THE FAILURE OF THE CHURCH

Thousands of homosexuals have told us or have written what this means to them. It means that, broadly speaking, their churches have refused to accept them into religious communion as homosexuals. Many of them find themselves entirely unable to square the thought of pretending to be other than what they are, or of dissembling, with the ethical standards their religions profess. Yet, if they tell the truth the doors of the churches are closed in their faces.

Homosexual acts, they are told by clergyman, priest and rabbi, are sins so vile in the sight of God as scarcely to bear discussion. The revulsion of most churchmen at the mere mention of homosexuality is so intense that the hapless subject is quite unlikely to avoid feeling condemned both of God and of man. In desperation, many homosexuals sincerely strive to conform to a pattern of living which they are told is The Divine Plan, but the attempt seldom is a success. Their failure then sinks them deeper into feelings of guilt, self-condemnation and despair, according to the degree of their own integrity and sensitivity to ethical problems.

Some homosexuals seek escape through the use of alcohol or drugs, so many of them in fact that some observers believe repressed homosexuality to be the prime cause of alcoholism and drug addiction. Others turn for help to psychiatrists. or else struggle weakly on until some mental hospital is the only way out.

The stronger ones are apt to rebel and become reckless outcasts of the gutter or prison fodder. It sometimes happens that in prison for the first time in their lives they discover their homosexuality to be just what it is, simply another aspect of the human condition, neither good or bad of itself. In such cases, blessed are they

who lose all, for thereby do they find themselves an ironic beatitude rung out from the dregs of disaster.

Only slightly less trying than ecclesiastical condemnation and rejection are the indifference and temporizing so often encountered. Many clergymen to whom homosexuals appeal for aid are so immersed in the delights of theological speculation or plans for some new stained glass window as to find little time for less pleasant pursuits.

Upon being pressed, this sort will ooze a synthetic charitableness, saying, "Come into the church by all means, but please soft-pedal your homosexuality. You have a fine choir voice and so long as there is no stir, I certainly won't condemn you. After all, the old Sodom story is in considerable textual disrepute these days anyway and the mission of the church is to save sinners. I don't see why this would exclude you, my son."

So runs the thinking of the sweepers under carpets, but large numbers of homosexuals want higher standards of honesty than this. They charge the churches with harboring far too many scribes and pharisees and expect the church to face the whole homosexual question squarely and fairly.

This, religion must do or else relinquish its claim to universality, is their demand, feeling that if the church is unable to supply adequate answers to ethical questions why then honor it any longer?

To unnumbered homosexuals the failure of the churches is of two sorts: a failure of commission, instanced in countless inhumanities vented upon countless homosexual men and women; a failure of omission, shown in an unreadiness and unwillingness to wrestle with the knotty question of the acceptance of the homosexual in the order of things.