RELIGION / JOHN DART : Church for Homosexuals Sees Need for Children’s Ministries

As many as 10 children show up for Sunday school at the Metropolitan Community Church in the Valley--a meager turnout for most churches. However, at overwhelmingly gay and lesbian churches such as this North Hollywood congregation, it represents progress.

It may surprise outsiders that religious education and child care are offered at all by many congregations of the Hollywood-based Metropolitan Community Churches. The church body defines homosexuality as a natural orientation for some people and it encourages committed, same-sex relationships.

Yet, the denomination is discovering from its experience and from an internal survey that children’s ministries are a must for its nearly 30,000 members in 280 churches in the United States and foreign countries.

A churchwide survey of 900 women, 92% of whom said they were lesbians and 5% of whom said they were bisexual, has shown that 37% have been married to a man at some point in their lives. Nearly as many--35%--were parents or caring for children.

The survey, released this year, did not determine how many of the children still live at home. But Metropolitan Community Churches officials say that congregations are faced with accommodating not only the natural offspring of divorced mothers, but also children who are in the legal care of gays and lesbians.

Among those who come to Sunday school at the 208-member North Hollywood church are two preschoolers adopted by a single man and the foster child of a woman member, said the Rev. Barbara Segat, a former private school teacher who volunteers as Sunday school coordinator.

“The foster parent said she couldn’t attend church here unless we had such a program,” Segat said.

Segat said that the Metropolitan Community Church in the Valley has had a child-care program on and off for a number of years, “but it was not active when I came aboard a year ago,” she said.

Also last year, the biennial convention of the 24-year-old denomination, meeting in Phoenix, offered for the first time a vacation Bible school, a children’s music camp and licensed day care for delegates with children in tow.

Those provisions resulted from efforts of the Rev. Karen Gregg, who heads children’s ministries for the church’s Southwest District. In 1987, she organized a Sunday school for the Long Beach church that eventually grew to serve 30 children in four classes.

“We had to train our people to know it’s OK to care about children,” Gregg said, adding that unfounded claims that homosexuals are child molesters had made churches hesitant about beginning children’s programs.

She and her partner, Sue Kirkland, have six children under 6 years old: Three are adopted, two are foster children and one is under their legal guardianship.

“I always wanted to be a mother, but I gave up on the idea of giving birth when I was younger because I knew I was a lesbian,” she said. “My family would have objected to me having children without being married.”

At first, the Metropolitan Community Churches, which started with one church in Huntington Park in 1968, were led and attended mostly by male homosexuals.

In more recent years, women have climbed to at least 40% among the membership and clergy ranks.

Over the years, a small percentage of the members have been supportive heterosexuals of both sexes--friends or relatives of gay and lesbian members.

One surprising finding from last year’s survey was that 56% of the women said they had been the victims of either incest, rape, molestation, battery or other types of physical or sexual abuse, according to Julie Tizard, a regional church representative who compiled survey results.

“The people who go to MCC congregations are those who have sought out the spiritual side of their lives--despite the fact that most churches reject their lifestyle,” said Tizard, a Phoenix resident who works as a commercial airline pilot.

Most Christian denominations profess to welcome churchgoers of any sexual preference, but more conservative churches urge homosexuals to remain celibate, if not seek medical or psychiatric help. Mainline churches tend to be more tolerant, but usually have reached impasses at national conventions on whether openly gay and lesbian members may become clergy. Metropolitan Community Churches was recently rebuffed in attempts to establish a national dialogue with the National Council of Churches as a prelude to seeking membership as a denomination.

Since the church’s congregations are generally small, it can be a struggle to provide religious education and child care.

In the Antelope Valley, the 40-member Sunrise Metropolitan Community Church of Hi Desert had to suspend its Sunday school for a half-dozen children after the congregation moved from rented church quarters to a one-room building leased in Lancaster.

“It’s surprising to most folks that we have families and that we want them raised with religious faith,” said Alan Robertson, a layman who has served as the congregation’s pastor for four years. The church has plans to restart its Sunday school.

“There are budget implications, but we are hoping to show other small churches in the denomination that it can be done,” Robertson said.