Transcripts

text | pdf |

---

[MUSIC PLAYING] PAUL BAILEY: We are, in fact, here talking about human dignity. And the greatest literature, the greatest art reminds us of man's dignity. Take away the possibility of dignity from people, and you take away everything worth having in this life.

JOHN YDSTIE: That's Paul Bailey, novelist and English instructor at North Dakota State University, talking to over 300 clergy, counselors, and mental health professionals at a public program on homosexuality in our society held last week in Fargo.

This morning on Home for the Weekend, we're going to hear excerpts and highlights from that public program. The event was sponsored by the Cass County Mental Health Association with the financial assistance of the North Dakota Committee on the Humanities and Public Issues and was incidentally the first program of its kind sponsored by such organizations. Stephanie Johnson attended the day-long event and produced this morning's program.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

STEPHANIE JOHNSON: Advocacy or condemnation of homosexuality wasn't the purpose of the Fargo program. Rather, it was to clarify the nature of homosexuality and to explore some of the special problems of that sexual orientation.

Impetus for the session arose out of concern for the mental health of homosexuals in our area. They experience a great deal of stress because of the stigma attached to their sexual preference. Prior to the program, local mental health professionals noticed an increase in mental health problems occurring among our homosexual population.

Those problems range from drug abuse to suicide. Today, we offer you highlights from that Program on Homosexuality in our Society. You'll hear from Dr. Phyllis Lyon of San Francisco's Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality, also from Dr. Ralph Blair, Psychotherapist and Director of New York City's Homosexual Community Counseling Center. Finally, you'll hear from local clergy discussing how religion views homosexuality. First, Phyllis Lyon.

PHYLLIS LYON: Homosexuality, which in essence means the love of man for man and woman for woman, is probably the most misunderstood and myth-ridden subject in the Western world. And nowhere is it as controversial as in our own United States. Actually, it's really an antisexual culture that impinges a great deal on homosexuals but also a great deal on heterosexuals.

So what I want to do this morning is to define the terms that we'll be using during this day and to give you a definition, as I see it anyway, of who the homosexual woman and man are. A homosexual, then, is a person, woman or man, whose primary interest is in a person of the same sex.

And that primary interest includes socially, psychologically, emotionally, and sexually, all of those components. And that interest is there whether or not it is ever expressed overtly. Most often in the past, it has been only the three letters, "sex," in homosexuality that have been used to define us as if homosexuals existed only as sexual beings with no other dimensions.

But homosexuals, like heterosexuals, are many-faceted persons. We are a minority characterized by our diversity. Insofar as can be determined, we make up about 10% of the population, which translates into some 20 million American people, a large minority indeed to be treated with a fear, revulsion, and scorn that so often we find present.

And that 10% comprises a cross-section of our society. We're present in every ethnic group, in every economic and educational sphere, in every age group. And we're equally divided among the sexes. There is this vast diversity of occupations in which we serve our country. And we're there whether anybody wants us or not.

As Dr. John Gannon put it in his book called Human Sexualities, quote, "What needs to be understood is that there isn't one homosexuality but a multiplicity of ways of organizing a homosexual preference into other ongoing lifestyles and commitments.

There are moments in people's lives when they are operating entirely within the limits expressed by being homosexual. In other moments with their homosexuality, indeed any aspect of their sexuality is irrelevant.

For some people, their sexuality is present, important, or eruptive in every circumstance, either for their entire lives or for a certain period in their lives. For others, it is a matter of minimum significance in all circumstances," end quote.

So then it is possible for a person to self-define him or herself as a homosexual without ever expressing those feelings sexually. For some reason or other, our society has no difficulty in assuming the heterosexuality of those persons who are not sexually active. Yet we are loath to give that same freedom to the homosexual.

There are a large number of homosexually oriented women and men whose only or predominant sexual outlet is heterosexual. Those are the people who, for a variety of reasons, have chosen to marry members of the opposite sex, for it is not the sexual act alone which defines us.

I find that an extremely important thing to understand. And I think that the Kinsey scale in a sense is defining numbers in a way primarily through sexual activity. But each and every one of you in this room could tonight have sex with a person of the same sex or a person of the opposite sex without changing your basic heterosexual or homosexual orientation. Sexual identity, sexual orientation lies in the head and the heart and not in the genitals.

