Charles Koehler 0:00 Hi, I'm Charles Koehler, and this is Lambda Reports, a program by and for the St Louis lesbian and gay community. For centuries, organized religions have been a source of persecution and oppression for lesbians and gays. Church figures and their followers have pointed to the Bible as proof that same sex activity is sinful and should be condemned. However, in recent years, there's been a gradual increase in openness to examining the whole area of sexuality, homosexuality and religion. Our guest today is author of the ground breaking work entitled, Can We Talk About This? We welcome to Lambda Reports, St Louisan Jeff Bessler, good morning. Jeff Bessler 0:51 Good morning. Charles. Charles Koehler 0:52 Jeff, just what have you produced and why was it produced in this work? Jeff Bessler 0:59 Okay, basically, what I've done is produce a 80 page study guide and a 90 minute audio tape, a cassette tape that can be used in congregations where they're trying to discuss the issue of homosexuality, most often for the first time. Charles Koehler 1:20 And when you say study guide, that sounds terribly educational and dull and boring, but I must say, from reading what you have to say, I found it just fascinating and very, very thought provoking, if I can add that in. So okay, more than just just dull text, it's really very thought provoking. Jeff Bessler 1:20 Well, I tried to capture the real feeling issues that were underneath some of the questions about just information that I think are part of the issue. Charles Koehler 1:54 I think another characteristic of the work that you've done is that it's challenging for everyone to read, whether they be straight, bisexual, gay, lesbian, whatever. Why did you entitle your work Can We Talk About This? Jeff Bessler 2:13 Well, I thought that that would be a way of drawing people into a discussion as a that sort of that first step, you know, can we talk? Charles Koehler 2:24 but I think it even goes beyond that, because it's questioning the whole concept and asking a real important basic question, can we talk about this? Jeff Bessler 2:35 Right? Because yeah, for so long, the assumption was that we couldn't talk about it, but it wasn't topic that had already been decided. There was, there was nothing to talk about. And of course, in the last 20 years, we've the church has learned, and hopefully is continuing to learn, that there really is much to talk about and mention, new information, a lot of new insight into understanding what gays and lesbians experience, who they are, how the church needs to think about that and reconsider its own history and its own teachings. Charles Koehler 3:13 I understand that you did this, and were, in a sense, commissioned to do this by the can you tell us a little bit about that. Jeff Bessler 3:21 Yes, the Missouri-Kansas Synod of the new Lutheran Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, they had a task force commission on homosexuality, and the members of that task force commissioned me to write this, and the Bishop of the Synod, which is the geographical Synod that includes area that includes St Louis, he approved my writing this, and it was then published by the Synod and distributed to every congregation that belongs to the ELCA, Kansas, Missouri-Kansas Synod, through the Synod offices. Subsequent to that, the national office, one of the commissions there in the national office, saw the material, and they have now reprinted it for national distribution, making it available to any congregation who would like to use it. Charles Koehler 4:19 That's quite a large area. Jeff Bessler 4:22 Yes, it is. We've even had some interest in it from people in Canada, things like Lutheran Church in Canada and things like that. Charles Koehler 4:29 Now, would you say that the work that you've done is exclusively directed to a Lutheran audience? Would you have to be Lutheran to understand what it says? Jeff Bessler 4:40 No, I don't think so. By and large, much of the material is basic information and basic questions that I think all Christians have who have not reexamined the issue of homosexuality. There are some portions of it that are Lutheran but, but those are, I think minimal. Charles Koehler 5:03 You said Christian. I think that that many of the questions that are asked in here, even though it does refer to New Testament teachings, would also apply to perhaps, people the Jewish faith too, some of the just, real basic human rights and justice type concepts almost anyone the atheist Jeff Bessler 5:27 Right, I tried to combine and speak to as wide a group of people as possible, even though the the material is basically addressed to people within the church. The other side of that is that even though material is addressed to Christians, the attitudes of Christians and the teachings of Christians have influenced people outside of the church as well. And so Charles Koehler 5:52 they've influenced, for sure, lots of the legislations and laws and current thinking of the general populations. Jeff Bessler 5:58 Exactly. And so for even if you're not Christian, to understand what's going on in the Christian Church, as well as to understand how the church is struggling with the issue might be very important. One thing that I might say is illustrates this is in the new book by Neil Miller called In Search of Gay America, a time women and men in a time of change. He describes himself in the book as a Jewish radical sort of person, but at one point as he was, as he traveled around the country and then wrote the book about his experiences afterwards, he talks about the fact that once he got outside of the large east and west coast cities, he discovered that many gays and lesbians are involved in their church traditions in some sort or other. And he was sort of amazed by this. And he'd always been sort of suspicious of that kind of involvement, and wondered if it was healthy and those kinds of things. But as he traveled around this part of the country, he came to the conclusion, and I read this from the book, he says, I became increasingly convinced that as long as churches remained antagonistic, that is to accepting homosexuals and homosexuality, chances for overall social and political gains by gay people were limited. If religious attitudes changed, the status of gays and lesbians in society would improve significantly. So I thought that was a very important insight, particularly in regard to the kind of work that I was