Homophobia, She Wrote
The gay blogosphere is alight with the news that a female choir member at the Greater Mount Calvary Holy Church on Rhode Island Ave. outed over 100 church members in two separate emails to Bishop Alfred Owens, Jr.
The first email, sent last month, named 45 members as gay; the second email, sent earlier this month, names over 60 additional people. An anonymous gay former church member supplied the Washington Blade with copies of the email messages, edited not only to remove the names of those who were outed, but also the person who sent them.
In one of the messages, the female choir member wrote, "I will be leaving the choir at the top of the year because 80 percent of the tenors are homosexuals and act more like a female in choir rehearsal than I do." Further on, she wrote, "The following people I am asking you to monitor very closely and my prayer is that you will sit them down from their ministries, because they are ushering in the presence of sin, lies, a spirit of homosexuality and sexual spirits."
She mentions specific gay bars such as Halo and the Fireplace, parties they go to, and even comes up with some curiously acute percentages of members who are gay. ("... 90.9 percent of the tenors in Sanctuary choir are homosexual. 99.9 percent of all the tenors in Celebration Choir are homosexual.") Copies of the messages also went out to over 300 church members via the church's Yahoo group.
Nearly 2 years ago, Bishop Owens garnered media attention for his use of the word "faggot" in a sermon recorded by the church. The CityPaper has an audio excerpt of the sermon, some of which the Blade quoted in its article:
It takes real men to confess Jesus as Lord and Savior. I'm not talking about no faggot or no sissy...Wait a minute! Let all the real men come on down here and take a bow. All the real men -- I'm talking about the straight men. You ain't funny and you ain't cranky, but you're straight.
According to the Blade's source, Bishop Owens responded to the emails by calling a meeting for all of the church's choirs. At the meeting, Owens reportedly said he wanted to help gay church members to stop being gay, and that he would meet with everyone named in the email messages to determine who "needs to be monitored or sat down from what they do." The church hosts a "Breaking the Chains of Homosexuality" group sessions twice a month led by Minister Dennis Sawyers.