So far, I have used the word homosexual to include both women and men who prefer same sex relationships. And that's a perfectly correct usage. But sometimes it leads to incorrect assumptions because for the most part, people think of homosexuals as males.

And it's for this reason that lesbian is most often used when referring to homosexual women. Homosexuals have often been called the invisible minority. But really, it's the lesbian who is invisible. Nonfiction books and articles and research have been almost exclusively devoted to the male homosexual with perhaps a chapter or two or an incidental mention of the lesbian.

The implication is either that what is said applies equally to female homosexuals or that the lesbian, because she is a woman, is just not that important. It's true that the male homosexual and the lesbian have many common concerns. But the lesbian differs greatly from the male homosexual in attitudes, problems, lifestyles. There's that same basic battle of the sexes split. The differences between women and men carry through in all spheres.

Now that we know something about what we're talking about, let's look at some of the more pervasive mythology which surrounds gay women and men. There are a lot of them. The ones I'm going to talk about, I think, are the primary ones that are concerning people all over.

Throughout the country, those forces which would take away the hard won civil rights of homosexuals are trumpeting that homosexuality is a threat to the nuclear family. The fact is that homosexuals of both sexes share the same values as the families which reared them. They, too, have mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, uncles, aunts for whom they love and care.

Many gay women and men have children of their own from previous heterosexual relationships. When gay people live with their children, with their children and a partner, or just with a partner, they consider themselves a family unit.

Respect for the family, love, caring, and commitment lead both homosexuals and heterosexuals to establish stable and long-term relationships. The lack of or the presence of children in a family, whether it's a heterosexual or a homosexual family, has nothing to do with sexual orientation or with the basic validity of the nuclear family.

Most lesbian mothers and gay fathers, having been the victim of heavy homosexual-- or heterosexual proselytizing all their lives, are less likely to be uptight about the sexuality of their offspring.

And experts in the field of gender identity, like doctors Richard Green and John Money, have testified there is no evidence to indicate that children raised in homosexual homes will necessarily become gay, but rather that they will probably grow up to be more tolerant and accepting of different people and differing lifestyles.

Neither homosexuals or heterosexuals can recruit children. Dr. Green and Dr. Money agree, as do other experts, that a child's sexual orientation is determined between the ages of two and six. Thus, the 10% of the population who are homosexual develop their orientation at an early age. And if they later become actively homosexual, it is because they were already inclined to that orientation in their human development.

It is this unfounded fear of recruitment or what I've come to see as a basic lack of faith that heterosexuals have in heterosexuality which has led to recent attacks on school teachers who are homosexual.

Dr. John P. Spiegel, past president of the American Psychiatric Association, has stated-- and a lot of people have made this statement-- that there is no evidence to support the thesis that homosexual teachers might affect the sexual orientation of their students.

Homosexuality is not catching any more than is heterosexuality. The overwhelming majority of homosexuals have no interest in preadolescent children, no sexual interest. Studies have shown variously that between 90% to 97% of sexual assaults on children are heterosexual and occur within the family context.

In a survey made in San Francisco in 1972, out of 107 reported instances of child sexual abuse, all were by heterosexuals. And the fact is that most homosexuals, like heterosexuals, seek lovers and friends from their own peer groups, their own age groups.

I've mentioned that gay people have families and are families. Yet the myth persists that relationships between persons of the same sex don't last, and along with that, that gay people are sexually promiscuous. I kind of like Alfred Kinsey's definition of promiscuity, which was that a promiscuous person is someone who's getting more than you are.

[LAUGHTER]

It's as good as right. It's true that many male homosexuals experience sexual contacts with many different partners. And I think part of this is that they're thrust into a sexual subculture. The gay man is not free to approach other men unless he knows they're gay for fear of being found out and thus losing his job or his friends.

And gathering places such as bars and steam baths are safe places to make sexual contacts but difficult places to make friendships. Many gay men have long-term relationships with one partner, even though such relationships appear to be more difficult to maintain for gay men than for gay women.

It's considered all right for a man to remain a bachelor. But as Dr. Martin Hoffman pointed out in his book Gay World, our society looks askance at two men living together, especially after the age of 30. Pressures of job, society, and parents often put unbearable strains on such a relationship.

However, two of my male friends are just celebrating their 19th anniversary. And other male couples I know have been living together for 10 years, for 14 years, for 22. And there are also gay men who prefer to live alone or live with groups of men and even some who prefer to lead a life of celibacy by choice.

