Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission

The Southern Baptist Convention’s polling arm LifeWay is out with a new poll revealing widespread support for gay rights, particularly among young people. According to the survey, a clear majority of Americans believe that “homosexuality is a civil rights issue like gender, race and age,” agree that same-sex marriage is “inevitable” and oppose employment discrimination against gays and lesbians.

The denomination is a fierce critic of marriage equality and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, and last year passed a resolution “opposing the idea that gay rights are the same as civil rights.”

Richard Land, the denomination’s top political spokesman, has claimed that the Devil is behind homosexuality and warned that gay rights will lead to divine judgment and “paganization.” While the SBC believes it is wrong to consider gay rights a civil rights issues, Land compared his own anti-gay activism to Martin Luther King Jr.’s leadership of the Civil Rights Movement.

Key findings from the poll include:

• 64 percent of those polled agreed “it is inevitable that same-sex marriage will become legal throughout the United States.”

• “80 percent of Americans disagree that employers should be allowed to refuse employment to someone based on their sexual preference.”

• 58 percent of respondents agreed with the question: “like age, race, and gender, homosexuality is a civil rights issue.”

• A majority of Americans believe rental halls and landlords should not be allowed to discriminate against same-sex couples.

• “More Americans do not believe homosexual behavior is a sin than those who believe it is a sin.”

The poll also found that women, young people and people with college degrees were more likely to favor gay rights.

LifeWay’s survey appears to line up with a new bipartisan analysis of exit polls which found that opposition to marriage equality is concentrated among the elderly, white evangelical Christians and people without college degrees.

The Southern Baptist Convention’s top ethicist and resident plagiarist Richard Land is offering a completely original idea that he hopes will end the debate over same-sex marriage once and for all! In his column, What Relationships Should Be Called Marriage: A Modest Proposal, Land proposes that gay couples should be barred from marrying but instead be treated the same way as “two maiden or widowed sisters who were living together or a mother and a devoted son or daughter who were living together in a platonic relationship.”

Marriage has been defined in Western civilization for at least two millennia now as being a sexual relationship between one man and one woman. Christianity has defined it so historically, most often coupling it with life-long permanence and monogamy. As an Evangelical Christian, I certainly embrace that definition.

However, how do we deal with those who would choose to extend some of the legal privileges our society has accorded marriage to same-sex relationships without shattering the definition of marriage or discriminating against people outside the heterosexual definition of marriage? How do we protect society against those who would extend the special status of marriage to homosexual, lesbian or polygamous relationships? How do we protect time-honored titles, like "husband" and "wife," from being attacked as homophobic or sexist terms to be replaced by spouse #1 and spouse #2 or "Mom" and "Dad" from being reduced legally to caregiver #1 and caregiver #2? Such legal assaults on these time-honored family terms seem inevitable if "same-sex" marriage becomes equal with heterosexual marriage.

I propose that as Americans we declare heterosexual marriage as the only relationship in our society that is to be defined by its sexual nature and that it will continue to be defined as a legal relationship between one man and one woman consummated by sexual intercourse.

If two men or two women are living together in a relationship and they want to ask the state legislature in their state to grant some of the special legal privileges accorded marriage to their relationship the state legislature should respond in the following fashion: "We will consider your request, but the sexual nature of your relationship will be irrelevant to our discussions because marriage is the only relationship in our society that is defined by its sexual nature. Why should other people who are living in committed relationships that do not involve sexual activity be discriminated against or left out?"

In other words, the state legislature would not discriminate against two maiden or widowed sisters who were living together or a mother and a devoted son or daughter who were living together in a platonic relationship. Why should such households and relationships be left behind when legal privileges and recognition are being passed out just because they are not in a sexual relationship?

Southern Baptist Convention’s chief “ethicist” Richard Land signed off from his weekly radio broadcast on Saturday without mentioning why he was leaving the show. He simply stated that his program is ending “due to a variety of circumstances” and asked people to pray for a “spiritual reformation” in America. Land lost his show due to his racially-insensitive tirade about the Trayvon Martin shooting, which he vowed to never apologize for until he eventually did, and for plagiarizing commentaries on his show, including part of his remarks about the Martin.

