IGF CultureWatch

David Kinnaman has seen the handwriting on the wall: "As these new generations begin to make up a larger share of the public, homosexuals will gain greater rights and protections-and widespread acceptance-in our culture."

Kinnaman is not happy about this. Kinnaman, who heads the Barna Group, which conducts survey research on and about evangelical Christians, is the author of Unchristian: What a New Generation Really Thinks about Christianity...and Why It Matters (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2007).

Kinnaman focuses on young people 16-29, particularly those he calls "outsiders"-atheists, agnostics, adherents of other religions and the "unchurched." Those now make up 40 percent of young people, he reports. Just a decade ago Christianity had an overwhelmingly positive image among the young, including outsiders, he says. But no longer.

"Our most recent data show that young outsiders have lost much of their respect for the Christian faith." They hold several negative images of Christianity: it is judgmental (87 percent agreed), too involved in politics (75 percent), hypocritical (85 percent), and out of touch (72 percent).

But the predominant negative perception is that Christianity is "antihomosexual." Fully 91 percent of "outsiders" say Christianity is anti-gay. Remarkably, 80 percent of young churchgoers agree:

"In our research, the perception that Christians are 'against' gays and lesbians-not only objecting to their lifestyle"-i.e., sex-"but also harboring irrational fear and unmerited scorn toward them-has reached critical mass. The gay issue has become the 'big one,' the negative image most likely to be intertwined with Christianity's reputation." In short, "A new generation of adults ... now accepts homosexuality as a legitimate way of life."

Kinnaman's book is meant to warn Christians that their political influence on the issue of homosexuality will ebb and that they need to undertake a "kinder, gentler" approach to gays such as getting to know them, engaging them in conversation, showing compassion, and talking about Jesus instead of initially taking a moralistic approach.

I am not sure that "compassion" is what gays expect these days. Acceptance is what most expect. But given the reiterated condemnations of "the homosexual lifestyle" (i.e., sex) by Kinnaman and his commentators in the book, evangelical Christians cannot offer that. It is their bottom line, their obsession.

But the Jesus of the gospels said nothing to condemn homosexuality. So the Christians eventually have to stop talking about Jesus and talk about "the Bible" (including the Old Testament), or even a rather amorphous (and manipulable) "biblical perspective." Bait and switch.

So the Christians have nothing to offer gays by way of sexual relating. Kinnaman asks, as if uncertain, "Is it still true that homosexuals have deep sexual needs, just like the rest of us?" But all they offer is celibacy. As one commentator writes, "What if we could provide intimate Christ-centered community and accountability for him or her in that pursuit? We believe that community is the answer to everyone feeling loved and human." Somehow it just doesn't seem the same.

Kinnaman moves inconspicuously from inoffensive "first statements" to more offensive "repetitions." He first says Christians oppose "church-sanctioned weddings for same-sex couples," which is part of their freedom in a civil society. But later referring to legislators, he says it is important to affirm that "marriage is between one man and one woman." So he thinks that not only churches should bar gay marriage but the state as well, a very different matter.

And Kinnaman refuses to engage the strongest gay arguments. For instance, asserting that a child needs a mother and a father, he opposes gay adoption. But-putting aside the research on same-sex parenting-there are many children in foster care and innumerable orphans worldwide with no parents at all. Are they better off with no parents or with two loving gay parents? Kinnaman refuses to reply.

Perhaps the most offensive Christian claim is that, as one commentator says, "There is not a special judgment for homosexuals (nor) ... a special righteousness for heterosexuals." Or as a pastor Kinnaman quotes puts it, "The struggle of gays in being attracted to the same sex is not different than my struggle in being attracted to the opposite sex."

What effrontery! All Christians know that loving heterosexual sex within marriage is perfectly legitimate and has a "righteousness" according to their God (Gen. 1:28). The unnamed pastor's attraction to his wife-a member of the opposite sex-has a legitimate mode of sexual expression, so the desire ("temptation") can be acted on. But his doctrine allows nothing for gays. Ultimately, one has to doubt these people's honesty or their intelligence.