Lesbians, on the other hand, are women. And therefore, when they realize their sexual preference, they bring with them all the conditioning they have received as women in our antisexual culture. Many, many lesbians have formed long-lasting relationships based solely on love and commitment since there are no legal ties to bind two women together, as in heterosexual marriage.

My partner and I are working up towards celebrating our 25th anniversary in February. I don't think longevity is any kind of criteria for any kind of relationship, unless it's a good one. But it is possible for people who love each other to be together regardless of their sexual orientation.

And other lesbians, as with gay men, live alone or live with groups of women. As with heterosexual women, the scope of a lesbian sexual activity depends largely on her age, her background, her companions, and her worldview. There's a lot of difference between lesbians in my age group and the younger women, as there are differences between heterosexual women of my generation and younger women today.

Heterosexuals continue to believe that if two women or two men form such a relationship, a couple relationship, that there must be role playing involved, that is, that such a gay union must be modeled on heterosexual marriage, with one partner being the more dominant and aggressive and the other being passive.

While it is true that some gay couples do play such roles, they are in the minority. Male homosexuals are men who prefer other men. When they live together, they are living together as men. And when two lesbians get together, that means theirs is a woman-to-woman relationship.

With few exceptions, lesbian women live with partners on a nonrole playing basis, striving for as egalitarian a relationship as is possible between two human beings. Because, after all, it's been the feminist movement which has brought to the attention of us all the dangers inherent in sex role stereotyping.

We now know that those qualities which we have labeled as "masculine," in quotes, or feminine are truly human qualities, and that to deny any person, regardless of sex, the right to be assertive, tough, tender, passive, emotional, logical, all of those things, is to deny full personhood.

Relevant to the stereotyping of masculine and feminine roles is the idea that gay men are effeminate and gay women are masculine, that each wishes they were the opposite sex, and that therefore, each hates the opposite sex.

The truth of the matter is that gay men are happy to be men. And gay women are happy to be women. Neither, as a general rule, hates the opposite sex. It is just that lesbians prefer women, while gay men prefer men. And although some gay men do fall into society's idea of an effeminate man, so do some nongay men. It's not everyone who can match John Wayne's he-man style.

And perhaps, lesbians do exhibit a greater degree of so-called masculine traits than do nongay women. Because, after all, we are independent women. And we have no man to lean on. So we have to learn to solve problems by ourselves. By and large, however, gay people, both women and men, are indistinguishable from the women and men who make up the heterosexual population.

And finally, there is that myth which states that the sexual activities of two men or two women are somehow perverted. Yet the sexual acts performed by same-sex couples and opposite-sex couples are virtually the same.

There are only so many things human beings can do sexually. The difference with gay lovers, of course, is that their sexual activity cannot lead to procreation. And that may be the crux of the matter, the reason that many people see homosexuality as a sin or as a natural.

Dr. Kinsey and his colleagues at the Kinsey Institute have long seen homosexuality as simply a variance, a natural variance on the whole spectrum of human sexuality. And there have been homosexuals on this planet since there have been people. And same-sex behavior is reported throughout the animal kingdom.

The point is and it's a point I think we're all going to be making today, is that we as a society need to get beyond the fact that an individual is homosexual to the kind of person she or he is.

Homophobia stems from ignorance, or as Rabbi Elliot Grafman put it many years ago, people fear that which they do not understand and what they fear they despise. A recent field poll in California indicated that those who were supportive of gay rights were people who had personal contact with homosexuals, either relatives, friends, coworkers, while those who adamantly oppose gay rights were people who, to their knowledge, had never encountered a lesbian or a male homosexual.

It's obvious that we need more programs like this one where heterosexuals and homosexuals can meet and begin a long-needed dialogue. And hopefully in the course of today's discussions, many questions will be answered, fears allayed, and understanding reached so that the gay people in this area can be more open and can continue the dialogue which we've started here today. Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

STEPHANIE JOHNSON: Phyllis Lyon of the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco. She's the author of the book Lesbian Woman.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Dr. Ralph Blair was another speaker at the Program on Homosexuality in our Society. His presentation focused on our need to come to better terms with a variety of behaviors as individuals and as a society.

Blair mentioned, there are several theories about the nature of homosexuality but most of them conflict. But he said it is clear that homosexuality is a state of being. And it is determined before and after birth by unidentifiable events that take place in early childhood.

