Ordaining of Homosexuals

Carol Lindstrom Luedtke’s thoughtful piece on the ordination of practicing homosexuals to be pastors in their churches was a surprisingly compassionate opinion on a very divisive religious issue (“Modern American Church Needs No Scarlet Letter,” Op-Ed Page, Jan. 24). The Times is to be commended for publishing one woman’s refreshing counterpoint to a usually hard-line approach to gay clergy joining their heterosexual peers. I differ, however, with her opinion that Saint Paul condemned homosexuality in the New Testament. Recent scholarship holds that he never suggested there was any historical or legal reason to oppose homosexual behavior. But if he did in fact object to it, it was purely on the basis of functional, contemporary moral standards (see Yale Prof. John Boswell’s “Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality,” University of Chicago Press, 1980). Because Paul wrote in Greek, translation exegesis and textual data can be variously explained.

But the bottom line to this controversy is that Jesus Christ never ever spoke one negative word about gay men or lesbians or even about homosexuality. He frequently socialized with the outcasts of society, preferring them to the self-righteous Pharisees who were the fundamentalists of his day. Surely Jesus would embrace even practicing homosexual Lutheran pastors in San Francisco.

MARSHAL A. PHILLIPS

Los Angeles