Homosexuality—once said to be the elephant in the living room—is also now the elephant in the church, and sometimes even at the altar and in the pulpit. Yet, as big as he is, there are still those who believe the elephant will just go away if we only ignore him. And then there are those who want to expose the elephant and drive him from the sanctuary with stones.

Gays, lesbians and bisexuals are worshiping—and sometimes leading the worship—in churches, synagogues, mosques and temples all over Nashville, across Tennessee and throughout the nation, even in highly homophobic Southern Baptist, Church of Christ, Mormon and Muslim congregations. Like it or not, the gay elephant’s prayers are floating up to heaven along with the straight ones.

Some of these homosexual worshipers and ministers are open about their sexual orientation. Others remain secretive, often living in fear that they will be discovered and exposed by unsympathetic religious ideologues who abhor the notion of gays leading churches. Still they worship. Whether facing disregard or stones, the elephant just won’t leave the sanctuary.

“Homosexuality is the major moral issue of our day,” one local lesbian campus minister says. “Yet, the church hasn’t handled it well. It’s the major moral issue of our day, just as race was the major moral issue during the civil rights movement. The church didn’t always handle that one very well either.”

The Rev. Will Campbell knows, perhaps better than anyone, that she’s right. A Baptist minister and author, Campbell was the only white person Martin Luther King Jr. invited to be present for the founding of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference that went on to spearhead the civil rights struggle. And Campbell, often called “the conscience of the South,” sees many people of faith going through the same kind of moral struggle with homosexuality as they did with race.

“In a sense, I think this is worse,” he says, sitting in the barber chair that graces the Wilson County log cabin where he has written 17 books chronicling the saga of human souls wrestling with moral choices. “So many people are scared shitless of the possibility that if they say nice things and make friends and so on and defend gays and lesbians, people might think they’re homosexual too. And I say, 'So what? Is that the worst thing you can be?’ ”

Campbell says he makes the same kind of moral judgment about homosexuality that Jesus did. “I say the same thing he said about it—absolutely nothing.”

But the Tennessee Baptist Convention says plenty. Just ask April Baker, the lesbian minister who serves as associate pastor of Glendale Baptist Church. When she came there last May as assistant pastor, the Tennessee Baptist Convention umpires who stand behind the doctrinaire plate were already judging her: (Strike 1) She was an ordained woman, and the Southern Baptist Convention forbids women to be placed in church leadership positions; (Strike 2) she was a lesbian, and the convention teaches that homosexuality is a sin; and (Strike 3) she is partnered, and this ups the ante for critics, because it suggests that she’s not only oriented a different way, but that she just might be acting on her orientation.

Two weeks ago, the Tennessee Baptist Convention cut all ties with Glendale Baptist because of what Baker represents. The Southern Baptist Convention is expected to follow suit this week. Church members, however, stand steadfastly behind her.

“At Glendale, we don’t all agree on everything,” Baker says. “We fit the old tale of if you have three Baptists in a room, you will have four different opinions about any topic. What we do agree on is that God has given us good news that has transformed us and that informs us every step of our live—the good news that God loves us all and that we are all welcome at God’s table.”

Despite the Tennessee and Southern Baptist Conventions’ institutional bias against Baker, she isn’t concerned about her future, and she has no doubts that God will take care of her.

“I believe with my whole being,” Baker says, “that God made me just like I am—brown-eyed, stubborn, female, a little shy, right-handed and lesbian. And in my heart, there’s no doubt that God loves me, not in spite of any of those things, but just because I’m one of God’s children.”

She might be a “little shy,” but Baker, 39, is no stranger to controversy. When she was working on her master’s degree in divinity some 15 years ago at Southeastern Baptist Seminary in Wake Forest, N.C., the hard-liners on the right were beginning to take over all the Southern Baptist seminaries, often expelling professors who were deemed to be too soft on such things as ordaining women and accepting homosexuals. Conservatives have characterized the struggle to cleanse these Baptist seminaries as an effort to get back to a solid belief in the inerrancy of the Bible.

“Some people thought it was about theology,” Baker says. “I thought it was about control.”