Because our social attitudes toward homosexuality are generally unaccepting, the role of the psychotherapist becomes an important one. Blair himself is a psychotherapist and Director of New York City's Homosexual Community Counseling Center.

RALPH BLAIR: Homosexual means same sex. But it does not mean sameness. What is erroneous and then so debilitating is the way in which homosexuals and others, including counselors and psychotherapists, view homosexual identity, desire, activity, organizations, politics, lifestyles, or what have you, as monolithic.

If you have homosexual desires, those desires are yours, not those of any other person with homosexual desires. If you engage in a homosexual act, that act is yours, not the act of anybody else who may be described as performing the same act.

The desires and the acts are yours, experienced in your brain, your largest sex organ. If you experience homosexual desires or behavior, the variety of homosexuality and homosexual phenomena is increased by one, by you.

You are your homosexuality. The person you are becoming is the homosexuality that you will be. Nobody else, psychotherapist, gay liberationist, feminist, judge, nobody else has the right to dictate what your homosexuality will be.

It's unfortunate that homosexuals and nonhomosexuals alike have put up with the notion that there are only two or three kinds of homosexuals-- the limp wrist or counterpart among lesbians, the clenched fist, or trembling fingers washing themselves in guilt and frustration behind a closet door.

Just because you have homosexual desires or engage in certain homosexual acts does not mean that you have to adopt a particular philosophy of life, a particular aesthetic, or circle of friends, or political stance, or form of relationship with a lover, coworkers, family, and so on.

But if you can accept your homosexuality, perhaps the thing that people are least prepared to accept, you'll be far better able to accept anything else in life. Facing his homosexuality successfully, a little boy can become a man. Facing her homosexuality successfully, a little girl can become a woman.

First of all, you have to know what's going on in yourself and in your environment. You must know something about what motivates you, what you value, and what you get out of present behavior. This precedes you're changing your behavior. Now, when I say changing, I don't mean changing orientation, since that is not possible, but changing self-sabotaging behavior for more productive, creative, and enhancing behavior.

Before moving on, let me say a couple of things about the various attempts that have been undertaken to change the orientation, the so-called treatment. I like to think of it as two classifications these days.

On the one hand, we have what is older, the psychotherapeutic hocus-pocus and even a theotherapeutic hocus-pocus today. For some time now, the writings of Psychiatrist Thomas Sauce have helped many of us to recognize the fact that the mental health establishment has replaced the priestly establishment for authority in human behavior questions.

"It has been doing this," he says, "with much of the same arrogance that used to characterize the pronouncements of religious authorities. In doing so and not unlike its predecessor, the mental health establishment has tended to create an often exaggerated picture of what it can be expected to do."

Psychiatrist Peter Bourne, Head of the White House Office of Drug Abuse, has made it clear when he said, quote, "One of the problems of Psychiatry and psychology is an overselling of the discipline in terms of the ability to predict or alter behavior," end quote.

Through two simplistic reporting, the popular press has often raised false hopes in people who very much want to believe that somewhere, somehow, someone in the mental health field is actually turning out patients who have had their sexual orientations reversed through therapy.

But as I concluded in my survey of the treatment literature on homosexuality, there has been conflict and confusion in etiology and consequently also conflict and confusion in prescribed remedies. After considering all variables, I found no validated evidence in even the most, quote, "promising cases" reported in the professional literature that anyone has successfully changed from homosexual orientation to heterosexual orientation.

After the disappointing results of long and expensive psychoanalysis, the public began to look to the alleged success of behavior modification techniques. Yet a pioneer of behavior therapy, Arnold Lazarus, has honestly acknowledged that, quote, "to my chagrin, I have had no enduring success with any of the methods of behavior therapy in trying to modify homosexual responses."

He admits, quote, "in the heyday of my behavioristic zeal, I succeeded in temporarily blocking all sexual outlets for some bewildered and ambivalent homosexuals who were subsequently overjoyed to relapse into active and gratifying homosexuality."

STEPHANIE JOHNSON: Blair also noted that fear and lack of accurate information add to the confusion surrounding homosexuality, a them-us mentality results, he said. And it blocks our ability to understand and accept homosexuality.

The need to do both is important because homosexuality is present to some degree in every family in America. Those families are termed the normal majority by antihomosexual activist Anita Bryant.

