Homosexual pastor fights hostile mood

By Lacey Fosburgh

New York Times

SAN FRANCISCO Five years ago, a young man who grew up in Houston and had wanted to join the church since he was 17, was ordained a minister here at the United Church of Christ, or, as it is also called, the Congregational Church.

The ceremony was not unusual, but the man was.

He was the first openly avowed homosexual to be ordained a minister by any leading church denomination. The investiture, which came after two years of struggle, provoked fear, opposition and warnings that approval would next be sought for bestiality and incest.

For five years, William Reagan Johnson, now 30, was the only openly avowed homosexual to be ordained by any leading church. Then recently Ellen Marie Barrett, an openly declared lesbian, won ordination from the Episcopal Church.

And now, says Johnson, "We are two. That's progress."

The last five years have been long and difficult for Johnson. He has traveled across the country from one church-related meeting to another, talking to people about sexuality and homosexuality.

In this period he has changed from a quiet, young seminarian who struggled alone in his effort to win ordination to a national spokesman of a growing but still largely underground interdominational homosexual rights movement.

What he has learned from all this, he said in an interview, is that there is widespread fear and ignorance about homosexuality in the church community. Further, he said there is a distinct discomfort with sexuality in general.

"The church, and the heterosexual clergy," he said, "is still hung up on the Victorian ethic that sees a conflict

between being sexual and being Christian. I'm convinced that people are more upset about the fact that I am sexual and open about it than that I am homosexual."

One of the main causes of hostility to homosexuals in the church, he said, is unwillingness to give what is seen a role of authority and power the ministry to a person who is regarded as inferior and unworthy.

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Among the advancements for homosexuals in the last five years, Johnson pointed to these as the most significant:

Passage in 1975 of civil rights planks, including rights for homosexuals, by the National Council of Churches and by the Unitarian Church, the United Church of Christ and many local Quaker chapters even though the planks are secular and do not address the question of whether homosexuality is a sin.

• The creation for the first time of homosexual study groups or homosexual caucuses. Now numbering 13, these are secret associations of seminarians and clergy members where people may discuss confidentially their common fears of exposure, ostracism and oppression. At issue, Johson says, is the very real possibility that they may lose their jobs or be denied ordination if they disclose their homosexuality publicly.

The foundation, mainly through Johnson's efforts, of the Interdenominal Task Force on Gay People in the Church, to work politically in churches for recognition of homosexuals' rights.

Johnson thinks it will be a long time, if ever, before he is offered a traditional parish to administer. But he says he does not want one. Instead, he considers himself a politician and an advocate for the human potential movement in the often inhospitable environment of the church.