Tag: LGBT

Pompeo’s Kansas church asks God to ‘give him strength’ in Senate confirmation process

April 17, 2018

“Mike has enemies because of his faith who may try to paint him in a poor light and make it difficult for him to reach the Secretary of State position,” the pastor of nominee Mike Pompeo wrote to his congregation.

By Bobby Ross Jr. | For Religion News Service

WICHITA, Kan. — Under fire from Muslim, Jewish and human rights groups for a record of anti-Muslim remarks, Secretary of State nominee Mike Pompeo is receiving spiritual support from his home church in Kansas.

Eastminster Presbyterian Church, where Pompeo is a member and former deacon and Sunday school teacher, prayed Sunday (April 15) that God would “give him strength” in his uncertain confirmation process.

“This morning, we want to pray for our dear brother Mike Pompeo as he goes through the confirmation process,” the Rev. Warren Snyder, Eastminster Presbyterian’s assistant pastor, said as members bowed their heads.

“We ask that you would be glorified in his life, that you would be lifted up, that you would strengthen him and his wife (Susan) and his son (Nick) as he goes through this process,” Snyder prayed to God. “Give him strength. Help him to stand.”

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee began hearings Thursday on whether to confirm Pompeo — the outgoing CIA director nominated by President Trump to replace Rex Tillerson in the top diplomatic post.

In advance of Pompeo’s testimony before the Senate panel, the Rev. Stan Van Den Berg, the Wichita church’s senior pastor, issued a call to prayer Wednesday. He cited a request from Susan Pompeo for “specific prayer during this very important and stressful time.”

Read the full story.

Religion News Service is a national wire service with more than 100 secular and religious media subscribers, including USA Today, the Washington Post and NPR.

When adoption agencies can turn away gay prospective parents, what happens to the kids?

March 23, 2018

Those who study the issue say it’s hard to tell exactly how such rules governing adoption affect the numbers of children placed in “forever” homes. 

By Bobby Ross Jr. | For Religion News Service

OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma lawmakers may soon sanction private adoption agencies turning away same-sex couples and other prospective parents who don’t meet their religious criteria, a possibility cheered by the Roman Catholic Church and many evangelical Christians and lambasted as discriminatory by gay rights groups.

It’s a conflict playing out across the nation, and both sides say that if the other wins, the number of children placed in loving homes will fall.

Seven states have passed laws — including Alabama, South Dakota and Texas last year — like the one proposed in Oklahoma. A bill with comparable language also has been introduced in Congress, according to The Associated Press. At least two other states — Georgia and Kansas — are debating similar legislation. At the same time, some local governments are withholding support from agencies that won’t serve gay prospective parents.

The LGBT community says the Oklahoma measure would result in fewer adoptions as prospective gay parents are turned away by agencies. Conservative Christians say failing to protect the right of adoption agencies to follow their faith would result in fewer adoptions, because those agencies would close before they act against their beliefs.

Those who study the issue say it’s hard to tell exactly how such rules governing adoption affect the numbers of children placed in “forever” homes. Still, the assertions from both sides on the matter have been definitive.

Passage of Oklahoma’s Senate Bill 1140 would “result in a disastrous reduction in adoption and foster placements and put 9,000 young people — currently in the system — in jeopardy,” said Troy Stevenson, executive director of Freedom Oklahoma, as the LGBT advocacy organization launched a statewide media campaign this month against the bill.

The numbers may not be there to back him up.

“I don’t know of any empirical evidence on the topic,” said Elizabeth Bartholet, faculty director of the Child Advocacy Program at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Mass.

“In general, any barriers to adoption are likely to decrease numbers of homes for kids in need,” Bartholet added in an email. “But, of course, it’s possible that religious agencies would shut down rather than put their religious principles aside.”

Read the full story.

Religion News Service is a national wire service with more than 100 secular and religious media subscribers, including USA Today, the Washington Post and NPR.

Related: Under new Texas law, faith-based adoption agencies win protections (reporting from Abilene, Texas)

After a rescinded invitation, Ken Ham talks about God at an Oklahoma university

March 6, 2018

Its president cited the historic commitment of the public university to the critical and civil examination of ideas, no matter how controversial.

