celibate life, slipping once over the line for which he was disciplined, but he never ever said that his desires were good and right in the eyes of God. He struggled to the end with homoerotic desires.

Does it make him a worse sinner than a heterosexual man or woman who struggles to be celibate before marriage, or a married man who desires other women after he has made lifetime vows?

For Deimel to call it hypocrisy because the church refuses to acknowledge homosexuals in its ranks and to have a "don't ask, don't tell" policy in consecrating secret but non-celibate homosexuals is blatantly false and unbiblical going against 2,000 years of church history.

Sin has permeated every pore of our sexual skin. We cannot avoid the fact that hardly a human being on the planet does not and has not struggled with sexual sin. Mr. Deimel thinks it is hypocritical if we don't give in to it. His own diocese (Pittsburgh) has split over this and other issues. Where is the win-win in that?

Mr. Deimel wants us, against all biblical advice and command, to practice whatever our sexual inclinations might be, in the name of inclusivity. He is on the wrong side of truth, history and the family.

His brand of sexual inclusivity is emptying churches, not filling them. The Episcopal Church is dying the death of a thousand cuts regardless of how many homoerotic priests and bishops it continues to ordain and consecrate. It would appear that the more it ordains gays and lesbians, the faster the churches empty.

Why? Because people know in their heart of hearts that it is wrong. While the evidence shows Americans are becoming more tolerant towards gay persons, they are not tolerant nor advocating the behavior for their children or for themselves.

And there is growing evidence that reparative therapy, if applied lovingly and carefully, allows for the possibility of deep-seated change in both men and women. I have witnessed such changes.

Mr. Deimel's charges of "don't ask, don't tell" and hypocrisy ring hollow. The Episcopal Church is reaping what is sowing, the whirlwind of its own demise.

END

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