While the SBC trustees reviewing Land’s radio show said that plagiarism was one of the “practices that occur in the radio industry,” even Religious Right talk show host Steve Deace said in an interview with The Tennessean that plagiarism is not common practice on radio shows, contradicting the trustees’ claims:

Trustees claim that Land was following practices that are common in the talk radio industry.

But Steve Deace, a syndicated Christian radio host from Des Moines, Iowa, said that’s not the case.

He said that radio hosts sometimes hear other people’s turns of phrases and repeat them when talking about issues. But they don’t read word for word from other people’s work.

If a host does that, then listeners will eventually catch them at it.

“They are going to know if you are lifting stuff from people,” he said.

Blogger Aaron Weaver, who first caught instances of Land’s plagiarism, pointed out that Land not only didn’t cite the authors of the articles but was actually “adding extra comments and using different adjectives” to pass commentaries off as his own. Indeed, when he initially defended his racially-charged rant regarding the Trayvon Martin shooting, Land never mentioned in his non-apology that he was reading from a Kuhner column.

Weaver and Robert Parham of the Baptist Center for Ethics think the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, which Land leads, should have been tougher on Land, especially considering the fact that Land teaches at a university where students who commit plagiarism can be expelled:

Weaver, a graduate student at Baylor University who blogs at thebigdaddyweave.com, said that trustees were wrong when they said the plagiarism was a result of “carelessness and poor judgment.”

“He wasn’t being careless,” he said. “This was intentional.”

…

Robert Parham of the Nashville-based Baptist Center for Ethics said that Land’s radio show should have been canceled years ago. He said that the show was more about politics than about religion or ethics.

Allowing Land to keep his job, despite the plagiarism, sends the wrong message, said Parham.

Along with being the head of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, Land also teaches regularly at Baptist seminaries.

“Allowing Land to continue as an SBC official — without even an unpaid leave of absence — will create a banquet of distasteful consequences for the Southern Baptists when it comes to how seminaries deal with students who plagiarize papers and how churches deal with pastors who plagiarize sermons.”

National Organization for Marriage’s Jennifer Roback Morse stopped by Richard Land Live this weekend, where the embattled head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission claimed that homosexuality has demonic origins. Land chatted with a caller who thanked him and Morse for fighting the “demon of homosexuality,” and Land agreed with her that “the Devil takes pleasure in anything that causes destruction in human society and the homosexual lifestyle does cause destruction.” He went on to claim that homosexuality was at least partly responsible for the collapse of empires in the past:

Caller: My comment is that I thank God for you all for standing up for God’s holiness and righteousness against this demon of homosexuality. My pastor past but he once said that this demon will be the last one to leave this earth because it is so strong and over in all of the New Testament and coming up to now it’s—

Land: Let me just say that first of all that the Devil takes pleasure in anything that causes destruction in human society and the homosexual lifestyle does cause destruction. It’s seen as one of the evidences in the decline of every empire we have seen; studies have shown it became rampant in the Persian Empire, the Greek Empire, the Roman Empire, the British Empire.

Land and Morse said that they are working against a “secular theocracy” and “sexual nihilists,” with the SBC’s top “ethicist” maintaining that America is witnessing a return to “paganism” where homosexual priests worshiped sex:

Morse: What we learned in California in the marriage fight is that the secularist thrust, I don’t even know what to properly call it, Richard, maybe you have a good name for it, but the secularists, the sexual nihilists.

Land: It’s a secular theocracy is what it is.

Morse: Yes, that’s exactly—

Land: It’s a secular theocracy driven be a full-blown pagan understanding of human sexuality. It’s just pagan.

Morse: When you say pagan, what do you mean by pagan? I can imagine what you mean.

Land: I mean totally focused on self, anything that feels good do it, just like the Greco-Roman orgies of the 1st Century and 2nd Century AD; same thing that our early Christian forefathers faced.

Morse: That’s very true, the hedonism, the hedonistic aspect of the culture. What I wondered you were going to say is full-on paganism I would think of as somehow worshiping sex, as sex taking on a kind of sacramental role.

