WaPo Champions Religious 'Sanctuary From Hate'

The top of Sunday’s Metro section of The Washington Post focused on anti-gay "hate." The headline was "A Sanctuary From Hate: Pastor, D.C. Church Offer Gay African Americans A Message of Acceptance and Responsibility."

What followed was a splashy article by reporter Darryl Fears with five photographs that offered no reply or rebuttal from the alleged forces of "hate," and no real exploration of what the church was teaching, beyond acceptance and preaching "safe sex." Fears described the tiny church sympathetically:

Inner Light Ministries in the District's H Street corridor might seem like a traditional black church, with fiery sermons, electric gospel music, a soulful choir and a congregation that sways and claps in rhythm. But it is hardly that.

For 16 years, it has served as a sanctuary for a small community of black gays and lesbians who say they feel shunned from all directions -- by black men and women who give them cutting looks of disapproval, by mainstream black ministers who condemn homosexuality, and by white gays who make them feel unwelcome in subtle ways, such as switching from hip-hop to country music in a club when too many black men hit the dance floor.

At Inner Light, members say they can be themselves. In the pews on a recent Sunday, a woman adoringly placed an arm around the shoulders of her girlfriend. A man with a linebacker's strong build sat near the front wearing mascara. And condoms sat in a basket near the door in case any worshipers wanted to grab some on their way out.

Safe sex is part of the message Cheeks preaches. Two-thirds of his 100 or so parishioners are gay and lesbian, a congregation that includes the young and the old; the healthy and the sick; those who are open about their sexual orientation and those who are more guarded.

They come to the church to pray for forgiveness and seek redemption. But many also come to share their experience of being black and gay, living and loving in a city where HIV and AIDS lurk in epidemic proportions in nearly every community.

Pray for forgiveness to Whom? The first mention of God came in paragraph 21, as the minister shakes his fist:

Cheeks, who had been ordained by the nondenominational National Spiritual Science Center in Takoma Park, found himself praying at the bedside of men taking their last breaths and presiding at dozens of funerals.

In November 1988 alone, he said, "I preached at 17 funerals." He was exhausted. "I didn't have another sermon in me. I was so angry that I told God to stop it."

A year later, Cheeks fell ill with pneumonia and a condition that attacked his nervous system. Doctors at George Washington University Hospital told him that he wouldn't walk again and might die. He thanks God that they were wrong.

Is Inner Light Ministries a Christian ministry? The website suggests it is a "Christ-centered community," and Cheeks preaches the "radical inclusiveness" of Jesus, but Fears and his editors kept the name and subject of Jesus out of the story entirely. Bishop Cheeks lists quite a mish-mash of religions in his biography:

He was initiated in Krya Yoga by Swami Hariharananda Giri and ordained as a Minister of Spiritual Science at the National Spiritual Science Center in Washington, D.C., received a Doctor of Divinity from the St. Andrews Theological Seminary of London and is an elder in the Akan Religion.

The Akan religion is west African, and has multiple gods.

Fears and the Post didn't really want to write a story about theology, but to remember the devastation of AIDS in the gay black community in the District of Columbia in the 1980s, and to feel sympathy for gay blacks who they feel are doubly cursed by discrimination.

The sermon of "safe sex" re-emerges at the end, as Cheeks is saddened by young people with the casual attitude that HIV is easily manageable:

As he left the Blade's offices, Cheeks said the discussion had driven home the need to start a youth mentoring program at Inner Light. "Most messages...to young folk is if you're gay or lesbian, you're going to hell," he said. "So why take responsibility if you're already condemned?

"They need to understand God loves them. But they also need to be accountable for their sexual behavior. Not everything goes."

That's a pretty vague ending. What are the limits? Or is the only limit being "safe" with a condom?