RALPH BLAIR: Homosexuals grow up in the homes of the normal majority. As the National Gay Task Force has replied to the Save Our Children campaign, we are your children. And of course, the task force hit it right on the head.

And sooner or later, since blood is thicker, it's the strength and the tenacity of the American nuclear family which will win the day for acceptance of persons who happen to be homosexual. In seven years of doing counseling with homosexuals and their families, I have never seen a case in which at least the acknowledgment you are still our son, or you are still our daughter did not prevail ultimately over initial shock, denial, anger, hurt, and assorted hassles.

Admittedly, some parents have not been able to go much further than just to quietly accept what they could not change. But neither could they really mention it, for example, to others. But other parents initially just as unprepared as anyone else for the news of their gay offspring, have gone forward to found chapters of parents of gays and to become involved in other educational and support groups, some even going on radio and television to help break down the public prejudice that has made the lives of their children more difficult than necessary.

When Judd Marmor, past president of the American Psychiatric association, was asked on CBS whether he thought there might be a family in America that could lean back and relax and honestly say that they would not have to contend with homosexuality in their family, he replied, in the negative, of course.

Because of the fact of homosexuality somewhere in virtually everybody's family, even in North Dakota, sooner or later, American families will come around. And they will continue to be able to see their way clear to accept that inevitable homosexuality.

And many will not only learn to live with it but will learn to truly take it in stride, as some already have during an even more difficult era. That time will be sooner rather than later if the educational efforts before us are tackled and carried out with common sense and concern for the sensibilities of all those involved. Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

STEPHANIE JOHNSON: Dr. Ralph Blair, Psychotherapist and Director of the Homosexual Community Counseling Center in New York City. His address was part of the Public Program on Homosexuality in our Society held last week in Fargo. Local clergy also participated in that program. They discussed how religion views homosexuality. John Ydstie has more on that session in a moment.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

JOHN YDSTIE: Dr. Richard Bovard of North Dakota State University opened the final segment of the program on how religions view the homosexual by reminding the participants that value questions are deeply connected with the phenomenon of homosexuality.

Bovard went on to say that obviously, for many people, the subject of homosexuality is the subject of sin, of deep moral wrong because many faiths profess that homosexuality is a sin against God and against nature.

Therefore, to avoid a discussion of values and religious beliefs at a program like this would be a disservice. For that reason, several local religious leaders were asked to comment on homosexuality in light of the teachings of their particular faith. First to speak was Rabbi Jerry Brown of Temple Beth-El in Fargo.

JERRY BROWN: I was asked to address you today so that I might share with you the Jewish view of homosexuality. And that's a very tall order. It has often been said that if you get two Jews together and ask them a question, you'll get three different answers.

[LAUGHTER]

So therefore, I really can't pretend to speak for all of Judaism or for all Jews in any way at all. But what I can do is share with you my own understanding of what the Jewish tradition has to say about this issue.

Before I do this, however, I think that a little digression is necessary concerning the nature of the Jewish tradition, particularly as it relates to the Bible for I am going to discuss the biblical texts that have been alluded to earlier this morning.

Many people mistakenly assume that all Jewish teaching is to be found in the Bible, the Old Testament, or at the very least, that Jews are obligated to follow all of the rules and teachings of the Bible to the letter.

In fact, Judaism has maintained its vitality through the centuries by distinguishing between those timeless values and concepts, which make the Bible a book for every generation and those specific acts of biblical legislation which grew out of the circumstances of a particular time and place.

We consider the biblical commands to love our neighbor, to seek peace and pursue it, to love, mercy and justice and the like, to be the very basis of our faith and our way of life. But we have recognized the need to alter some specific biblical rules in the light of new insights and developments.

Now, if we understand this insistence upon faithfulness to the timeless spirit of the biblical world, then we are ready to examine the Jewish view of homosexuality as I conceive it. The Bible seems, on the face of it, to be very clear on the subject, according to the book of Leviticus. Homosexual activity, among males at least, is a criminal act punishable by death.

Early traditional rabbinic law dating to some 2000 years ago accepted this statement with very little comment. But more recent research into homosexuality, along with the emergence of the gay rights movement, has led many Jewish scholars to re-examine the biblical and traditional rabbinic texts in an attempt to understand the guiding principles upon which this attitude was based.

In his recent responsum rabbinic opinion on the subject, Dr. Eugene Mihaly offers us his analysis of the biblical and traditional rabbinic attitudes toward homosexuality. The biblical and rabbinic law concerning the homosexual is based on several assumptions. First, that the homosexual acts out of volition that he is a willful rebel, a sinner who has chosen consciously to flout the law and the law of God.