Land: As you know many of the Roman religions, the idolatrous religions were sexual, and the priests were homosexuals and they worshiped in Corinth they had homosexual priests had these temples that were pre-Christian paganism.

It appears that Richard Land’s non-apology backfired, badly, as the Religious Right leader and chief ethicist of the Southern Baptist Convention is quickly doing damage control following his explosive racial comments on President Obama and the Trayvon Maritn case and accusations that he repeatedly plagiarized conservative columnists during his radio show. Initially, Land took a defiant stance and criticized his detractors, but then issued two statements expressing his “regret” that he “overestimated the progress that has been made” on race relations, and he admitted not to plagiarizing but simply failing “to provide appropriate verbal attributions” during his show. As Kyle pointed out this morning, Land is now facing an investigation by the Executive Committee of the ERLC and also took down the archives of his radio show, ostensibly due to “the danger that such unauthorized use by news agencies or others might include quoted material used by Dr. Land without clear and proper credit being given to the author or source of the quoted material.”

Yesterday, Dwight McKissic, a prominent African American pastor in the SBC who has received attention for his virulently anti-gay views, slammed Land for his initial remarks and his condescending non-apology, and even threatened to boycott future SBC meetings if Land is not repudiated. He even said that Land was reviving the racist “curse of Ham”:

Richard Land’s racial remarks against the backdrop of the Trayvon Martin tragedy are the most damaging, alienating, and offensive words about race that I’ve read or heard, rendered by a SBC personality, in the twenty-eight years that I’ve served as a SBC church planter/pastor.

The pain that Richard Land inflicted upon Blacks in the SBC is a pain that would be only felt greater by the pain inflicted upon Trayvon Martin’s family by George Zimmerman. In his non apology—apology, he blames those of us who responded to his racial views, for the pain we felt. The opening line in his letter of apology, dated April 16, 2012, says, “I am writing to express my deep regret for any hurt or misunderstanding my comments about the Trayvon Martin case have generated.” He then blames his readers and listeners for not being “progressive” enough to be on the same page with him racially.

…

I remain appalled at his unrepentant words. And since Dr. Land will not repent of his words, I feel compelled to ask the SBC by way of resolution to repudiate and renounce the racially offensive, biblically unjustifiable and factually incorrect words of Dr. Richard Land. He spoke these words as an official of the SBC; therefore, the SBC must take ownership and responsibility for Dr. Land’s words. I could not with a good conscience attend a SBC meeting in the post Luter years, or increase giving to the Cooperative Program as long as Land’s words remain un-repented of. To do so would be to engage in self-hatred; the exercise and practice of low self-esteem; to support Land’s view of racial profiling and his flawed racial reasoning.

What was even more troubling to me than Land’s remarks, was his assertion that the vast majority of Southern Baptists agree with his racial views. If he is accurate in his assessment, it confirms the suspicion that many Black Baptists have held for years regarding Southern Baptists; and that is many Southern Baptists, if not the majority, inherently and instinctively don’t honestly respect, relate to or view Blacks with a mindset of mutual respect, equality and understanding. Blacks are primarily viewed as mission projects, not as mission partners. Inadvertently, Dr. Land opened to us the window of his heart and showed us this painful reality (Mark 7:20-23). The question now is, did Richard Land show us the heart of the entirety of the SBC?

To read Land’s initial comments and his apology is painful, shameful and heartbreaking for many of us. Now the SBC must take ownership of Dr. Land’s words, because according to Dr. Land, his words reflect the views of his constituency. There are three reasons why I believe the SBC must repudiate Dr. Land’s remarks; or I, for one, will remove myself from SBC gatherings.

