In arguing against gay unions – Seventh-Day Adventist editor Johnsson says he’s “not primarily concerned with what the state should or should not do in recognizing these unions.” He claims to “abhor attitudes and actions that single out homosexuals for scorn, derision, or abuse,” though he’s nonetheless against their enjoying the psychosexual intimacy he reserves for his fellow heterosexuals. Johnsson is sensitive enough to say: “I accept … that from their earliest sexual awareness they found themselves to be ‘that way’; that they have suffered – and still suffer – in trying to deal with this identity; that this is not something they freely choose. Although I find their pain difficult to enter into, I accept its reality.” Perhaps not, for he adds: “But inclination does not have to determine action” and he goes on to confuse deep-seated homosexual orientation with temptations “to lie … to fornicate or become a drunkard.” Would he confuse domestic violence with heterosexual “inclination?” (SDA’s Ministry magazine notes “that one woman in five in our American congregations is a victim of domestic violence.” ) His admission that homosexuality is “alien to my makeup and difficult for me to grasp” is, indeed, the case. No doubt a later SDA editor will know better – as presumably Johnsson knows better than SDA pioneer Ellen G. White who, notwithstanding her better insights otherwise, taught that spilling “seed” outside heterosexual intercourse killed seed people.

Moore is a Southern Baptist Seminary professor. His denomination split from northern Baptist churches in order to perpetuate “Bible”-based slavery in18th century America and “Bible”-based racial segregation into the second half of 20th century America. Long after the slaves were dead and gone, Southern Baptists finally reinterpreted the Bible and apologized for their bigotry. Astonishingly, Moore now claims that “the gay liberation movement in the mainline churches stands firmly in the tradition of the segregationist churches of the Jim Crow-era South.” Admitting that, during the 1950s and 1960s, “many [?] of our churches were ignorant of just how captive they were to a culture of racial oppression” he fails to see how that same “Bible”-based cultural conservatism now drives the oppression of gay people. Following his white supremacist forebears, he faults the liberators of today’s oppressed (calling them, this time, “the mainline churches” – cf. the northern churches of a bygone era). Moore grants that “Baptist pastors once mistakenly thought they could preach the gospel and still stand in the church-house door blocking out people for whom Christ died from joining the fellowship.” But then he has the self-serving and illogical audacity to identify today’s supporters of oppressed homosexuals with yesteryear’s oppressors of black people! He says: “As Southern Baptists, we’ve seen all of this before.” Indeed they have!

Trading on a word association with C. S. Lewis, Touchstone calls itself “A Journal of Mere Christianity.” But the “mere” thing about this magazine is its neocon narrow-mindedness. In fact, Touchstone contradicts Lewis’ spot-on recognition that “the real reason for all the pother [over homosexuality is] neither Christian nor ethical” but simply because, to heterosexuals, it’s taken to be “disreputable and unmentionable, and,” he adds wryly, “happens also to be a crime.”

Executive editor James M. Kushiner dishonors gay people (none of whom asked to be gay) by placing quotation marks around “gay” and “gay unions.” He makes fun of their not “clamoring for more time in the confessional or for access to vows of celibacy” while he enjoys marriage and six children. So much for the Lord’s law of concern for the needs of our neighbors based in what we know to be our own needs. That was Jesus’ interpretive touchstone. It’s not Kushiner’s – at least with gay people. When United Methodists observe that “faithful Christians can disagree on the compatibility of homosexual practice with Christian teaching” and Episcopalians note that “we are of different minds [on issues of homosexuality but] we do not believe these should be church-dividing issues,” Kushiner attacks them as though Paul had never written Romans 14. Attacking United Presbyterians who have ordained “practicing homosexuals and bless[ed] homosexual unions,” contrary to the denomination’s constitution, he seems to put more stock in a constitution than in the canonical text of the Golden Rule.

Below Kushiner’s piece is an ad promoting Touchstone editors who are available for speaking engagements. It’s headlined: “Lend me your ears.” That’s what gay people want from those at Touchstone – ears that will hear them. As the cell phone commercials keep asking: “Can you hear me now?” Sadly, at Touchstone, as at SBC Life, Adventist Review and elsewhere, they can’t. Or, they won’t. And yet, as Bonhoeffer said, listening is the very first thing we owe the oppressed.