She went on from the seminary to eventual ordination, slowly came to grips with her sexual orientation, and fell in love with the woman with whom she now lives. They vowed their love for one another in a “commitment ceremony.” Without doubt, that ceremony, in the eyes of those two women and, many believe, in the eyes of God, was a marriage—the Baptist spiritual sex police be damned.

Little known to the general public, such same-sex commitment ceremonies are conducted quietly in a number of Nashville churches and synagogues. In fact, Congregation Micah’s Rabbi Kenneth Kanter says the only negative comment he’s ever heard about gays and lesbians at Micah was in regard to such a ceremony.

“With the exception of one family, who said something to me about it, I haven’t had a single word from anybody,” he says. “And that, I think, is very positive.”

On a recent gray day, the light from a rain-streaked restaurant window falls softly upon the comely, piquant face of a local lesbian campus minister. “I’m not ashamed of being a lesbian,” she says, explaining that she wants to speak anonymously to avoid any harassment being leveled against the well-known college where she serves as a campus minister. “Almost everyone around here knows who I am and that I live with another woman who teaches here at the college. But I just don’t want the administration to be harassed by a lot of telephone calls and letters.”

Her concern about homophobia is typical of many homosexual Midstate ministers interviewed for this article. Whether it’s fear for institution or self, the overwhelming number of those agreeing to talk only on the basis of strict anonymity is an indication of the fear, misunderstanding and ignorance surrounding the subject of homosexuality.

But, fortunately, the caution is in sharp contrast to the increasing openness and resolve that many heterosexual religious leaders in Nashville show in welcoming gay and lesbian worshipers. Some straight clergy members even support the idea of their faith ordaining gay and lesbian ministers.

“Congregation Micah from its very beginning welcomed a great diversity of Jewish people,” says Rabbi Kanter, who heads the synagogue. “This includes male couples and female couples, some with families. They have been part of the congregation from its inception.

“As early as 30 years ago, the Reform Movement [of Judaism] endorsed the concept of gay and lesbian members of synagogues outright, and then the ordination of gay and lesbian men and women as rabbis.”

Equally firm on this subject is Father Joe Pat Breen, pastor of Nashville’s St. Edward Catholic Church. He acknowledges that the official Roman Catholic Church has taken a dim view of homosexuality over the centuries, but he says that many Catholic parishioners, clergy and theologians have moved in the opposite direction.

“In most all of the churches, I think, all people are welcome and we don’t go around trying to determine what their orientation is. [Homosexuals] are God’s people. They are welcome, and they’re invited to participate in every phase of the church life. Their talent and skills certainly are very helpful in the liturgy.”

There are signs of similar views emerging from the Methodist Church.

“Here, this might help you,” the lesbian campus minister says, clearly amused as she hands over a book entitled, “Can Homophobia Be Cured?” Published in Nashville by the Parthenon Press, an imprint of the United Methodist Publishing House, the book dispels myths and offers factual answers to typical questions that Christians might have about homosexuality. It also suggests that the church can help cure the “illness” of those who hate or fear homosexuals.

This lesbian minister was born and raised in Tennessee, earned advanced degrees in religion, married and was ordained in the United Methodist Church. She and her husband, a lawyer, adopted two children, then she gave birth to two more. Over time, she came to understand her sexuality. She and her husband divorced, and eventually she fell in love with the woman with whom she now lives.

“Being gay is not someone’s vocation,” she says. “You have a social life. You have a spiritual life. You have a financial life. Being gay is just part of who you are. But it’s not a vocation. It’s a tragedy that gay ministers have to spend so much time fighting off anti-gay attitudes.”

Perhaps none is as beleaguered in that regard as the Catholic Church. As it tries to emerge from a series of priest sex abuse scandals, church leaders may be overshooting. The clergy grapevine and the Catholic press, including such distinguished publications as the National Catholic Reporter and the Jesuit magazine America, have reported that the Vatican is preparing a document that would ban gays from entering Catholic seminaries. The ultra-conservative Catholic publication The Wanderer has characterized this as a long overdue campaign to rid the Catholic priesthood of homosexuals.