No one was surprised when the Phelpses announced plans to protest Heath Ledger's memorial services. Known for their "God Hates Fags" message and their obnoxious funeral pickets-they now demonstrate against fallen American soldiers for defending our "doomed, fag-loving nation"-the Phelpses are nothing if not attention whores. What's surprising is how much the Phelpses can tell us about ourselves.

Let's admit it: deranged people, like car wrecks, are fascinating to watch. While everyone would be better off ignoring the Phelpses, doing so is hard sometimes. (I feel the same way about Britney, Paris, and Lindsay-my willpower against media "junk food" is only so strong.) So it was that I recently found myself listening to Shirley Phelps-Roper-daughter of Fred, who founded the infamous Westboro Baptist Church-when she appeared on a Washington D.C. radio station.

Phelps-Roper condemned Ledger for Brokeback Mountain, in which he plays a cowboy who falls in love with another man. Ledger is in hell because he mocked God's law, she claimed, and "if you follow his example, you will go to hell with him."

Predictably, the show's callers attacked Phelps-Roper; sadly, they often made little sense. One insisted that, according to the bible, God doesn't judge anyone. Say what? Phelps-Roper's reading of the bible may be selective, but apparently, so is everyone else's: it doesn't take much searching to find a judgmental, even wrathful God in the bible.

The show's host then attacked Phelps-Roper for her picket signs, which often thank God for disasters: "Thank God for 9/11." "Thank God for maimed soldiers." "Thank God for Hurricane Katrina." and so on. Phelps-Roper had a ready comeback:

"Exactly. You better thank him for all of his judgments because the scripture says that God is known by the judgment that he executes in this Earth, so you thank him for everything."

This answer is interesting, and not as bizarre as it might first appear. Theologians have long pondered the problem of evil-if God is all-knowing, all-good, and all-powerful, why does he allow evil in the world?-and some quite respectable ones have concluded that evil doesn't really exist. From our limited human perspective, things may look bad, but that's just because our minds are too feeble to comprehend God's design: ultimately, everything is just as God planned it.

The problem is that, pushed to its limits, this position quickly yields practical contradictions. By this logic, we ought to thank God for Heath Ledger's death; but by the same logic, we ought to thank God for Brokeback Mountain's box-office success. We ought to thank God for Hurricane Katrina; yet we ought also to thank him for sparing the (delightfully debaucherous) French Quarter. We ought to thank God for AIDS, yet also for protease inhibitors. If God should be thanked for everything, then God should be thanked for EVERYTHING.

Yet somehow I don't expect to see the Phelpses with signs thanking God for same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, or the passage of ENDA, or the increasing acceptance of GLBT people. If I were on a radio program with Shirley Phelps-Roper, I'd want to ask her "Why not?" If all of God's judgments are "perfect," why not these?

My guess is that she'd answer that these events result from human free will rather than divine will. But then how do we distinguish them from 9/11? Was it God's will for Islamic extremists to fly planes into buildings? If so, do they escape hell, since they were only doing God's will? If not, then why are we thanking God, rather than blaming the extremists?

I wouldn't expect a satisfying answer to these questions, but that's not because Phelps-Roper is deranged (which she is) or stupid (which she isn't, as far as I can tell). It's because centuries of philosophical theology have failed to produce satisfying answers to the problem of evil. Instead, we pick and choose: even though God is supposed to be responsible for everything, we thank him for the things we like and call the rest a mystery. In this respect Phelps-Roper resembles most biblical believers: she just happens to "like" rather different things than sane folks do.

A talented and likable actor dies in his prime. The Phelpses thank God, while mainstream believers declare God's will a mystery. Had the paramedics saved him, mainstream believers would thank God while the Phelpses declared God's will a mystery. In either case, divine providence remains unquestioned. Heads, God wins. Tails, God wins.

If there's a mystery here, it's why believers seem to have lower expectations of God than they do of local weather forecasters. That, and why a loving God lets the Phelpses continue to spew hate in his name.