By Bobby Ross Jr. | For Religion News Service

EDMOND, Okla. — Students at the University of Central Oklahoma got a lesson in free speech as the 16,000-student public university welcomed a presentation by Ken Ham, a nationally known creationist who rejects Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.

The lecture Monday by the founder of the Ark Encounter — a $102 million, 800-acre Noah’s Ark theme park that opened in Williamstown, Ky., two years ago — came weeks after the university’s student government association rescinded an invitation for Ham to speak on campus. Some students, who deem Ham homophobic, objected to student funds being used to bring him to campus.

After the student group’s decision made national headlines, UCO President Don Betz stepped in and reinvited Ham to offer his talk on “Genesis and the State of the Culture” at the public university’s Constitution Hall.

University officials also built a forum on free speech rights around Ham’s visit: two days of programming on understanding and exercising the First Amendment guarantee.

Betz cited the historic commitment of the 127-year-old university, about 15 miles north of Oklahoma City, to critical and civil examination of ideas, no matter how controversial. And ultimately, Betz funded Ham’s $4,500 fee through unrestricted donations made to the university by individuals and organizations, said Adrienne Nobles, a UCO spokeswoman.

“No tuition or state-appropriated funds were used,” Nobles said.

Ham is president of the Christian apologetics organization Answers in Genesis, which also owns the $27 million, 75,000-square-foot Creation Museum, west of the Cincinnati Airport in Petersburg, Ky.

“It never used to be controversial for a Christian to come and speak at a secular university,” Ham told Religion News Service before addressing a crowd of about 500. “But it certainly seems to be controversial today, not just for Christians — but for anyone who has conservative values — to come and speak at universities.

“We have generations today that are so secular in their thinking, and they have this idea that you have to embrace all views,” he added. “But, of course, they don’t want to embrace my view that I start with the Bible, and I have a particular worldview because of that.”

Read the full story.

Religion News Service is a national wire service with more than 100 secular and religious media subscribers, including USA Today, the Washington Post and NPR.

Related: ‘If Christians don’t believe in a literal Genesis, they have no foundation for their doctrine’ (reporting from Edmond, Okla.): Creationist Ken Ham discusses his belief in a 6,000-year-old Earth, what might have happened if Noah ‘had swatted those two mosquitoes’ and why he views the Bible’s opening 11 chapters as so important.

Under new Texas law, faith-based adoption agencies win protections

July 10, 2017

Despite opposition from gay-rights groups, Lone Star lawmakers passed the Freedom to Serve Children Act.

By Bobby Ross Jr. | The Christian Chronicle

ABILENE, Texas — At age 17, Jennifer Griffith discovered she was pregnant.

The daughter of a pro-life advocate, Griffith knew she couldn’t abort her baby. Instead, the unmarried teen turned to Christian Homes and Family Services for help.

The 55-year-old ministry — based in this West Texas city where the wind blows hot all day and the sunset explodes with colors each evening — worked with her to find a faithful couple to adopt her baby.

“I wanted my child to have two parents who were married and who were going to raise their child in the Christian faith,” said Griffith, who grew up in the West Freeway Church of Christ in Fort Worth.

A new Lone Star State law — set to take effect Sept. 1 — protects the freedom of faith-based organizations such as Christian Homes and Family Services to adhere to their “sincerely held religious beliefs.”

Under House Bill 3859 — passed by the Texas Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Greg Abbott — state-licensed nonprofits can require, for example, that prospective parents be active church members who attend worship services weekly.

Moreover, taxpayer-funded charities can decline to place children with same-sex couples. However, in such cases, the ministries must refer the couples to more suitable providers.

The law also will permit agencies to place children in religious schools, decline to refer teens for abortions and refuse to enter into contracts with organizations that don’t share their beliefs.

Religious groups make up roughly a quarter of Texas’ 210 state-licensed child-welfare providers. Texas is home to more than 250,000 members of Churches of Christ — the most of any state.

“We had to create an environment in which the state’s work can coexist with the work of faith-based organizations, and I thought this bill really succeeded in doing that,” said Sherri Statler, president and CEO of Christian Homes and Family Services, which is associated with Churches of Christ.

But House Bill 3859 drew fierce opposition from gay-rights advocates and progressive religious groups. In response to the law, California banned state-sponsored travel to Texas, accusing it of authorizing discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Read the full story.

