BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Another gay rights issue that has divided people of faith is hate crime legislation. President Obama signed an expansion of the hate crime law that makes it a federal offense to attack people because of their sexual orientation. Some faith leaders welcomed the hate crime expansion, calling it a human rights victory. But others fear it would inhibit religious speech, even though the law explicitly says no one will be prosecuted for their beliefs or speech.

Here to examine the issue is David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times who has covered religious liberty questions. David, welcome. Why do what appear to be a fair number of religious conservatives think this new law or this extension of the law is wrong?

DAVID KIRKPATRICK (New York Times Staff Writer): Well, if you believe yourself to be engaged in a culture war, a part of which is about the nature of sexuality and homosexuality, then you want to convey to your children, you want to teach your children that homosexuality is a sin. It’s something to be avoided. It’s not a natural kind of behavior. And now comes along a statute that is going to say homosexuals are a kind of person worthy of not only special respect but special protection. You’re going to see that as a defeat.

ABERNETHY: But what about seeing it as a threat to free speech, even to what a pastor might say in the pulpit? Some people have said pastors could be prosecuted for preaching the biblical view of homosexuality and other things like that. What about that?

KIRKPATRICK: That’s overblown. Okay, I mean, clearly this does not suspend the First Amendment, and there’s nobody, I think, on either side of the US Senate or House of Representatives that intends to see preachers locked in jail. But we get overblown rhetoric on the left and the right, and the reason why this particular overblown rhetoric finds some purchase in the minds of people out there is because there is an element of thought involved. You know, what a hate crime does is it adds to the penalty to an aggressive or criminal act if the person who perpetrated it was motivated by a special disdain for the person they’re hitting. You know, if someone is standing outside of a bar saying “I hate gay people” and then slugs a gay person, that’s a hate crime, and it does have something to do with their reasoning and their thinking, so it’s not ludicrous to think that a kind of thought is being penalized here.

ABERNETHY: And even that it might apply to a sermon?

KIRKPATRICK: Well, that goes a little bit far, but, you know, suppose a pastor gave a sermon about how terrible sodomy is, and then later that day he happened to get into a fight with a gay man. Well, he could be in trouble.

ABERNETHY: But what about just a parishioner who heard a sermon and then went out and did something? Would that, then—would the pastor then be held responsible for that?

KIRKPATRICK: I’m not a lawyer, but that seems pretty far-fetched to me. However, on the other hand, you know, if you’re an active participant in a congregation that spends a lot of time talking about what a sin sodomy is, and then you happen to get in an altercation with a gay man, I think that that could plausibly raise questions, and if you want to, you know, if we’re going to try to be as sympathetic as we can to the people who are concerned about this, let’s look at college campuses. You know, that’s a place where, within the context of the campus, people do regulate free speech, and they do regulate hate speech, and I think that there are some people who think, well, goodness, I don’t want my son or daughter to end up at a secular college where by reading certain passages of the Bible they’re going to trigger, you know, speech codes. So they’re not—it’s not completely irrational to feel like there’s something at stake here.

ABERNETHY: David Kirkpatrick of the New York Times. Many thanks.

LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: The middle-aged woman struggling with the weak surf has quite a story to tell, one of heartbreak and despair and then a remarkable transformation. Her name is Mary Setterholm.

MARY SETTERHOLM: You know, I didn’t know that what I was going through was hell, but it was hell.

SEVERSON: There were the beatings, the sexual abuse, the prostitution.  She lost her faith in humanity and God.In 1972 when Mary was 17, she was the US woman’s national surfing champion. Now she owns and operates the Surf Academy in Santa Monica where she and 80 full-time staffers teach hundreds of kids each year how to ride the waves. Some classes for kids from the inner city she offers for free. Sister Sheila McNiff of the Los Angeles diocese met Mary in 2002.

(to Sister Sheila McNiff): What was your first impression?

SISTER SHEILA MCNIFF: Amazement at somebody who had such a tragic story and yet had such a heart for reaching out to other people who were suffering and that was clear right from the beginning.

