Jack Jenkins at ThinkProgress, reporting on Rabbi Denise Eger’s installation as the first gay president of Reform Judaism, asked a controversial question: Can anti-gay religious groups survive in a country that embraces LGBT rights?
Pointing to the many debates going on within more conservative churches right now about how to grapple with LGBT rights, and to demographic changes that suggest that young people embrace LGBT rights, Jenkins seems convinced that the days of the openly homophobic church are winding down.
I’m a bit less certain. After all, lots of mainline churches have been ordaining women as ministers for years now, but plenty of denominations hold out and maintain strongly un-feminist, complementarian views of marriage. I can easily see a similar thing happening with homosexuality. The tricky part, I think, will be more about how the churches write their membership policies and interact with the public domain. Will evangelical churches be able to put their swords down on the gay marriage fight, even if they continue to exclude gay people from marriage within their churches (or from the ministry, or from teaching at church school, whatever)? If they can’t recommend ex-gay therapy anymore, what will they do about gay people in their communities? I can imagine acceptance – however begrudging – of legal rights for LGBT people alongside a theology that condemns homosexuality, but that would be a pretty big shift in culture in and of itself for some denominations.
What do you think? Are anti-gay churches digging their own graves?