SALON

Tuesday, Feb 19, 2013 5:15 PM UTC

Baptists for marriage equality

Hood supports the Uniting American Families Act, which allows same-sex couples to get immigration benefits

By

Topics: Religion Dispatches, LGBT Rights, Immigration, southern baptists, Religion, sen. patrick leahy,

Baptists for marriage equality (Credit: Flickr Creative Commons)
This article originally appeared on Religion Dispatches.

This morning Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) announced that he would be reintroducing the Uniting American Families Act (UAFA), which would permit same-sex spouses of undocumented immigrants to sponsor them for immigration benefits just as straight spouses do:

We must also do better by gay and lesbian Americans who face discrimination in our immigration law. Today, Senator Susan Collins and I will introduce the Uniting American Families Act. This legislation will end the needless discrimination so many Americans face in our immigration system. Too many citizens, including Vermonters who I have come to know personally and who want nothing more than to be with their loved ones, are denied this basic human right. This policy serves no legitimate purpose and it is wrong.

Religion Dispatches
Three years ago, when there was considerably less movement in favor of comprehensive immigration reform in general, evangelical leaders who supported immigration reform threatened that including UAFA in a package would mean losing their support. Not much has changed in that camp; witness the Southern Baptist Convention’s Richard Land’s recent comment to the Christian Post:

“Same-sex partner provisions such as those included in the Uniting American Families Act would be strongly opposed by many in our communities who are otherwise sympathetic or even enthusiastic about the benefits of immigration reform,” said Land.

“[President Obama] needs to understand that’s a deal breaker for lots of us and it needs to not be in there.”

Last year, Land agreed to step down from his post as president of the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission in late 2013, after he was exposed for plagiarizing, among other things, inflammatory remarks about the Trayvon Martin case. At the time, Brian Kaylor, a contributing editor at Ethics Daily, a moderate Baptist publication, told me, “Land is much more influential among journalists as an ‘evangelical leader’ than he is with the average Southern Baptist in the pews. He has more say in newsrooms than sanctuaries.”

Who constitutes Land’s “lots of us,” then? Meet an average—or maybe not so average, but instructive—Southern Baptist, the Rev. Jeff Hood. Four years out of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, the denomination’s preeminent training ground, the 29-year-old Hood supports LGBT rights (he actually prefers to the term “queer”) and favors immigration reform with UAFA. About Land and other evangelical leaders who say they support immigration reform but refuse to accept it with equal treatment for LGBT couples, Hood told me, “I think it’s disgusting. They are not reading their Bibles or listening to Jesus.”

Having grown up in a Southern Baptist church, Hood said that when he got into Southern, “it was like I got accepted to Harvard.” He aspired to the archetype. “I wanted to be your average megachurch pastor. I wanted to play the game, have a pretty wife, a lot of hairspray in her hair.” Now, he and his wife live outside of Dallas, where he pastors a house church, works as a hospital chaplain, and volunteers to help death row prisoners and on “queer issues here on the ground.” When the issue of equality in immigration reform came on his radar, he said, “it’s painfully obvious to me. You don’t bust up people’s families.”

Hood’s “road to Damascus” moment at Southern was when a respected mentor (not at Southern) came out to him. “I had no mental ability to grasp that at all. I wasn’t given any space to love anyone who wasn’t heterosexual, and, for that matter, a Calvinist,” said Hood.

Although that revelation completely changed his thinking about God and the Bible (it “blew up boundaries for me”), still, “I will tell people, when they ask me—I say I’m a Southern Baptist, because I still claim that heritage.” Hood is emphatic about another aspect of classifying himself. “I am not an evangelical hipster,” he said. “I’m very distrustful of those people.”

Sure, Hood became, in his words, a “pariah” at Southern, for his questioning of the waging of the culture wars, of the “norms they had with regard to human sexuality.” But Hood also “became someone who was trusted by young men to come out to.” Gays at Southern? Hood told me, “A lot of close friends who are closeted are pastoring Southern Baptist churches.”

His denomination, Hood maintains, realizes it needs to change or face irrelevance. “No one’s listening to them now. They realize they are losing ground, losing their voice. They’re trying to figure out a way to gain it back and be relevant. They thought that Calvinism was going to be the answer, that Calvinism would make it cool… Tim Keller and the new Calvinism guys—they’re trying to make Christianity cool, they’re trying to make their brand of Christianity cool. I’m like, why can’t Christianity just be Christianity. The reason is—it’s hurtful to even say this—because they are concerned with patriarchy and control. By promoting Calvinism and all these theologies of exclusion, they are able to maintain control. To me, Christianty is not an exclusive deal.”

Hood described Land as a “joke, even among Southern Baptists, he is a joke. They look at him as something that represents something they don’t want to be anymore. Nobody wants to be the culture warriors anymore.” They want to be, he said, “something where you can still be a bigot and seem kind of cool in the process. And they don’t think he’s cool.”

Sarah Posner is the senior editor of Religion Dispatches, where she writes about politics. She is also the author of God's Profits: Faith, Fraud, and the Republican Crusade for Values Voters" (PoliPoint Press, 2008). More Sarah Posner.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 2 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

Salon is proud to feature content from Religion Dispatches, a daily online magazine that publishes a mix of expert opinion, in-depth reporting, and provocative updates from the intersection of religion, politics and culture.


follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations