Posted on Sun, Nov. 07, 2004
Preachers take 'war' to Topeka
BY ROY WENZL
The Wichita Eagle
What happened in May ticked off pastors Joe Wright and Terry Fox. They felt belittled, rejected.
Legislators rejected their plea to put an amendment to a statewide vote that would have defined marriage as being between one man and one woman.
Some legislators refused to shake Wright's hand. Others dismissed them as a nuisance.
"'Insignificant,' one of them called us," he said.
So, the two pastors cleared their schedules and drove Kansas for months, pleading with church leaders to get evangelical Christians to vote in November.
They succeeded.
They say politics in Kansas changed Tuesday. On Jan. 10, they plan to stand on the Capitol steps with 400 pastors at their backs.
Church people are awake, Wright said.
On Oct. 13, twenty days before the election, Pastor Joe Tuttle of Bethel Baptist Church in Emporia arrived at the Lyon County fairgrounds. He'd arranged a rally for 7 p.m. to listen to Wright talk about voting, and a statewide marriage amendment.
By 6:15 p.m., 45 minutes before the scheduled start time, several dozen people had arrived, from many denominations, from Lyon County and beyond.
Tuttle asked friends to count heads. By 7 p.m. the gathering place was packed. By 7:30, people were still coming in.
Wright told them "it is time for the church to awaken."
Get out and vote, he said.
Tuttle's volunteer crew counted 600 people listening.
He wasn't surprised.
"People felt like they should have the right to choose on the marriage issue and that the legislature hadn't given them the chance," Tuttle said.
People told him they did have the right to vote Nov. 2.
On the morning of Nov. 3, in Wichita, Vinnie Levin awoke to election returns that left her feeling heartsick.
In the months leading up to Tuesday's vote, she heard that two Wichita pastors were spurring evangelicals to the polls in Kansas.
She could see the results: they did it.
Levin and her partner, Kristi Parker, publish Liberty Press, a monthly newspaper for gay people in Kansas.
The television told her that voters in all 11 states voting on a marriage amendment had vehemently supported defining marriage as between a man and a woman. Commentators said evangelicals, coming out to vote for marriage amendments, tipped the presidential election.
Levin, who has a 3-year-old son and considers Kristi her wife, watched the news and realized that gay people like her, who already feel pressured to hide, were now waking up in a state where they might be less tolerated, less safe from discrimination.
"It broke my heart," she said.
Fox gave close to 100 interviews to radio stations and newspapers. He and Wright went to 40 towns and cities.
The sparks began to fly, Wright said. A flood of calls and e-mails came, offering help. Everywhere they went--Parsons, Emporia, Manhattan, Hutchinson and elsewhere--pastors turned out in dozens to meet, make plans and listen to coaching about how to preach without crossing the legal line that sparks IRS interest. Wright and Fox's lawyers helped coach them: don't criticize or endorse any candidate; just tell people to vote. Wright told people: "You know whom to vote for."
When the two pastors watched the election news Tuesday, they heard commentators speculate all day that high turnout was probably being driven by young people voting against Bush.
Clueless, Wright thought. The media didn't know what was coming.
But he knew.
Every time the television showed long lines of people somewhere, waiting to vote on Tuesday, Wright looked on, and felt a growing euphoria.
Those people in the lines looked like churchgoers.
Terry Fox the pulpit preacher comes off sometimes as intimidating. At Immanuel Baptist he preaches blunt talk about gay lifestyle, liberals, morality, secular humanists. He freely says "We're at war," meaning "culture war."
Fox in person is self-mocking, a good listener. He grins when Wright, sitting a few feet from him, teasingly says he has "aggression issues."
Fox says Christ demands compassion, not intolerance; that he's concerned that his pulpit image, carried on Channel 22, can be misunderstood.
On Wednesday, at Wright's office at Central Christian, he sat with Joe after the election, feeling giddy. There is a chance that Christians are going to take charge of culture war, he said.
"Christians have been pushed aside for too long," he said.
On Friday, three days after the election, he led a quick tour of Immanuel Baptist Church at 14th and Topeka, one of Wichita's poorest areas.
Twice in the past 10 years, he said, churchgoers voted not to join the exodus of churches to the suburbs.
They voted to stay, in part to help the poor, to support the central city.
Every week, he said, volunteers here pass out food and clothing to hundreds of poor -- black, white, Hispanic. The church funds, swelled with donations from more than 4,000 active members (500 new ones since the marriage debate took off), have built huge indoor basketball courts, a bowling alley, a hall for 1,500 children, and a cross out front, rising 105 feet. A beacon to the community. They do community outreach programs to help people.
"Nonreligious people have no idea what we're really about."
He said evangelicals are about everything Christ stands for.
Gay people already feel alienated, said Graylan Keefe, the pastor of First Metropolitan Community Church.
So now evangelicals seem to say "that God is a Booga-Bear," intimidating and intolerant. "Why should an already alienated gay person want to join that church?"
Patrick Hutchison, a spokesman for Equality Kansas, a civil rights group for gay people, said Wichita is a good place to live and is for the most part tolerant of gays. "I don't know of anyone who's ever been bashed."
He hopes a marriage amendment fails. He expects it to pass.
Vinnie Levin, the Liberty Press editor, said Wright and Fox have lit a fire under a movement "that wants to take away rights that I already don't even have."
"They say that as Christians they feel discriminated against?" she asked. "They are white, Christian, straight males. What do they know about discrimination?"
Every week, she said, she gets phone calls from people who were just fired by an employer or just evicted by a landlord. These people lost jobs and homes not because they got in people's faces about their lifestyle ("that's not a smart thing to do in this state") but because they were found out, and pushed out, by people who know it's legal to discriminate against gay people.
"You can't fire or evict someone because they are black," she said. "That's illegal. You can't do that to a person because they are Jewish, like I am. But you can do it to gays."
Most gay people mind their own business, she said. On Wednesday morning they awoke wondering what their nation and their state now intends for them.
"I was raised in the Jewish tradition so I don't know as much about Jesus," she said. "But from what I'm told, he was about love and tolerance. But there's nothing tolerant or loving about what's happening."
People will feel scared, she said.
Everything will come up for debate now, Wright said.
On Jan. 10, when the Legislature convenes, Wright and Fox will be there with 400 other pastors. Teams of preachers will stay through the legislative session.
To be heard, he said.
Statewide, he said, everything meaningful that has been rejected by courts, legislators and liberals could come up for debate now: prayer in schools, evolution, the Ten Commandments displayed in public buildings.
This time, he said, government will have to listen to people who think they got pushed aside for a long time.
If Vinnie Levin thinks Tuesday's vote will mean discrimination, that's unfortunate, Fox said.
Hurting people is wrong, he said.
"We want to reach out to all people," he said.
But the gay lifestyle is wrong, he said.
"Displeasing to God."
"And we are in a culture war."
War is never pleasant, he said.
My jaw just dropped when I read this.
Why is this happening to our country?
Do religious zealots just have nothing else to do? What is it?
I'm in the process of obtaining the email addresses of these two pastors. I'm going to send them a nice, long letter.
