I happened to be in Washington, D.C., in October when 300,000 gay-rights activists gathered there to march. The day was chilly, and gray clouds spit raindrops on the column of marchers snaking through the capital. As I stood on the sidelines, directly in front of the White House, I watched a startling confrontation take place.
About 40 policemen, many of them on horseback, had formed a protective circle around a small group of outspoken Christian protesters. Thanks to huge, orange posters announcing hell-fire, the tiny knot of “true believers” was managing to attract most of the press photographers. And despite being outnumbered by the gays 15,000 to 1, the protesters were yelling inflammatory slogans at the marchers.
“Faggots go home!” their leader screamed into a microphone, and the others took up the chant: “Faggots go home, faggots go home.…” When that got tiresome, they switched to “Shame-on-you-for-what-you-do.” Between chants the leader delivered minisermons about false priests, wolves in sheeps’ clothing, and the hottest fires in hell (which, he said, were reserved for sodomites and other perverts).
“AIDS, AIDS, it’s comin’ your way” was the last taunt in the protesters’ repertoire, and the one shouted with the most enthusiasm. I, along with the protesters, had seen the group of marchers at the head of the column: a sad procession of several hundred persons with AIDS—some in wheelchairs, some with the gaunt and sunken faces of concentration camp survivors, some covered with purplish sores. Listening to the chant, I could not fathom how anyone could wish that fate on another human being.
The gay marchers themselves had mixed responses to these Christians. The rowdy ones blew kisses or retorted, “Bigots! Bigots! Shame on you!” One group of lesbians got a few laughs by yelling in unison, “We want your wives!”
Among the marchers were at least 3,000 who identified themselves with various religious groups: the Catholic “Dignity” movement, the Episcopalian group “Integrity,” and even a sprinkling of Mormons and Seventh-day Adventists. Over 1,000 marched under the banner of Metropolitan Community Churches (MCC), a denomination that professes a mostly evangelical theology except for its stance on homosexuality. This last group had a poignant reply to the beleaguered Christian protesters: they drew even and stopped to face them, then sang, “Jesus loves you, this we know, for the Bible tells us so.”
The abrupt ironies in that scene of confrontation stayed with me long after I left Washington. On the one side were “righteous” Christians defending pure doctrine (not even the National Council of Churches has deemed the MCC worthy of membership). On the other were “sinners,” many of whom openly admit to homosexual practice. Yet one side spewed out hate and the other sang of Jesus’ love.
Another scene, one with haunting similarities to the confrontation in Washington, came to my mind.
John 8 tells of a time when Jesus himself faced two contrary parties. (Although the passage is missing from the earliest copies of John, the story probably records an actual event.) On the one side stood the “righteous” ones: Pharisees and teachers of the law. On the other stood a condemned sinner, a woman caught in the act of adultery. The Pharisees had dragged her into the temple courts to lay a trap. Would Jesus follow Mosaic law and order her execution by stoning—even though the Romans forbade it—or would he go against the Law?
In his masterful style, Jesus sprang the trap back on the accusers. “If any one of you is without sin,” he said, “let him be the first to throw a stone at her.” As Jesus stooped down and wrote on the ground with his finger, the fractious crowd filed silently away—all except the woman who had sinned. “Neither do I condemn you,” Jesus said to her at last. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”
Jesus’ response seems to offer an important principle that applies to everyone, “righteous” and “sinner.” To those tempted toward self-righteousness or smugness, Jesus gives a word of correction. He summons out into the open the sins we strive to keep hidden: We have no right to scorn others, for we, too, are sinners.
Self-righteousness poses a special danger to people like—well, like us evangelicals who value correct doctrine and preach high moral standards. But it poses an equal danger to people like the MCC marchers, some of whom search diligently for biblical loopholes to excuse their sexual proclivities. For all of us, the message is the same: Bring to the surface sins that you would rather repress or rationalize away.
Jesus gave a strikingly different message to the obvious “sinner” in the story. To the woman caught in the very act, he offered not execution, but acceptance and forgiveness. There is no sin—not murder, not adultery, not homosexual promiscuity—powerful enough to exclude a person from acceptance by God. Only a refusal to repent stands between a sinner and God’s free gift of forgiveness.
Joy Davidman used to say that Christians are not necessarily more “moral” than anyone else in the world, just more forgiven. What does a “forgiven” person look like? That is a good question, one I have asked myself often since that day of conflict in Washington, D.C.
