Subject: A Soulforce Open Letter to Bishop Grove and the United Methodist
From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 1999 08:56:42 EST

OK to Publish in whole or in part.
(For more information contact Mel White at <<JC OnTrial [email-masked]>>)

AN OPEN LETTER  
To Bishop William Boyd Grove, Presiding Officer
    The Trial of the Reverend Jimmy Creech, 
    November 17-18, 1999, Grand Island, Nebraska
To Bishop Joel Martinez, the United Methodist Bishop for Nebraska and 
To the good people of the United Methodist Church. 

Dear Sisters and Brothers,

We beg you, in the name of Jesus, do not allow the trial of the Rev. Jimmy 
Creech to convene in Grand Island, Nebraska, November 17, 1999.  You may 
sincerely believe that this is a private legal matter between you and one of 
your clergy who has broken a law.  You may be convinced that this is a case 
of pastoral discipline that is no one's business but your own.  
Unfortunately, the whole world knows what is really happening in Grand 
Island. 

This rare church trial is taking place because Jimmy Creech dared to bless 
the loving relationship of two gay men.  By trying him in this public forum 
you are saying to the nation that you find their loving relationship so 
offensive that a clergy who offers them God's blessing should be persecuted 
and punished to the full extent of church law.  With Methodism's roots 
planted deep in John and Charles Wesley's concern for the outcast, how can 
you try Jimmy Creech for his concern for gay and lesbian people? You are 
trying a good man for breaking a bad law and it is that bad law that is on 
trial, not Jimmy Creech. 

This trial is another highly visible assault on America's sexual minorities 
that will be broadcast to the nation.  Every newspaper and newsmagazine 
report, every radio and television newscast from Grand Island will 
inadvertently inflame the debate about homosexuality and homosexuals.  
Televangelists and religious talk-show hosts will use Grand Island to fill 
the airwaves (and their directmail, fundraising letters) with more false and 
inflammatory anti-gay rhetoric.  Skinheads, white supremacists, militia, 
Christian Reconstructionists and other extremist groups will have their 
anti-homosexual bigotry re-enforced. The news will even trickle down to 
drunken kids with baseball bats.

Whatever your verdict, this trial will further confuse and divide the church 
of Christ.  It will support discrimination in public policy against 
homosexuals.  It will help ruin lives, divide families, and split churches.  
And it will justify fear, anger, bigotry and acts of violence against us.  If 
you allow this trial to continue, you will break the heart of Christ, bring 
shame to His body the church, and commit an act of spiritual violence against 
God's gay and lesbian children

One day, in the not-too-distant-future, the body of Christ will finally 
acknowledge the truth about God's lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered 
children.  Why not do it in Grand Island?  According to more than one million 
members of the American Psychological, Sociological, Medical, Pediatric, 
Psychiatric, and Social Worker Associations the verdict is in. Homosexuality 
is neither a sickness nor a sin. In 1994 the American Psychological 
Association summarized a quarter-of-a-century's scientific and clinical 
research on homosexuality with these words:

"The research on homosexuality is very clear.  Homosexuality is neither 
mental illness nor moral depravity.  It is simply the way a minority of our 
population expresses human love and sexuality.  Study after study documents 
the mental health of gay men and lesbians.  Studies of judgment, stability, 
reliability, social and vocation adaptiveness all show that gay men and 
lesbians function every bit as well as heterosexuals." 

Although science is still not clear how we are formed, why not take this 
moment in Grand Island to admit that God has formed us and loves us exactly 
as we are.  Our sexual orientation is simply another human characteristic 
like the shape of one's hands or the color of one's eyes.  Unfortunately, the 
church is always the last to acknowledge scientific truth.  It is tragic that 
you continue to ignore years of scientific, psychological, historic, and even 
biblical research in our favor.  But you cannot ignore what you know in your 
hearts about us. 

Close your eyes and remember the names and faces of the homosexual and 
bisexual people of faith who have inspired and informed your life.  We are 
your friends and colleagues in the United Methodist Church.  You know from 
personal experience that we love Christ and serve Christ's body alongside you 
as pastors, counselors, teachers, musicians, and church administrators.  You 
know that over the centuries as clergy and laity we have given our lives in 
faithful, creative, and committed service.  Please, in the name of Christ, 
help end the persecution of sexual minorities by the very church we love and 
so faithfully serve.

Before you place Jimmy Creech on trial again for demonstrating Christ's love 
to the sexual outcasts in your midst, dare to consider how history will 
remember you and your United Methodist denomination for this unconscionable 
act.  For the past two thousand years, the church has tried its martyrs and 
its heroes for their courageous and prophetic stance.  Please, don't do it 
again to Jimmy Creech.