“Many of us are very concerned,” one gay priest, the pastor of an old Middle Tennessee parish, says in decidedly somber tones. “We keep hearing reports of this mysterious document being prepared, saying that gay men are to be barred from the seminary. Apparently one day it’s just going to descend from nowhere. The greatest frustration is that you can’t find out who’s formulating the statement, where it’s being prepared or where it will come from. They say it will just come from somewhere in Rome.”

And that’s not the only evidence that the Catholic Church may be creating sacrificial lambs to quell the controversies that have plagued it. First, there were Pope John Paul II’s remarks to a flock of Brazilian bishops about “the importance of choosing suitable candidates for the priesthood.” Then came the report of a letter written by Cardinal Jorge Arturo Medina Estevez when he was a Vatican official. In that letter, Estevez was reported to have written that “a homosexual person...is not suitable to receive the sacrament of holy orders.”

The Rev. Philip Murnion, director of the National Pastoral Life Center in New York, told the gay publication Advocate last year that innocent gay priests are scared. “I think that priests, having been overprotected in the past, are concerned there may be a tendency to throw them overboard to save the ship.”

The rumblings of this secret Vatican document seem consistent with the Religious Right’s momentum in the United States, which has sought to link homosexuality with pedophilia. Such conservative personalities as televangelists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, and conservative Catholic columnist Pat Buchanan, have seized upon the clergy sex abuse scandals and jumped on this bandwagon.

“If the Boy Scouts can have the moral courage to stand up to establishment abuse and reject homosexuals as scoutmasters, why can’t the Catholic Church?” Buchanan fumes in a recent column.

This tirade flies in the face of findings from the American Psychological Association, the National Association of Social Workers, the American Academy of Child Psychiatrists and the Child Welfare League of America, which all have policy statements saying there’s no correlation between homosexuality and child abuse. In fact, many ministers cite government statistics showing that heterosexuals are far more likely to sexually abuse children than homosexuals.

“If this statement [barring gays from the seminary] comes,” the gay Catholic priest says, “I’ll have no choice but to leave. I was very open when I was in the seminary about who I was and what my sexual orientation was. I would have to leave the priesthood as a matter of conscience. Who wants to stay in a place where you are told that you’re kind of person isn’t welcome?

“Even though the statement is said not to affect gays already in the priesthood,” he says, “it will say to me and many others, 'We don’t want you.’ We have a good many gays and lesbians who worship here at this church. It will say that to them too. I know about 10 gay priests in this area. There may be more, but I personally know about 10. I would say that if this ban is announced, probably four of them would leave the priesthood. The other six say things like, 'I’m too near retirement,’ etc.

“If it comes down, I probably will just stand up in the pulpit one Sunday and say, 'Folks, apparently I’m not welcome here anymore. Now what are you going to do about it?’ ”

The idea that the hierarchy would contemplate such an order, the priest says, “shows what a rift there is between where people really live and where the hierarchy lives. It will show just how morally bankrupt the hierarchy is on matters of sexuality.”

Another gay priest, also a pastor, touches on a second possible fear: that an edict from Rome barring homosexuals from entering seminaries could embolden those who want to ferret out gays already ordained. He says some laymen are already developing a list of gay priests so they can start a campaign to get these priests out of the Diocese of Nashville.

“A lot of good people are going to be denied ministry,” he says, “and a lot of people are going to be denied the services of some mighty good priests if this goes through. Also, I feel strongly that denying homosexuals the ability to be ordained isn’t going to solve the problem of sexual abuse and immature sexual activity on the part of the clergy.”

When Father Joe Pat Breen engages the subject, he forcefully returns to his theme of the difference between the institutional church and the people church.

“I’m hoping,” Breen says, “that the bishops of the United States would provide the leadership to prevent such a document from ever being presented in the name of the church. It would be one of prejudice, one that would be very harmful to the Christian spirit. It would be one that certainly would not be welcome, and it would be one that would, in many ways, be unchristian.

He makes a clear distinction between Rome and the people who make up Catholic churches. “For the most part, it’s no problem for the people of God. It’s a problem for the institutional church—Rome. I hope, and certainly I pray, that Rome would not be so foolish, so stupid, to proclaim such a document.”

As Breen says, the leaders on the hot seat in this regard are the Catholic bishops. Already faced with a severe priest shortage throughout the world, they stand not only to shrink the number of seminarians, but also to lose some already ordained priests.

And the prospect of losing such priests has staggering potential. One priest interviewed for this story estimates that as many as half of priests are gay. “Although,” he says, “some of the older ones probably have repressed it, so I would estimate conservatively that the number who fully understand their homosexual orientation would be about 40 percent.”

Advocate, one the country’s leading gay publications, has reported on this subject, estimating that the figure ranges from 15 percent to 50 percent nationwide. The publication quoted one gay priest as saying: “Honey, we are legion inside the church.”

The man bearing the biggest weight of this problem locally is Bishop Edward U. Kmiec, the gentle, soft-spoken leader of the Diocese of Nashville. Kmiec has been firm in creating tough safeguards against clerical sex abuse. On the other hand, knowledgeable clergy and laity give him high marks for resisting the homophobic paranoia that seems to have seized some in the Vatican hierarchy. More than once, Kmiec or his senior staff have been quick to offer what is not such a terribly complicated distinction: A priest’s persuasion isn’t the issue; celibacy is.

“One problem for all gays and lesbians, even those in religious vocations,” one gay priest says, “is that people think that just because we’re homosexual we’re always out there looking for sex. That’s no more true for us than it’s true for heterosexuals.”

One silence being gradually broken involves clergy sex abuse of girls and young women. Many female victims say they’re speaking out more now, if for no other reason than to debunk the notion that the church’s sex abuse problem is rooted in homosexuality. Marianne Duddy, executive director of Dignity, a Catholic homosexual support organization, claims that the media vastly underreports female sexual abuse.

“Priest-on-girl sexual abuse,” Duddy says, “while horrific, seems to have less of an 'ick’ factor [than the abuse of boys] for many people in the general public.”

Just as it was a journey for Rev. Baker of Glendale Baptist and other ministers to come to grips with their sexual orientation, so it has been a journey for many ministers to try to understand homosexuality and its moral implications. Rev. Campbell, the Baptist minister and author, puts it this way:

“I don’t deny there were times when I was highly prejudiced against gays. In the Army, for example, my view was I didn’t want those guys fooling around with me. And part of it, I imagine, was fear that if I’m nice to the choirmaster, a young sergeant from Alabama, if they saw us close, drinking a beer together, they may think I’m one too. That was the fear.

“There are still a lot of people in that situation. And a lot of them deep down aren’t secure in their own sexuality or their masculinity, and [being homophobic] is the way they can feel macho.”

Campbell simply rejects the absolute certainty his fellow Baptists seem to have that the tree of Christianity is rooted in anti-homosexual soil.

“Jesus might very well have been a gay,” he says. “I don’t know. Don’t care. Although, he did seem to like women, you know. One of the most salacious, sexy passages of any literature I have ever read was that passage in the Bible where those women were up there sucking his toes, tickling him with their hair and all that.”

That kind of half-humorous candor has led many troubled souls, both layman and minister, straight and homosexual, to seek comfort and understanding in that little log cabin where Campbell writes and practices his own brand of renegade ministry. Many other souls, fleeing the harsh judgments of a homophobic church, haven’t been lucky enough to get to know Campbell, but they have found some other safe port from these theological storms.

One such person is John Bridges, the city’s cultural affairs director. When Mayor Bill Purcell named Bridges to the post some three years ago, he became the first openly gay individual ever to serve in a senior Metro job. But what many don’t know is that Bridges is a licensed lay reader in the Episcopal Church and the first openly gay person ever elected to the vestry of the Episcopal Christ Church Cathedral.

Bridges grew up in a small Alabama town, in the staunchly anti-gay Church of Christ, and graduated from the Church of Christ David Lipscomb University here. Throughout most of that time, from early adolescence on through graduation at Lipscomb, he knew three things deep in his soul: that the worship of God was important to him; that he was gay; and that he had to keep his sexuality in an airtight closet because the church where he did the first thing—worship God—said that doing the second thing—being gay—was sinful and could get a kid into deep guacamole with the church’s big guys. For a long time, Bridges kept those three balls in the air, with surprisingly little guilt.

“I was probably 12 or 13,” Bridges says, reminiscing, “and my concern about [being gay] honestly wasn’t the fact that I would go to hell. I don’t think that ever crossed my mind. And I remember when I finally did truly come out in the sense of having sex with a man, and knowing I was having sex with a man, and understanding that I was gay, and this was really what I wanted to do, and that it was actually sex and was not just playing around.... I sort of attempted to put myself through a spiritual crisis about it—I guess because I thought I should.

But the crisis never came. “This was going to be part of my life from now on,” Bridges says, “and I was going to do this again and be glad I did. So I didn’t go through a great deal of guilt about it.”

Just as Bridges looked inside his psyche and came to an honest view of himself, so the campus lesbian minister looked at the social order around her and came to a similar understanding.

“We teach people that there are two ways to be, male or female,” she says. “We set up these buckets, a male bucket and a female bucket. And whenever someone gets out of their bucket, people start getting twitchy. We say to a little boy, 'You’re a sissy,’ because he acts a certain way that’s out of his bucket. And he says to himself, 'Uh oh, something’s wrong with me.’ I believe that gender and sexuality are way more fluid that most people ever imagine.”

If Bridges never had his spiritual crisis, perhaps many other homosexuals aren’t having them either. Many of those interviewed for this story say there are thousands of gays and lesbians in some of this city’s most anti-homosexual churches, yet many of them seem to live with the disconnect. And some of them are even ministers.

Yet Bridges’ impression is that most homosexuals still aren’t participating in organized religious life.

“The vast majority of the openly gay community is disaffected with religion and isn’t practicing,” Bridges says. “Homophobia has made some people so bitter and so anti-ecclesiastical that they want nothing ever to do with it again. And there are other people who say, 'I really would like to go to church, and I understand there’s a place where I can go and be myself and be welcome. But there is that distinction in it—'be myself.’ Most any denomination will say, 'Oh we’d be glad to have gay people here.’ By that they mean 'We’re glad to have ’em here so we can help them change,’ or 'We’re glad to have ’em here as long as they don’t scare the horses.’ ”

In addition to Christ Church Cathedral, Glendale Baptist and Congregation Micah, the houses of worship in Nashville that welcome the participation of openly gay, lesbian and transsexual people include the Metropolitan Interdenominational Church, Edgehill United Methodist, St. Ann’s Episcopal, First Unitarian Universalist, The Temple Congregation Ohabai Shalom Reformed Synagogue and an increasing number of Catholic churches.

Perhaps the reason the Episcopal Church in general is friendlier to homosexuals is that its hierarchy is more realistic about some of its clergy being homosexual. But how much so, nobody knows.

Rev. Campbell says that many parishioners simply won’t accept the fact that some of their ministers are homosexuals.

“I feel sorry for priests and for bishops,” Campbell says. “I knew an Episcopal bishop who was gay. He knew how many bishops in the church were gay. Yet among his parishioners, I would be in physical danger if I said, 'Father so and so, this bishop is gay.’ They wouldn’t believe it. They would say, 'That’s a lie, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself.’ ”

When all’s said and done, what’s to become of the seemingly endless circle of religious homophobes disparaging religious homosexuals and religious homosexuals disparaging religious homophobes, 'round and ’round? Will that circle ever be unbroken? Some believe it will.

“Oh, sure it will change,” Campbell predicts. “In the first place, people are going to get tired of that fight. All social change comes slowly and painfully, but it comes.”

In the meantime, homosexuals keep repeating the famous gay liberation statement: “We’re everywhere. Get used to it.” And many churchgoers might remind themselves of that phrase again the next time they join the elephant in prayer at church, synagogue, mosque or temple.