SEVERSON: Mary’s dad left home when she was a baby—ended up in jail. Her mom, working and getting a law degree, would leave Mary and her five brothers and sisters with a babysitter.

SETTERHOLM: This woman would put us in a backyard dog pen area and just leave us there.

SEVERSON: The babysitter beat the kids, and then her son and his friends gang-raped Mary several times.

SETTERHOM: I would really, really, really fight back some times, and I never won, not once, but I fought. I fought. I never let them just have me.

SEVERSON: She went to a Catholic school, was admittedly a hell-raiser, and says she paid for it with violent thrashings from the nun who was her teacher. She remembers one beating in particular when she was 12.

SETTERHOLM: I fainted in this beating. I mean, my head was like a melon just banging against the wall. And so I look at the cross, there was a big cross, a horrible, bloody cross of Christ up on the wall, and I remember looking at that cross and going, “Save me.” I really experienced, like, a talking back from the cross, and it was, “Yes, this is what you go through. No one comes for you.” And when I heard those words I just fainted, not because of the beating, but because of what I heard—a truth about the cross.

SEVERSON: And then she was sexually abused by a now deceased priest.

SETTERHOLM: You know, they come out with their big robes, and everyone goes and hugs the father, but he would take me off to the side, and he would get busy right away fondling me.

SEVERSON: The ocean became her sanctuary—has been ever since she was six years old. As a teenager, she started hitchhiking to the beach, and that’s when she turned her first trick.

SETTERHOLM: I kind of fell into it, which is how it happens for most women. They don’t really have a cognitive thought, “I’m going to prostitute.”

SEVERSON: She wasn’t much older than some of the kids she coaches when she started turning tricks regularly—says taking money for sex gave her a feeling of control in a world where she had so little. But she’s convinced she almost lost control, almost lost her life to one man who picked her up.

SETTERHOLM: I said, hey, I wanted to go to Newport, I thought you were going to Newport and he just backhanded me. He just started beating me, and while he was doing that I look at the car door, I want to just jump out, and its wired shut. There was no handle. It was a death trap.

SEVERSON: She used her surfboard as a shield and barely managed to jump out of the car. Her run of bad breaks continued after she moved to New York, married a Muslim, and had five kids she is still close to.

SEVERSON: But your husband—

SETTERHOLM: Yes.

SEVERSON: He was abusive, too.

SETTERHOLM: Yes, he was very abusive. I’ve been in two shelters for battered women.

SEVERSON: After her divorce Mary returned to prostitution. She was with a john when she experienced what became a transformational moment.

SETTERHOLM: I look out through a crack in these van curtains, and I see this cross of Christ, and I just felt this stab in my heart, and I got to feel my broken heart in that moment—the broken heart of the cross itself, the broken heart of being where I was, a sense of I don’t know how to stop this, I don’t know how to get out of here, I don’t know how you can even get to me and find me, yet I feel you all around me.

SEVERSON: After hearing all the stories about the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandal, Mary decided she needed to share hers. She contacted Sister Sheila McNiff, the LA diocese’s victims assistance coordinator, told her she wasn’t interested in monetary compensation, she simply wanted to help others like herself. After hearing her story, Sister McNiff asked her if she would tell it directly to Cardinal Roger Mahony.

SISTER SHEILA MCNIFF: Right away it was obvious to me that Mary had the capacity to steal his heart. My impression of Cardinal Mahoney is someone who is very serious, and you don’t get a warm, fuzzy side of him. But Mary found that place in his heart for really speaking her truth and speaking on behalf of other victim survivors.

SEVERSON: The cardinal asked her to become his emissary and tell her story to other victims. She gave the cardinal her surfing trophy, and it reportedly now sits on his desk.

SISTER SHEILA MCNIFF: We were talking and she was saying she’d never finished college, and I was astounded, because clearly this was an articulate woman.

SEVERSON: So Mary went to Loyola Marymount University and got her bachelor’s degree in theology. Professor Jeff Siker is chairman of the theological studies department.

