My concern with "Should the Church Split Over Gay and Lesbian Christians?" (February 2004 cover) is simple: For gay and lesbian Christians, the church has been split for a long, long time. Not only has the church been split, it continues to do some serious splitting.
Gay and lesbian people and their families have been told by the various Christian churches on one hand that they are created by God, on another that they cannot express that creation physically, on another that they are welcome in church, and on yet another, that they are going to hell. These "split" messages have caused incalculable damage to gay and lesbian people. This perspective seems absent in the conversation about someone's church splitting. Gay and lesbian people have experienced the violence of exclusion at the hands of the church for centuries.
The issue is hardly "Should the Church Split?" Rather, the issue is: Should the church listen to the lives of gay and lesbian Christians long enough to stop splitting and crushing them?
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