Oprah tackles new issue: ‘Gay is a gift from God’

Rev. Ed Bacon

By Drew Zahn

On the third day of her televised “Best Life” week-long series, even Oprah Winfrey was stunned to hear one of her pastor panelists, Rev. Ed Bacon, declare, “Being gay is a gift from God.”

With wide eyes, Winfrey responded, “Well, you are the first minister I’ve ever heard say, ‘Being gay is a gift from God,’ I can tell you that.”

The comment was made earlier this month on the “Your Spiritual Journey” segment of Winfrey’s “Best Life Week” by Rev. Bacon of the All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, Calif., a church described by Pasadena Weekly as “one of the most socially progressive religious institutions in America.”

The comment was so controversial that Winfrey invited Bacon back four days later via video link to explain himself.

“Tell us, what did you mean by that comment?” Winfrey asked.

“I meant exactly what I said,” Bacon responded with a wide smile. “It is so important for every human being to understand that he or she is a gift from God, and particularly people who are marginalized and victimized in our culture. Gay and lesbian people are clearly outcasts in many areas of our life, and it is so important for them to understand that when God made them, God said, ‘You are good.’”

The video of both Bacon’s original statement and his follow-up interview with Winfrey can be seen below:

During the original broadcast, Bacon’s comment was applauded by another member of Winfrey’s panel, Michael Bernard Beckwith, founder and spiritual director of Agape International Spiritual Center in Los Angeles, who agreed and gave a high-five to Bacon.

“You … you are the first two ministers I have ever heard say, ‘Being gay is a gift from God,’” said Winfrey.

As Winfrey explains on the video above, however, Rev. Bacon’s comment – and Beckwith’s agreement – generated a massive viewer response.

“You don’t know how freeing it felt to hear that statement, and I was sure any gay person that heard it was in awe,” one of Winfrey’s Internet message board writers reportedly responded. “I want to thank both of them for letting my heart lift up and feel like something in this life, not an abomination.”

“On today’s show,” another viewer commented, “I was appalled by the pastor’s remark that being gay is a gift from God. How many gay people did this man of the cloth lead down the wrong road with his comment?”

Rev. Bacon, as well, confessed that he received an avalanche of e-mail and voice mail response, which he says was 30-to-1 appreciative of his comment.

“What I gather is that [the comment] simply unleashed a flood of healing throughout the country,” Bacon said. “People were talking about their hearts being healed, and their hearts leaping.”

Bacon also acknowledged that he received criticism over the remark.

“Ironically,” Bacon said, “the most meanspirited e-mail I received was from Christians who interpret the Bible – from my perspective – in a condemning way.”

Bacon further explained that he perceives some Christians use the Bible to condemn people, while others use it to love.

“Everyone has to make a decision about how they use the Bible, if they’re biblically oriented like I am,” Bacon said. “You have to take the orientation of compassion and inclusion to the Bible, or you’re going to have to use it as a way to beat people up and condemn them and judge them.”

Bacon further addressed the issue at All Saints Episcopal Church the Sunday between his two appearances on Winfrey’s program.

Referring to critical e-mail received after his remark, Bacon said from his church’s pulpit, “Some of it is the most vitriolic stuff I have ever read, calling for the rescission of my ordination, saying I didn’t know what I was talking about and saying, ‘Show me where in the Bible it says that being gay is a gift from God.’”

To the last challenge, Bacon replied, “Well, if those folks would read the Bible, they would see that in Genesis it says that when God created humankind, God said that we are good – all good, didn’t mention any exceptions.”

A video of Bacon’s pulpit comments, made available by All Saints Church, can be seen below:

Rev. Susan Russell, associate pastor at All Saints, further backed Rev. Bacon and his comments.

“We take for granted that a message of toleration and inclusion is what God’s message is about, but a lot of people have never heard this,” Russell told Pasadena Weekly. “What I find so wonderful is that Ed Bacon [is] able to use this national stage for an inclusive message about the love of God.”

She continued, “Ed said he meant that we’re all created in God’s image. We invite those who thank us to come see us, and we explain the background of our positions to those who disagree. We think it’s an opportunity for dialogue even with those who think we’ll burn in the lake of fire.”

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‘There are many different versions; I don’t see why we can’t have one’

A filmmaker who recently released an independent project about a formula that turns all heterosexuals into “gays” now has announced he’s working on “The Princess Diana Bible” in which “God” ordains homosexuality as the better lifestyle.

“There are many different versions of the Bible; I don’t see why we can’t have one,” stated Max Mitchell in a statement on a website for his new project.

The “gay Bible,” produced by the New Mexico-based Revision Studios, states God instructs “it is better to be gay than straight.”

Mitchell said he developed the idea for the “Bible” from his new movie project, called “Horror in the Wind,” in which an airborne substance “reverses the world’s sexual orientation.”

He said it’s named “The Princess Diana Bible” because of Diana’s “many good works.”

The website offers a preview of the project, which is forecast to be available in 2009.

In Mitchell’s version, Genesis talks about Aida and Eve:

“And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Aida, and she slept: and he took one of her ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib, which the Lord God had taken from woman, made he another woman, and brought her unto the first. And Aida said, ‘This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of me. Therefore shall a woman leave her mother, and shall cleave unto her wife: and they shall be one flesh.’ And they were both naked, the woman and her wife, and were not ashamed.”

The new version continues:

And Eve conceived, and bore Cain, and said, we have created a child in God’s image. And God said the male was different than the woman because he was fathered by the serpent. … And Eve again conceived with the serpent and bore Cain’s brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.

According to the pro-homosexual website Queerty.com, Mitchell has described his work as divinely inspired.

“Jesus was gay. In Biblical times homosexual relationships were so commonplace that no one gave it a second thought. It was heterosexuality that was considered sinful,” he told the website.

On the website’s comment page, one participant said, “Aida and Eve are a breath of fresh air upon the face of repressed homosexulity (sic) in America. Finally, a version of the bible everyone can relate to.”

At Belieftnet.com, a commentator expressed opposition to the project.

“Every once in a while, art doesn’t transcend truth as much as it distorts it, and that’s where I draw the line. Hence my opposition to the upcoming ‘Princess Diana Bible.’

“This book is inspired by a political agenda and one person’s desire to contort not only the text but the very context of it to suit his own perspective. That, you may say, is what commentators do – and perhaps even translators – but this guy is making himself an ‘author,’ which makes it a book, not a Bible,” the commentator wrote.

From World Net Daily News