trying to accomplish. Charles Koehler 7:39 You do this for the the the local synod. Charles Koehler 7:46 Synod. Charles Koehler 7:47 yes, okay, Lutheran Church. What is the official Lutheran stance on homosexuality as of today? Jeff Bessler 7:56 The official stance probably could be summed up that homosexual people are people to be loved, but that homosexual activity is not accepted, and that couples and their relationships cannot be blessed, and that active homosexuals, in other words, gays and lesbians who are involved in practicing homosexual, Charles Koehler 8:22 Same sex. Jeff Bessler 8:22 same sex activity, cannot be ordained. Charles Koehler 8:27 Okay., Jeff Bessler 8:27 Sort of a standard church position. Charles Koehler 8:29 Okay, let's talk a little bit about biblical interpretations. And you spend a little bit of time in your work talking about traditional versus more recent and enlightened interpretations of the Bible. What do you have to say about in that area? Jeff Bessler 8:49 Okay, basically what I did in the book was summarize much of the work had been done by other authors, for instance John McNeill, the Jesuit priest who had written a book The Church and the Homosexual in 1976 and it's come out in a revised edition recently. But yes, very, very important, groundbreaking work. And basically what I did was summarize all of the arguments about the various passages in Scripture that have been talked about by a variety of authors and various interpretations, both positive and negative, towards accepting Charles Koehler 9:28 It's very important that you did do that, and it's I find it very fascinating to the comparison between the two. Jeff Bessler 9:35 Right. The idea behind the study was to sort of give a general overview of of the different issues, the different biblical interpretations and things like that, for the people using the study, so that once they finished the study, they could then go on to begin to discuss the issue. In other words, the study is not a way of ending the discussion. It's a way of beginning the discussion. Charles Koehler 9:58 That's one of the things that I noticed time and time again. And here you caution the people that are participating in this, these exercises, activities, discussions, are reading it is, now is not the time to come to a conclusion or forgot exactly how you say it. Jeff Bessler 10:15 Right. And I think it's important for people not to feel under the pressure of having to come to a very quick conclusion the kinds of issues that homosexuality raises for the heterosexual culture that we live in, homophobic heterosexist culture are really very profound and touch on a lot of very deep values, a lot of identity issues and all kinds of things. And so instead of trying to force people to make very quick discussion decisions and overwhelming them with all kinds of information, I think it's better to start off saying, here's sort of the lay of the land. Here's a map. And now as as time goes by, you can read a variety of books. You can you'll hear discussions of things in the news and on television. There'll be news events, things like that, which they can begin to make sense out of, out of the whole issue, and sort of process things and give people a chance to go through that process in more leisurely way. Charles Koehler 11:16 Your current working background this is a clinical social worker, yes, yes. Setting. And also, you have a training and background extensive in theology and in counseling. Have you found that to be helpful in writing, Jeff Bessler 11:34 Writing the study, yes, I was trying to use a combination of theology and spirituality in terms of engaging that as part of because that's the context, that's the the world of of dialog that I'm trying to engage because these, this is the church, and at the same time, use basic group dynamics that would facilitate a discussion where people, instead of simply being experiencing conflict, could, in fact, begin to dialog and build a sense of community, even while disagreement might continue. Charles Koehler 12:17 Real briefly what now that you've done this work, and there's a questionnaire in the back, what has been the response to what you've done, what you've created, this monster that you've created? Jeff Bessler 12:29 Well, the questionnaires in back, they're just beginning to come in, because the study is just being, beginning to be used widely, and there's not enough of the questioners back to have a sense of what that's going to look like. Charles Koehler 12:43 Any nscientific feel? Jeff Bessler 12:45 Unscientific feel. One of the things I think that's that interested me most was that even people who are still in a rejecting position, by and large, there's been a consensus, including even those people, that gays and lesbians should have basic civil rights, and civil rights guarantees political sorts of things, which I think is a first step. I don't think a lot of people were even at that point. And I think that as people move and work through the issue and sort of absorb all of the information that the study has for them over a period of time, that that's, you know, a major step, which shows some significant, I think, initial movement. Charles Koehler 13:24 I understand that this is going to be translated into Spanish for possible distribution throughout the Central and South America. That's pretty significant. Jeff Bessler 13:34 I have a friend in Buenos Aires who has been trying to arrange that, and the ELCA has been open to publishing it once it's been translated. Charles Koehler 13:43 Great, great. Well, that's all the time we have for today. I'd like to thank our guest, Jeff Besler, who has produced a multi part program entitled, Can We Talk about This? for the Evangelical Lutheran Church, and as we said before, I think we both agree that it could benefit nearly everyone, Lutheran and non-Lutheran alike. It's very challenging work. It's available through ELCA Distribution Center, 426, South Fifth Street, Box, 1209, that's in Minneapolis, Minnesota, 55440, I'll repeat that. That's ELCA Distribution Center, 426, South Fifth Street, Box 1209, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 55440. Tune us in again next week, and let's see Jeff Bessler 14:44 There's an 800 number to call. Charles Koehler 14:45 There's also an 800 number. 1-800-328-4648, Tune us in again, next week, same time. This is Charles Kodhler for Lambda Reports. Thanks. Transcribed by https://otter.ai