This story appears in the August 2017 print edition of The Christian Chronicle.

One year later, Orlando victim’s mom urges: Show your children ‘all the love you have’

June 10, 2017

Bernadette Cruz’s 22-year-old son, Peter “Ommy” Gonzalez-Cruz, died in the June 12, 2016, mass shooting that targeted a gay nightclub.

By Bobby Ross Jr. | The Christian Chronicle

ORLANDO, Fla. — She thinks of him every day — her beloved son Peter “Ommy” Gonzalez-Cruz.

Yet even as she grieves, Bernadette Cruz pushes forward, relying on her friends, her family and her faith.

Cruz’s cheerful, affectionate firstborn son was just 22 when he was caught in an ambush of gunfire on June 12, 2016 — one of 49 victims of the Pulse gay nightclub massacre.

At the first anniversary of the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, Cruz has a message for other parents: “Take advantage of every day with your family because you never know what can happen. Communicate often with your children and show them all the love you have for them. They will reciprocate.”

I checked in to see how Cruz is doing after writing about her son’s death last year.

As Christian Chronicle readers may recall, Gonzalez-Cruz was the nephew of my friends Luis and Tony Cintrón (they are twins). Bernadette Cruz is my friends’ sister. In my 2016 column, I highlighted a special connection that a Church of Christ in New Jersey made with the victim’s family.

On Friday, while in the Orlando area on an unrelated assignment, I took a few minutes to visit the now-closed nightclub site where gunman Omar Mateen, who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, opened fire.

Read the full column.

This column appears in the online edition of The Christian Chronicle.

In Orlando, a call for more openness, less fear

July 13, 2016

After gay nightclub massacre, showing love to LGBT community a focus at Christian conference.

Second Place, In-Depth Reporting, Associated Church Press

By Bobby Ross Jr. | The Christian Chronicle

ORLANDO, Fla. — Sally Gary couldn’t come to Orlando and fail to visit the site of the gay nightclub massacre where 49 people died.

The founder of CenterPeace, a Dallas-based ministry that provides support and resources for people who experience same-sex attraction, said she felt compelled to pay her respects.

“I can’t imagine being here and not paying homage to the brothers and sisters who lost their lives there,” said Gary, a member of the Highland Oaks Church of Christ in Dallas.

Months before the Pulse nightclub attack, Gary accepted an invitation to speak at the Equip Conference in Orlando — a biennial event formerly known as the Spiritual Growth Workshop.

The nation’s worst mass shooting — in which 53 people were wounded in addition to those killed — provided “a very in-your-face reminder” of the urgency for churches to become more open and less fearful in discussing LGBT issues, Gary said.

Her message to the standing-room-only crowds that filled her three sessions: The person experiencing same-sex attraction isn’t a guy in a rainbow-colored bikini marching in a gay pride parade.

“It’s me,” said Gary, who grew up in the Tenth and Broad Street Church of Christ in Wichita Falls, Texas, and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Abilene Christian University.

Read the full story.

This is the first of a three-part series in The Christian Chronicle.

A church makes a special connection with an Orlando victim’s family

July 13, 2016

How a New Jersey congregation came to bless a grieving mother who lost her son in the nation’s worst mass shooting.

By Bobby Ross Jr. | The Christian Chronicle

ORLANDO, Fla. — “It’s been a while, man,” said my friend Jose Luis Cintrón, who lives in Fort Worth, Texas.

Thirty years, to be exact.

Sadly, I called after all these years because my friend just lost his nephew, Peter “Ommy” Gonzalez-Cruz, in the mass shooting that claimed 49 lives at a gay nightclub in Orlando.

Back in 1986 — my senior year at Keller High School, north of Fort Worth — Cintrón and I were part of a tight-knit group of friends that included his twin brother, Tony, and my brother, Scott.

We roamed the same school hallways. We worked together at a McDonald’s restaurant. On our off nights, we hung out — seeing movies like “Top Gun” and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” playing co-ed softball and cruising in our super-cool cars, such as the gray 1980 Ford Pinto with manual transmission that Scott and I shared.

“Those were fun days,” Cintrón said as we reminisced before talking about his family’s unfathomable loss.

Read the full column.

This is the third of a three-part series in The Christian Chronicle.