A story such as this is important, very important. As part of the LGBT (and atheist community), the more of us that realize what is at stake and refuse to remain silent in the face of Christian privilege and religiously-motivated bigotry, the harder it will be for anyone to silence us. Bigotry becomes much harder to maintain when it is exposed for what it is.
As Hemant Mehta concludes in his writeup concerning this story, "Cortez is just a symbol of what’s to come. Denominations that have long been against equal rights will start to come around, one pastor at a time, until they have no choice but to come around on the issue or risk being left in the dust."
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The pastor of a Southern Baptist church in Los Angeles, California announced last month that he is now “gay affirming” and has accepted his son’s homosexuality, a declaration that is causing a rift in his local congregation and sparking controversy within the Southern Baptist Convention.
In an hour-long sermon released on YouTube and a letter submitted to John Shore’s Patheos blog, Danny Cortez, pastor of New Heart Community Church, told his congregants that after a “15-year journey,” he has shifted away from his negative stance on homosexuality and is now accepting of LGBT people.
“In August of 2013, on a sunny day at the beach, I realized I no longer believed in the traditional [church] teachings regarding homosexuality,” Cortez said in his letter. “And it was especially the testimony of my gay friends that helped me to see how they have been marginalized that my eyes became open to the injustice that the church has wrought.”
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,,,in a rare move for a SBC church, Cortez’s congregation did not vote to expel him from the pulpit after he declaredurch — that is, a worship community where members “agree to disagree and not cast judgment on one another” on the topic of homosexuality. Although some members plan to split off from the churc his gay-affirming stance, but chose instead to keep him as their pastor and become a “Third Way” chh on June 8th, Cortez will remain head of New Harmony Community Church as it embraces a live-and-let-live approach “in the same way that our church holds different positions on the issue of divorce and remarriage.”
Southern Baptist Minister Explains Why He Changed His Mind On Homosexuality | ThinkProgress
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