Second, an aspect of the harshness of the law is also due to the general tendency in the legislation in Leviticus and the rabbinic laws based upon them to distinguish and to separate the Jew from their idolatrous neighbors. There is an aspect to these laws, in other words, which is part of the rabbinic attitude toward idolatry and flows from the particular time place, the historic situation in which these laws were formulated.

As I said, much has been learned about human behavior since biblical times. Much has changed. The question is, do the assumptions upon which the traditional law and the biblical law in fact are based still make sense today in a time when homosexuals are denied the basic human freedoms that others enjoy?

Again, I quote Dr. Mihaly, "We know today that in the overwhelming number of cases, as we've heard this morning, in fact, the homosexual is not a willful volitional rebel. He is either a homosexual from birth or became one in early childhood or adolescence. In any case, that is the way he is.

At the very least, therefore, he would, even according to traditional law in the light of our present knowledge, have to be treated as one who acts under duress and merits all the sympathy, consideration, and kindness that traditional law extends to the victim. Furthermore, we also know today that the homosexual is hardly motivated by idolatrous drives, nor is homosexuality an assimilated threat in any way."

Well, clearly, the assumptions upon which the rabbis and the biblical writer relied have been proven incorrect by modern psychology and inquiry. The homosexual can no longer be considered a criminal in any sense of the word, for his is not a volitional choice but rather a state of being.

Since this is the case, it seems to me that the true spirit of Jewish tradition demands that the homosexual, again, in Dr. Mihaly's words, quote, "be accepted without moral judgment in terms of personal guilt or sin. And every form of sympathetic understanding be extended to him."

In the past few years, several Jewish congregations have been formed by Jewish homosexuals and have applied for membership in the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, which is the umbrella association for reformed Jewish congregations nationally.

These applications caused considerable debate. But the debate was not over whether or not the homosexuals have the right to worship and follow their chosen faith in freedom. The question was whether or not a congregation which accepted only homosexuals could be admitted to the Union.

Our friend Dr. Mihaly and others, in fact, argued that all of our congregations must be open to all, including the homosexual. Dr. Mihaly asserted that, quote, "we must extend to the homosexual, as we would to any jew, the privilege of joining a congregation."

But he is strongly opposed to separate homosexual congregations, for such congregations would not be open to all Jews. He says, quote, "the synagogue should help in integrating the homosexual into the religious life of the community, not be a vehicle for isolating him."

Now, ideally, Dr. Mihaly's recommendations make very good sense to me as I, as a rabbi, understand Jewish tradition. I feel it is essential that we rid ourselves of the misconception of the homosexual as criminal and begin to deal with him as person.

Ideally, homosexuals should be as welcome to any congregation as anyone else. But we do not live in an ideal world. The fact remains that many, if not most, people are unable to deal with the issue of homosexuality in the way that I have suggested.

Acceptance and compassion remain goals to be striven for, not facts of life. And I think that one might search very long within Judaism or any other faith before finding a congregation that would willingly accept acknowledged homosexuals as members.

Some time ago, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations did in fact admit the congregation Beit Chayim Chadashim, a homosexual congregation in Los Angeles, into the ranks of its membership. And several other congregations in New York and Florida have followed.

But it was only accepted on the condition that the congregation accept heterosexual Jews as well. And so while Dr. Mihaly's position held sway in theory, in practice, the congregation remains a gay congregation.

The admission of this congregation, as well as the others, into the Union, I think is a good first step toward the ultimate goal of recognizing the human rights that I feel our tradition teaches us to extend to homosexuals as to all other people.

Yet the ideal of which Dr. Mihaly spoke remains to be realized. The ideal is the application of the real religious message of the bible, a message that speaks to all men in all times and to the issue of homosexuality today. It is a message that demands compassion and justice for all men, a message which applies no less to the homosexual than to any other human being. Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

JOHN YDSTIE: Rabbi Jerry Brown of Temple Beth-El in Fargo. Also among those who addressed the problem of homosexuality and religion was James Merrill, a Lutheran layman, who is director of Lutheran Social Services of North Dakota.