For decades courageous individuals and organizations within United Methodism 
have stood faithfully for the truth about God's gay children.  You have 
ignored the witness of the Methodist Federation for Social Action, the 
Reconciling Churches Program, Affirmation and CORNET.  You have closed your 
hearts to appeals on our behalf from Gregory Dell, Leslie Penrose, Jimmy 
Creech, Jim Lawson, Don Fado, the more than sixty other clergy who stood with 
him at the holy union in Sacramento, and other courageous clergy and laity 
around the nation.  You have sacrificed dozens of gay and lesbian clergy, 
demeaned their relationships and pushed them from their United Methodist 
ministries. You have studied, discussed, and debated endlessly.  You have 
tabled, postponed and delayed. Now you are about to put on trial another 
United Methodist clergyman who had the courage to act.  Be advised.  We have 
no option but to do our best to prevent this trial from taking place.

We are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered people of faith, our friends and 
families.  Many of us are United Methodists.  Some of us aren't.  We are 
committed to the nonviolent "soul force" principles of Jesus, Gandhi, and 
King.  We come to Grand Island, Nebraska, in the spirit of Christ whose last 
words to us were: "A new commandment give I unto you, that you love one 
another."  This trial is not an act of love.  It is an act of spiritual 
violence against us.  And we are determined to show relentless love in 
response.

To counter that violence we have invited the Reverend Jimmy Creech (and any 
United Methodist clergy who care to join him) to conduct a same-gender holy 
union on the eve of the trial, Tuesday, October 16, 1999, in Grand Island, 
Nebraska.  We are inviting gay and lesbian couples who would like to reaffirm 
their vows to join in that celebration as well.  

On Wednesday, October 17, 1999, if you insist on trying Jimmy Creech, we are 
committed to a nonviolent "Soulforce Direct Action" to prevent the trial from 
taking place.  The endless discussion and debate about homosexuality and the 
United Methodist Church is going nowhere.  Harvey Cox said, "Not to decide is 
to decide." This trial makes it clear. You have decided that our loving 
relationships are not worthy to be blessed by the church. 

 We aren't coming to Grand Island to ask you to bless our relationships.  God 
does that already.  In fact, our loving relationships are God's gift to us, 
evidence of God's presence in our lives.  We are coming to Grand Island to 
prevent you from another act of spiritual violence that demeans, dishonors 
and discounts our love for each other.  In blessing our relationships, Jimmy 
Creech and the others have refused to obey unjust laws that were created to 
deny God's gifts to us.  We pray daily that one day you, too, will add your 
blessing to what God has already done.  Until then, we come asking you to 
stop these acts of spiritual violence against us.  

To bishops Grove and Martinez, to the thirty-five member jury pool, and to 
every trial participant we must add these words.  Between now and November 
18, the whole world will be watching you.  Ask the Spirit of Truth to lead 
you.  Listen to the still small voice of God.  Then, have the courage to take 
your stand against this tragic trial.  

On the morning of November 17 stand with us outside the courtroom.  Refuse to 
add your name to this moment of infamy.  Link your arms in our arms.  Add 
your voice to our voices.  In so doing, you have the opportunity to make glad 
the heart of Christ, to help heal his wounded body the church, and to prevent 
another act of spiritual violence against God's lesbian, gay, bisexual, and 
transgendered children. 

Gandhi says, "It is as much my moral obligation to refuse to cooperate with 
evil as it is to cooperate with good."  In our eyes, this trial is an act of 
spiritual violence against us and thus evil.  We cannot be silent any longer. 
 We beg you to intervene.  If you had the opportunity to stand between the 
assassin and those innocent Evangelical teenagers who died in their Fort 
Worth Baptist Church, you would have risked your life to save them.  If you 
could have placed your body between those drunken kids and Matthew Shepard 
before they broke his skull and tied him to the fence to die, you would have 
done it without a second thought.  

You are men and women of courage and commitment. If the trial is not convened 
we will bless your names and celebrate your courage.  If you insist on 
convening the trial, we are prepared to intervene nonviolently.  We cannot 
stand by in grief and silence any longer.  This is your chance to place your 
body between God's gay and lesbian children and the untruth that leads to 
their suffering and death.  Please, do not enter that courtroom.  Hear Jesus' 
words to the Pharisees, "You know the law by heart, but you have forgotten 
the heart of the law: justice, mercy, and truth." 

James Russell Lowell wrote these words.  We commend them to you:

"Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side.
Some great cause, God's new messiah, offering each the bloom or blight.
And the choice goes by forever 'twixt the darkness and the light."

May God give us all wisdom to know the right and the courage to do it before 
our "choice goes by forever."

Mel