Posted by
AudiR10TDI on Thursday, August 16, 2007 7:17:14 AM
August 16, 2007 --In the 1990s, I belonged to one of the largest Anglican churches n America, chiefly because I wanted to sing in the performance choir. This church practiced Don't Ask Don't Tell, and had many gay members who were prosperous business people that kept their sex lives out of the sanctuary and everyone was happy to welcome them. Then came AIDS. In our choir we had nine funerals in five years, of choristers whom we watched waste away before our eyes. We had funeral services for every one of them, attended by their grieving partners and families, and we sang at them all. They were our friends and colleagues and suddenly their private business was very public indeed. (Likewise the world of figure skating, which had strenuously denied that there were gays in their sport until AIDS began to take them away in a very visible way).If there was some malady that struck the adulterous, the thief, the blasphemer, the purveyor of toxic envy and those who neglect and vilify their parents, the same shock and dismay would strike that and every other congregation.
AIDS set an example for many other sinners, I think -- sinners who thought that they could also continue to do wrong and their sins would not find them out. AIDS proved to us all that nothing can be hidden forever.
It was not long after this round of funerals ended that the heterosexual choirmaster, married to one wife and father of four, was very publicly fired when his adultery with a young female choir member was discovered -- and it was the gay members of the choir who told him that his choices were two: either he would confess to the Dean or they would turn him in. He confessed and was fired that very day. When the Dean and the choirmaster met with us separately, it was the gay members of the choir who landed hardest on this man. To his midlife-crisis protest that "for the first time in my life I am in love" one man snorted, "You are not in love. You are in heat."
Having seen and experienced the wages of sin in their own lives, they were willing and eager to share that knowledge with those who thought that they too could break Commandments and never be found out.
And it was the gay members of the choir who comforted the deserted wife and humiliated children whose shame was revealed to everyone just as visibly as AIDS had marked those sinners among their friends.
Sin cannot be justified forever. Wise people realize that we are all sinners and use their own sinful nature to help others overcome like sins as they all progress toward Heaven. Together.