"We are one people." It is easy to say, but we have struggled over it for 232 years. The charismatic speaker, who once wrestled with his biracial identity and found his footing as a community organizer in south Chicago, brings a conviction that gives people goose bumps. It is a vision that clashes with the hard truth voiced by Bruce Springsteen: "No secret my friend / You can get killed just for living in / Your American skin." Barack Obama knows it is hard, and includes LGBT Americans in his call to action.

Sen. John Kerry points out that Martin Luther King was 34 when he said, "I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.'" Thomas Jefferson was 33 when he drafted that creed. If Obama wins, he will be 47 at his inauguration-a year older than Bill Clinton, four years older than Jack Kennedy, five years older than Teddy Roosevelt. His toughness is evident in his remarkable coolness in the face of smears by the Clintons.

To be sure, Obama has fought back against those attacks. Former President Clinton, who switches between charming elder statesman and eager practitioner of win-at-any-cost politics, blamed the divisiveness on Obama and the media, and used civil rights veterans John Lewis and Andrew Young as trump cards instead of addressing charges that he was behaving like the late GOP operative Lee Atwater. Those who fault Obama for fighting back must have admired Kerry's month of silence after the "swift boat" attacks in 2004.

Obama notes that the Clintons' attacks began only after he started rising in the polls. One of his central messages is, "Change doesn't come from the top down, but from the bottom up." By contrast, Hillary Clinton implicitly compared herself to Lyndon Johnson, emphasizing his key role in passing civil rights legislation. What was patronizing about that comment was the implication that change chiefly depends on Washington politicians.

Obama raised a stronger vision of leadership on Jan. 20 at King's own Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, with a speech of rare grace and power. At one point, after saying "none of our hands are entirely clean," he admonished his audience: "We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them. The scourge of anti-Semitism has, at times, revealed itself in our community. For too long, some of us have seen immigrants as competitors for jobs instead of companions in the fight for opportunity." This was not pandering.

Obama challenges gay people as well by refusing to respond to opponents of gay equality with boycotts. As he wrote in response to the controversy over a campaign appearance by antigay gospel singer Donnie McClurkin, "We will not secure full equality for all LGBT Americans until we learn how to address that deep disagreement and move beyond it." He understands that our cause requires many painful discussions, not demands for silence from those whose views offend us. He shows the way by talking to churches and ministers about homophobia.

As Obama told The Advocate in October, "on issues from 'don't ask, don't tell' to DOMA to the gay marriage amendment to the human rights ordinance in Illinois that is the equivalent of what we've been attempting to do at the federal level and that I was a chief cosponsor of and then passed-there has not been a stronger and more consistent advocate on LGBT issues than I have been." Like Clinton and John Edwards, he opposes same-sex civil marriage, but he supports giving same-sex couples the 1,138 federal rights and responsibilities accorded married couples. Needless to say, this is less than I want; but it would be a giant step toward the goal. The next few years will not bring final victory, but are an opportunity to push the debate crucially forward.

If you are not careful, life can beat the hope out of you. Some activists I know, old enough to remember the Sixties, support Hillary. They have pictures of King and Bobby Kennedy on their walls, yet now back someone more reminiscent of Richard Nixon. Instead of supporting a leader who can inspire a broad spectrum of Americans, they support someone whose idea of the presidency is managing the bureaucracy, and whose idea of bipartisanship is cosponsoring a measure against flag burning.

Some claim that Obama lacks detailed policy proposals. They should visit BarackObama.com, including barackobama.com/pdf/lgbt.pdf. Others hesitate to support him because they worry about what might happen to him. But if we are governed by our fears, we are defeating ourselves.

The times call for a leader who offers more than a continuation of the scorched-earth politics of the past two decades-someone who will do more than triangulate and outmaneuver partisans on the other side. Once again a gifted man from Illinois has come forth who understands that a nation divided against itself cannot stand, who exhorts us to summon the best in ourselves to continue the work of building our nation. I will not lower my sights because the work is hard. That is why I support Barack Obama for President.

