When we proposed to conduct this memorial service for Matthew Shepard, we asked a statewide gay and lesbian organization to assist us in planning and promoting this event. To our surprise they declined stating that Christianity had killed Matthew Shepard. Despite my personal opposition to that resolution, I was forced to admit that my church worldwide had sent a very negative message to the gay and lesbian people of the world, a negativity that they have almost come to expect from religious sources. Public statements made by the pope, John Paul II, the Rev. Jerry Falwell, the Rev. Pat Robertson, the Anglican bishops and a wide variety of other Christian voices proclaim that homosexuality is not normal, that it is a deviation, that all homosexual practices are to be condemned, that God is opposed to homosexuality and that the Sacred Scriptures condemn it. All Christians must live with the judgment of the homosexual community on the Church because, as painful as it is to realize, their charges are accurate.
Words shape consciousness and therefore words have consequences.
When religious voices claim to speak for Christ suggest in their prejudiced ignorance that homosexual people are sinful, abnormal, unclean or subhuman, we do nothing less than to sow the seeds that are used to justify hate, and even murder. These words embolden those religious voices who believe that they speak for God when they oppose extending hate crime laws to include gay and lesbian people. Christianity does have bloody hands. We did contribute to the murder of Matthew Shepard. That is why we gather in this Cathedral today as Christian people to mourn the death of this innocent victim and to pledge ourselves in a public way to stand against the rampant homophobia that the Christian Church has helped to create and to encourage.