Gay Manifesto

"Is homosexuality a manifestation of sin? Is it a sickness?" So go the questions that lead off the July-August issue of Trends, a bimonthly adult education journal produced by the Christian Education staff of the United Presbyterian Church. The answer? A resounding and very un-Presbyterian no.

Trends editors Dennis Shoemaker and Florence Bryant include a statement that the issue does not represent the "official position" of the United Presbyterian Church. They also print a declaration of the denomination's 1970 general assembly that "the practice of homosexuality is sin." But having bowed to the official position, the magazine then goes its own way in order to "stimulate inquiry."

In an opening "perspective," Editor Shoemaker dismisses Old Testament texts against homosexuality as part of the Levitical "Holiness Code" that kept Hebrews different from their idolatrous neighbors. As for St. Paul's strictures, the editorial notes, he believed that "all mankind was sinful."

Editor Bryant, in an article, "The Church and the Homosexual," proposes that the church ordain gay ministers and bless "permanent and faithful" gay unions. But the article likely to cause the most furor is one by Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, authors of Lesbian/ Woman. Among other controversial points, they raise an outlandish suggestion: that because lesbians have removed themselves from the "battle of the sexes," they are "the only women capable of loving men."

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