JAMES MERRILL: I'm Jim Merrill from Lutheran Social Services. I'm a layman. I understand there are some people worried about me not being a theologian. In fact, they worried about some of the rest of them not being theologians. But I'm avowedly not one. And I'm never sure why I'm up here. I think it was so that all of the little people out there would have a chance to be represented at the table up here. And they want to see what a klutzy layman would do, given the situation.

On the other hand, friends, if you've been to listening to theologians lately, you just want to listen to me--

[LAUGHTER]

--because frankly, if I had to wait in my faith life for a theologian to decide what I ought to be up to, I'd be dead a long time ago. They can hardly agree on that-- like Panmunjom, they can hardly agree upon where to put the table.

So you hear in a nontheologian, oh, we're-- although we're all our own theologian, by the way. You see, when we go to sleep at night, we make up our own prayers. I don't care what you read, what you heard, who the preacher was, how strong the pope. Your own theology comes in your own head anyway. And so we end up being our own theologian.

If you come to Ashley, North Dakota, on Sunday next at 9 o'clock, you'll be able to hear me preach a sermon, which I won't have time to do today. Name of the sermon is Here Comes the Judge. Here Comes the Judge. That was done by Flip Wilson.

And I think a lot of us got to listen to that because it occurs to me throughout North Dakota and other places. I don't understand why the legal profession has so much trouble with the judging situation. The judges are overworked. The calendar is overloaded. Why? We got volunteers all over ready to judge the neighbor just like that.

[LAUGHTER]

Now, right. We're all ready to judge. And so that's what I'm going to call it Here Comes the Judge. And I'm going to get more serious. Some years ago, I was in Le Sueur, Minnesota, when a young pastor came in to see me about a talk I was going to give at his church a couple of nights hence.

But it was obvious from the way he sat there, his trouble was not what I was going to talk about or the subject. Something obviously bothered him a great deal. I said, sir, what's eating you? You don't look well.

Well, he said, it's true. I'm not. It's not the talk either. He said it's a young couple in our church, ideal couple, a four-year-old child, beautiful people, do all the right things. But all of a sudden, the man left and left the four-year-old child and the wife.

And he said, the wife doesn't understand why. Just left. And I can get to her to counsel her. And I've been able to talk to her. But he won't come in. And the more he talks about it, I said, did it ever occur to you that he may be a homosexual who tried to hide in marriage and just can't face it? Yes, he said.

But he said, I can't understand why he won't come in. I'd like to talk to him. You forgive me as the Lutheran layman if I say to you what I said to him. I said, sir, why would he come to you? Why would he come to you for help? He already knows he's damned at your place.

And that poor pastor-- I was sorry later, I said it. That poor pastor, tears began to roll down his cheeks and he sobbed convulsively. And he said, I know. My brother is one. And he tells them that his brother, after graduating from high school, admitted to the family he was homosexual. He departed that part of that small town in Minnesota, went to California, where he now lives with his lover.

And he said, in our family, we treat him, as many families do, a mental patient or someone who's dead, no Christmas cards, no correspondence. And again, he wept and said, and I love him. He's my brother. But for a pastor, his church cut him off from his own blood brother.

What theologians will answer for that? Who shall answer for that? I didn't answer that very well. I heard people say today the problem is one of antisexuality. And I submit, my friends, as I see it. And over the 15 years, I've been pleading for a better description of sexuality for our young people and the rest of us. I agree with that.

I think the greatest trouble is we haven't even come to terms with being sexual creatures ourselves. We've been convinced that what we do at night in the missionary position, as somebody referred to it, even that is dirty. And so how in the world could we accept anything else? And so we're right now worrying about whether Oh, Calcutta is going to come to town and nine people are going to catch cold at the Civic Auditorium.

[LAUGHTER]

If we can't accept that, if we can't understand that, how in the world did we think we'd talk to our brother who's got a different sexual style than we understand? And in fact, someone has said the trouble with sex education, the reason it doesn't proceed with more rapidity in our country is there are so many unforgiven masturbators.

And I think that's true. Stop and think about it. We've never come to terms with our own sexuality. And I was in Minot last week talking to Luther Lygas. Pastor called me. Took a half hour on the phone upset because he felt I had not stated my position clearly enough on how I felt about premarital sex.

I said, sir, it's been my experience that adults more often than not have shut off their audience and especially young people, by stating their position first, and then wondering why the kids don't offer up theirs. Isn't that right? We rush with our opinion and wonder why the kids don't talk to us. And we never get to hear them. Of course, they won't talk to us because we've already shut them off.

