When investor-candidate Rick Scott merged his interests with the Southern Baptist Church last summer through a bit of strategic gay-baiting, his campaign immediately acquired more assets than his enormous wealth could buy, and the Baptists bought themselves another governor. So it came as no surprise that after a January closed-door meeting with Baptist leaders, Governor Scott appointed the former CFO of the Florida Baptist Children's Home to head the Department of Children & Families. And within weeks of that appointment, the Florida Baptist Witness newspaper officially called on Scott and his DCF chief to reinstate anti-gay adoption discrimination. So goes the southern tradition of allowing a 19th Century church to make public policy in the 21st Century.
There is nothing new about the Southern Baptist anti-gay conspiracy in Florida politics. It began back in 1977 in singer Anita Bryant's Miami church when her hysteria influenced the Legislature to write bigotry into law. Since 1994, Baptists have employed a lobbyist to further their interests. And John Stemberger admitted in 2008 following the passage of his Marriage Protection Amendment, â┚¬Å”There's no question in my mind, as the organizer, that without Florida Baptist churches this would not have happened, period.â┚¬Â With 2,300 Florida congregations and 1 million foot soldiers, the Southern Baptist army is formidable, and anti-gay voter referendums are easily passed.
Few churches are as militant in their efforts to harm gay families as are the nation's 16 million Southern Baptists, the largest protestant denomination in America. Even now, the Southern Baptist Convention posts on their national website the malicious anti-gay rhetoric of the Family Research Council, an organization the Southern Poverty Law Center has officially labeled a hate group. They exhort their members to be politically engaged in defeating equality measures, and warn that if Southern Baptists are not politically engaged, â┚¬Å”then we disobey the commands of Christ and allow Satan to prevail by default.â┚¬Â Fueling the illusory battle with Satan has served Republican politicians well, and they court the Southern Baptists every election cycle, promising institutional anti-gay bigotry in return for zealous support of their political agendas.
Whether it's organizing a boycott of Disney World to punish Ellen for coming out on a Disney-owned sitcom or bussing in out-of-state parishioners to protest a local anti-discrimination ordinance (like Orlando's Chapter 57), it is inevitably the Southern Baptist Church leading the anti-gay fray. National campaigns against hate crime legislationâ┚¬â€ÂEmployment Non-Discrimination Act or Don't Ask Don't Tell–are always Baptist-led. It was even a Southern Baptist preacher, George Rekers, who was hired in 2008 to defend (unsuccessfully) the state's anti-gay adoption statute when Martin Gill sued for the right to adopt his foster kids.
In 1996, Baptists issued their â┚¬Å”Resolution on Homosexual Marriage,â┚¬Â still on their website. It condemns gay relationships (â┚¬Å”a homosexual sexual relationship is always sinful, impure, degrading, shameful, unnatural, indecent and pervertedâ┚¬ÂÂ); and it lays out a political road map for opposing marriage equality nationwide. The SBC promises to fight efforts to legitimize â┚¬Å”thoroughly wickedâ┚¬Â same-sex marriage, and vows â┚¬Å”we will never conform to or obey anything required by any governing body to implement, impose or act upon any such law. So help us God.â┚¬ÂÂ
Baptists championed Florida's 2008 Marriage Protection Amendment. The referendum leaders, John Stemberger and Mathew Staver, relied on the network of Southern Baptists to obtain the required signatures in each district, finance their myriad organizations, and even preach specific sermons on the necessity of discriminating against gay people. The national SBC implored their vast membership to support anti-gay marriage amendments in Florida, California and Arizona, and all three passed easily.
Candidate Rick Scott needed that Baptist network to win in 2010, so he predictably turned to gay-baiting, telling the Florida Baptist Witness that he was opposed to LGBT civil rights protections and adoption and foster parent privileges for gays. This news fired up the Baptists who had been lukewarm to Scott. And now the governor will not have to personally initiate any anti-gay measures. Liberty Counsel's Mathew Staver (former preacher and current Tea Party activist), plans to stop gays from adopting, presumably through the well-oiled Southern Baptist referendum express in 2012.
Who can stop the Southern Baptist war on Florida's gay community?
Gay rights organizations completely underestimated the power of the Southern Baptists in 2008 and were surprised when the Marriage Protection Amendment passed with 62% of the vote. Even now, those organizations tiptoe around the rabid elephant in the room, unwilling to publicly condemn the church for stirring and profiting from gay hatred. Cultural leaders look the other way, and progressive candidates recoil at being labeled gay-friendly. If only someone would reach out to national business leaders who could counter the religious extremism by expressing a simple truth in these times of economic challenge: Fortune 500 companies will not bring their jobs and riches to a state that endorses anti-gay discrimination, nor should they.
It's time for decent people to condemn the malicious tactics of the Southern Baptist Church and its political allies. It's past time for Baptist parishioners to rise up from their pews and leave or reform their church on behalf of their own gay children, parents and friends who continue to be persecuted in the name of their God.
Vicki Nantz is a Florida filmmaker whose latest documentary is In Anita's Wake: The Irrational War on Florida's Gay Families. She is also a former Southern Baptist.
