32
THE FINAL STEP:
APPROVAL OF HOMOSEXUALITY
Very few evangelical egalitarians up to this time have advocated the
moral validity of homosexual conduct, as far as I know. And I am thank-
ful that the leading egalitarian organization Christians for Biblical
Equality has steadfastly refused pressures to allow for the moral right-
ness of homosexual conduct.
However, we would be foolish to ignore the trend set by a number
of more liberal Protestant denominations, denominations that from the
1950s to the 1970s approved the ordination of women using many of
the same arguments that evangelical egalitarians are using today.^1 And
those few prominent evangelicals who have endorsed homosexual con-
duct have already set a pattern of following evangelical feminist argu-
ments. Virginia Mollenkott and Letha Scanzoni are two examples in the
United States.^2
(^1) The widely influential book by Krister Stendahl, The Bible and the Role of Women (trans.
Emilie Sander [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1966]), contained many of the arguments that persuaded
liberals to ordain women, and it is amazing to see how closely these arguments parallel the
arguments being made by egalitarians today (see above, pages 59-60).
(^2) However, Mary Kassian notes that Virginia Ramey Mollenkott’s 1977 book Women, Men,
and the Bible (Nashville: Abingdon, 1977) was one of the four most influential early books in
promoting evangelical feminism (Kassian, The Feminist Mistake, rev. ed. [Wheaton, Ill.:
Crossway, 2005], 248). Then, a year later, Mollenkott’s book with Letha Scanzoni, Is the
Homosexual My Neighbor? (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978) argued for a more toler-
ant view of committed homosexual relationships. Today Mollenkott’s personal website iden-
tifies her as a lesbian who has won several awards for promoting lesbian causes
(http://www.geocities.com/vrmollenkott). And now in 2005 Letha Scanzoni, one of the first
evangelical feminist authors, has publicly endorsed committed homosexual marriage: see David
G. Myers and Letha Scanzoni, What God Has Joined Together? A Christian Case for Gay
Marriage (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2005). (See also the tragic information about
professed lesbian Judy Brown, who was previously an influential egalitarian author, in chap-
ter 13, pages 122-123, above.)