And he thought I was very unclear about the adultery business and all the rest of that. And I get in trouble with it all the time because I've never found, by the way, 10 clergymen that would agree on what the adultery commandment had to do with.

I give him a simple example of someone who's not married, 21 and 18 years of age, have intercourse two weeks before the wedding. Did they commit adultery or didn't they? I get about a third say yes, a third say no, and a third wait to see how the vote turns out.

No wonder our young people wouldn't know. The adults don't know. And we've not cleared up our own value systems ourselves. And then, they all fled together. I sat down there listening to these people talk. I had just an outline. Then I kept adding things. And I can hardly read it.

I talked in Grand Forks this week on marriage, many faces of marriage and divorce. And people wondering why our young people aren't feeling better about a heterosexual marriage. Why should they? The facts are just out, 50/50 chance of the marriage ending in divorce. Why would a kid seek that kind of relationship? What if they told you, the airplanes are going up today, 50/50 chance of falling down? You wouldn't even take a free ticket.

And then I heard that thing in 60 minutes the other day. Did you hear that in 60 minutes? They're interviewing the spouses of homosexuals. And the pathos of a reporter, ignorant person, who said-- do you remember that, that the homosexual, in effect, I notice you're married? Well, yes, that's true. That's what the program is about. Yes, I'm married.

And then even more so, he had to add on. And then I noticed, as if this was totally out of the question, I noticed you even have two children. And do you remember that, the man saying, in what way did it ever say that being homosexual robbed me of the joy of having children or wanting children? Poignant response to a dumb question.

Well, friends in a hurry, I think as I look back on it, born in 1924 in Northern Minnesota, I was taped in more ways to be aware of the homosexual than anything I can think of. I don't think I was taped about Indians, Blacks, any other thing and more effectively than I was about homosexual and that chauvinistic way I grew up in the woods.

And it was later enforced as I left high school, went into World War II, where people took great joy in reporting on either beating up on queers in the park or some other strange stuff. And everybody applauded, that's what a grown man ought to do. I've had a great deal of taping about that.

And now quickly, part of what we're doing at Lutheran Social Service and I hope some of you had the experience is we're trying to help people face other folks who are different because as again has been said here many times, a part of our trouble is we've not talked to anybody who's homosexual. It's easy to make great judgments and do all kinds of things if you've never met the human being.

And so you've seen us in workshops where we bring the handicapped, and say, meet somebody who talks different, walks different, acts different than you. Talk to him because, I submit, we all suffer from the third eye syndrome, the third eye, which is like this. If I came to visit you and notice that you had a third eye right in the middle of your forehead, can you imagine trying to converse with somebody got three eyes?

I'm starting to talk to her. And I notice my gaze keeps wandering up to the third eye. I think I better quit that. She's going to notice. And so I start talking this way while I look at the dummy. Can't look me in the face. I look back. My gaze wanders up. I'm fighting the difference between you and me all the time. I'm fondling this difference. I never find the human being on the other side.

And that's what we've done, is I think we're great judges looking for sinners have found we haven't been able to find the human being. We're so busy cataloging sins and wondering where to put the ash marks on them and all the rest.

And then one more thing. I heard Dr. Ralph Blair-- I'm glad he came up to be with us. I heard him say something today. It touched me very closely because I believe it a great deal when he said, we are where you are. And we are you. And if any of you heard me before, I've talked about that. We are them.

And the people who are most apt to judge, we have to look out because we're going to be right there someday. you know that? Up the poor, all the other people. We magnificently reach down and offer up and say, we're going to help. We do it in this posture, by the way. I was this way down. Watch out because one day, you'll be there. And I say to you, my friends, until we understand that, we'll continue to judge our brother wherever we find them. We are them. Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

JOHN YDSTIE: James Merrill, Director of Lutheran Social Services of North Dakota, speaking to clergy, counselors, and mental health professionals at a program on homosexuality in our society held recently in Fargo.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

This morning's Home for the Weekend was produced by Stephanie Johnson with assistance from yours truly, John Ydstie. Additional material from the recent public program on homosexuality sponsored by the Cass County Mental Health Association will be featured in future programs on this station. Special music during today's program was performed by John Fahey. Home for the Weekend is heard each Saturday morning at this time on KCCM. This is John Ydstie. Have a fine weekend.

[MUSIC PLAYING]