A year ago at this time there were high hopes among gay activists for the new Democratic Congress. They were going to pass legislation expanding gay rights and eliminating discrimination that had long been blocked by the Republicans in power since 1995. Even if Bush vetoed new gay-rights legislation, the Democrats would at least put him on the defensive about it and build momentum for the day when the Democrats took the White House. All of this would be payback for the huge amount of time, energy, and money that gay Americans - their third most loyal voting constituency after blacks and Jews - had given the Democrats.

That was then.

At the midpoint of this Congress, it's not looking very good. Not one piece of pro-gay legislation has even reached the president's desk.

Let's look in more detail at just how far short the Democrats have fallen. In a column one year ago, I proposed a 100-point scorecard based on four key issues and suggested how to evaluate the total:

75-100 points: Never vote for another Republican.
50-74 points: Democrats are worth our first-born children.
30-49 points: Democrats are willing to fight for gay equality, at some political risk.
10-29 points: Democrats will do the minimum necessary to mollify gays.
0-9 points: Democrats know they can take gays for granted.

Now here are the four issues and how things are looking so far:

(1) Federal recognition of gay relationships (worth up to 50 points): Congress has done nothing to eliminate or modify the Defense of Marriage Act, passed by a Republican Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996. It has also done nothing to give spousal benefits to the same-sex domestic partners of federal employees. Not only has no vote been taken on proposals to do these things, there have not even been hearings on them. While the Democratic presidential candidates have talked about such things, we learned painfully from the 1992 presidential campaign of Bill Clinton that talk is very cheap.

Points for the Democrats: 0.

(2) Gays in the military (worth up to 30 points): Congress has done nothing to eliminate or modify the ban on gays in the military, passed by a Democratic Congress and signed by Clinton in 1993. There have been no hearings on the subject, either, despite a stream of military leaders coming out against the policy and a wartime decline in anti-gay discharges. Again, the Democratic presidential candidates all oppose DADT on paper, but this counts for nothing until something is actually done.

Points for the Democrats: 0.

(3) ENDA (worth up to 15 points): The Employment Non-Discrimination Act passed the House, with 35 Republicans providing the necessary margin for passage. That first-ever triumph for a gay-rights bill was thanks largely to the leadership of Barney Frank, who fended off efforts by left-wing gay groups to kill the bill because it did not include explicit protection for transgendered people. Senator Ted Kennedy has promised to introduce the bill in the Senate, but so far no action has been taken or scheduled. It's unclear whether the bill will even get a vote in the Senate this year.

Points for the Democrats: 5.

(4) Hate crimes legislation (worth up to 5 points): This is the least important of the four issues. There's no evidence hate crimes laws actually deter hate crimes, but a federal law would have some symbolic value. Yet even that seems unlikely to come out of this Congress. Both the House and the Senate have passed hate-crimes legislation, but have waffled on how to send the bill to President Bush for his signature or veto. An effort to send the bill to Bush as part of a larger defense spending authorization foundered when anti-war liberal Democrats opposed the spending.

Points for the Democrats: 3.

By my scorecard, the Democrats have earned just 8 out of a possible 100 points at mid-term, which means that so far at least they're taking gay support entirely for granted. While they still have a few months to go, it seems unlikely they'll accomplish much in an election year when they have to worry about reelection and are likely to let gay rights take a seat even further back on the bus.

The Democrats' anemic performance so far does not necessarily mean you should vote for Republicans this November. If you support the Democrats' views on taxes, the Iraq war, national healthcare, and other issues, you're likely to back them even if they get nothing more done on gay rights.

But the Democrats' failure to produce does liberate voters who intensely support gay rights but disagree with the Democrats on other important issues. Many of these voters, subordinating their strong feelings about non-gay issues, have supported Democrats in the past because they believed the Democrats would actually accomplish something positive for gay rights.

Now these voters will find it harder to support a Democrat they would otherwise oppose just because the candidate says she supports civil unions, employment protection, ending the military ban, and the like. For them, voting Republican is not a strategy to punish the Democrats for their faithlessness on gay issues. It's a vote of principle.

Soothing words are nice, and the Democrats excel at such kindnesses. But results matter much more. On this, so far at least, they're failing.