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As I’ve listened to Black Baptists discuss Land’s comments, I believe his most offensive remark related to his belief in justified racial profiling. The SBC must repudiate the profiling comment, if nothing else. According to the prosecutor and investigators in Florida, Trayvon Martin was shot and killed because of Zimmerman’s profiling. Land’s comments gives ecclesiastical license from the SBC for this kind of profiling. Land’s racial profiling comments are analogous to what the major SBC pastors and theologians said about Black people for many years—for which they have never repented of—and that is, Black people were cursed by God. Land’s “justifiable profiling” doctrine is virtually identical and analogous to the SBC “curse of Ham” doctrine. Land just presented the 21st Century version of the “curse of Ham” doctrine, financed with Cooperative Program dollars. This is an egregious offense. Black SBC churches only give 1% to the Cooperative Program. Nevertheless, our churches helped to finance Richard Land’s communicating to all of America that racial profiling is justifiable. It was the justifiable profiling doctrine that led the SBC to conclude that slavery and segregation were biblically permissible. Land has revived that doctrine. According to Dr. Land, persons like me are worthy of being profiled.

Elsewhere in the post, McKissic commented on racial segregation at SBC meetings, called on Land to apologize to President Obama and Trayvon Martin’s family, and said that is comments “are not only factually incorrect” but are also “biblically unjustifiable.”

Richard Land, head of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, yesterday took up a defiant tone against charges that he used racially-insensitive language during his radio show in his attack on President Obama and civil rights activists over the Trayvon Martin case, saying that he is being “mugged” by the media for simply “criticizing this rush to judgment.” Land on his show had said that “it was Mr. Obama” who turned the Trayvon Martin shooting into a national issue” by pouring “gasoline on the racialist fires” in order to help “gin up the black vote” for his re-election with the aid of “race hustlers.”

But black SBC pastors, including the incoming-president of the convention, criticized Land’s comments and one threatened to introduce a resolution condemning Land at an upcoming meeting, and other Baptists commented that it was reminiscent of Southern Baptists’ past work against the civil rights movement and helped feed “the deep-seated resentment toward people of color held by some white Southern Baptists.”

Land’s problems didn’t end there.

Baptist author and blogger Aaron Weaver found that Land not only plagiarized his controversial rant from a Washington Times column by Jeffrey Kuhner, but also that Land has repeatedly plagiarized editorials verbatim from other right-wing publications like the Washington Examiner and Investor’s Business Daily.

Not a good move for the SBC’s “chief ethicist,” who used his title as ethicist while defending his comments about the Trayvon Martin case: “defending people who are being lynched in the court of public opinion is part of my job as an ethicist.”

Rather than apologize for the two incidents, Land instead said he is simply sorry that others have “misunderstood” his comments on Martin or his blatant plagiarism.

First, Land admitted to failing “to provide appropriate verbal attributions” during his show but not to plagiarism, saying he regrets “if anyone feels they were deceived or misled”:

On occasion I have failed to provide appropriate verbal attributions on my radio broadcast, Richard Land Live!, and for that I sincerely apologize. I regret if anyone feels they were deceived or misled.

…

While I do not use a script, listeners familiar with the program know that both the audio of the program and material I reference during the program are posted on the program’s Web site during or immediately following the broadcast.

However, Weaver notes that Land unmistakably tried “to pass off Kuhner’s words as his own” and even “attempted to make Kuhner’s words his own by adding extra comments and using different adjectives,” pointing out that while Land includes a link to Kuhner’s article on his website no author can “write a 500-word essay, pull 250-300 words verbatim or nearly verbatim from someone else and simply include a short footnote at the bottom.”

Land kept up with his “sorry if you misunderstood” mantra in a letter to SBC president Bryant Wright posted late on yesterday where he again offered a non-apology about the “misunderstanding” regarding his comments, complaining that he “overestimated the progress” the country has made on issues involving race:

I am writing to express my deep regret for any hurt or misunderstanding my comments about the Trayvon Martin case have generated. It grieves me to hear that any comments of mine have to any degree set back the cause of racial reconciliation in Southern Baptist or American life. I have been committed to the cause of racial reconciliation my entire ministry. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a Baptist minister has been a personal hero of mine since I surrendered to the ministry in 1962.

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Clearly, I overestimated the progress that has been made in slaying the ugly racist ghosts of the past in our history. I also clearly underestimated the extent to which we must go out of our way not to be misunderstood when we speak to issues where race is a factor.

Please know that I apologize to any and all who were hurt or offended by my comments. I will certainly recommit myself to seeking to address controversial issues with even more sensitivity in the future.