Dear Editor:

Earl C. Apel asserts that the controversy over ordination of homosexuals is like the 1960s' Civil Rights Movement. It is not. The Civil Rights Movement was about the denial of rights to black citizens based on their race. Those rights were granted by the Constitution and the fourteenth amendment, The Rights of Citizens, ratified in 1868.

The Presbyterian Church is a community of believers. Membership is not a right... it is a matter of belief and conformity to orthodoxy and meeting standards of Christian behaviour. Leadership within the Church, also, is not a right, but a calling and a privilege. It requires (or should require) adherence to certain tenets of belief and conformity to standards of righteous behaviour. Homosexual behaviour does not meet the standard. It is not an issue of civil rights, but of sinfulness.

The issues are whether the practice of homosexuality is sinful or not and whether or not the Church will ordain homosexuals despite their behaviour... which the Church considers sinful in accordance with the Bible. Mr. Apel, his pastor emeritus Hal Porter, Mr. Tim Cahn and many others refuse to recognize that homosexuality is a sin. There is no way to bridge this gulf. Claims that Christ bridges the gulf are false because our Lord demands repentance from sin. Some of us believe, as the Bible teaches, that homosexual behaviour is a sin. Some do not. We are not both right.

The blacks at lunch counters were trying to obtain their civil rights as Americans. These rights were being denied based on their race... something that was illegal. That is very different from what is at issue in gay ordination.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were imposed on the Southern states by the Federal Government. These laws were passed by a Congress controlled by Democrats (although Southern Democrats opposed them) with the help of northern and liberal Republicans. President Lyndon B. Johnson, a southern Democrat who had seen the winds of change in the way the South voted in the 1960 election, was a chief advocate of these laws because he was anxious to sign up as many potential Democratic voters as possible to offset the shift in voting patterns by Southern whites from the Democratic to the Republican Party. I also think he was, for a variety of reasons, committed to equal rights for blacks.

The kneel-ins, sit-ins, pray-ins, 1955 Montgomery bus boycott, 1961 Freedom rides, the Selma-to Montgomery march in the Spring of 1965 all contributed to a change of climate in the South. That change came when white Southerners began convicting white men for crimes against blacks and white Civil Rights workers. In no small part, this was a white Christian phenomenon. Most whites never saw Civil Rights demonstrators as sinners... lawbreakers, agitators, and "uppity", yes... but not as sinful. In the end that was the difference. Additionally, Ku Klux Klan violence in defense of segregation, such as the horrendous attack on the Baptist Church in Birmingham in September 1963 which killed several black girls, disgusted many white Southerners and softened their hearts.

Granting people their civil rights as defined by the U.S. Constitution, which was what the Civil Rights Movement was about, is a long way from accepting sin and deeming it righteous, which is what ordaining unrepentant homosexuals is about. The humanity of homosexuals is not in question. Homosexuals are human and, like all of us, sinners. What is in question is the way we interpret the Word of God and what defines righteousness. Ultimately, the Civil Rights Movement was about justice. The issues over which we are struggling in the PCUSA are not about justice; social or otherwise. If Mr. Apel wants God's justice, God help him. What he had better hope for is what we all hope for in Jesus Christ, God's grace and forgiveness.

Yours in Him,