PROFESSOR JEFF SIKER: She speaks her own truth. She speaks from her experience. She speaks from the streets, and she’s determined not to let the academic institution be a purely academic institution. If it’s not going to make a difference in the world, if it’s not going to be engaged in the world, then what use is it?

SEVERSON: Now that Mary is no longer homeless herself, she searches out those who are.

SISTER SHEILA MCNIFF: She finds homeless women in bushes. She’ll take them home and put them in the bathtub and put their clothes in the washing machine and take them down to a shelter. She knows the shelters, she knows the laws, she knows who to ask for help, and she’s just an incredible human being with compassion.

SETTERHOLM (speaking at Serenity Sisters meeting): “We come to believe that a power greater than ourselves could introduce us to our authentic self.”

SEVERSON: She started a support group for women with deep emotional problems and no one to share them with. It’s called Serenity Sisters. First Erica, then Donna:

ERICA: I read once that one in three women is assaulted or sexually abused by the time she’s 18. Where do you take that stuff? Where do you process that stuff?

DONNA: And it’s because of Mary’s nonjudgmental presence we are all welcome. All our stories are welcome.

SETTERHOLM: So the real call to me is to be present alongside “a sinner.” I have hope that they feel the presence of someone loving them. That is my number one objective.

SEVERSON: The Serenity Sisters will continue to meet while Mary moves to New York long enough to earn joint master’s degrees, one in divinity from the Union Theological Seminary, and one in social work from Columbia. She plans to use her education and her experience to help other women and kids escape the misery that was her life. She is going to New York because she knows she can’t study if she’s anywhere close to the surf.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly I’m Lucky Severson in Santa Monica, California.

DEBORAH POTTER, guest anchor: Mainline denominations continue to be sharply divided over issues surrounding homosexuality, and this week (August 17-23) it was the Lutherans’ turn. Leaders of the nation’s largest Lutheran denomination voted to lift their church’s ban against noncelibate gays and lesbians in the clergy. The issues dominated debate at the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s biennial assembly held in Minneapolis this week. Kim Lawton has our report.

PRESIDING BISHOP MARK HANSON (Addressing 2009 Churchwide Assembly): Have no fear, we will pray!

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: They prayed for unity, but disagreements over homosexuality were clear as delegates of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America—the ELCA—gathered in Minneapolis this week (August 17-23).

UNIDENTIFIED DELEGATE: We cannot change what is right and what is wrong.

UNIDENTIFIED DELEGATE: How about Jesus saying judge not, that you be not judged?

VOICE OF ASSEMBLY MODERATOR (Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson): If you’re in favor of the amendment, vote one. If you’re opposed, vote two. Please vote now.

LAWTON: After vigorous debate, clergy and lay delegates approved a measure that allows local congregations to hire homosexual pastors who are in “lifelong, monogamous” relationships. Previously, only celibate gays and lesbians could be recognized as ELCA pastors.

REV. BRADLEY SCHMELING (St. John’s Lutheran Church, Atlanta): Well, it’s certainly painful when people say that your relationship or your call are not valid.

LAWTON: After acknowledging his relationship with another man, Atlanta pastor Bradley Schmeling faced a church trial in 2007. He’s no longer officially recognized as an ELCA pastor, but his congregation kept him on. Schmeling says he hopes the denomination is entering a new era.

SCHMELING: Well, my dream for the ELCA would be that we could be a community that really celebrates gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender leaders in the church—not just tolerate our presence, but genuinely celebrate the gifts that people bring to the church.

LAWTON: Traditionalists argued that the measure violated biblical teachings.

REV. CORI JOHNSON (Northern Great Lakes Synod delegate): We have a clear witness in Scripture about homosexuality. Every time homosexuality is mentioned in Scripture, it’s mentioned in a negative light. We don’t have any positive references to homosexuality in Scripture.

LAWTON: Many said the same standards should apply to all pastors.

REV. MARK CHAVEZ (Lutheran Coalition for Reform): And the proposals are just a flat-out rejection of what the Christian church for 2000 years, and most Christian churches today, and most believers today, still hear and believe: Don’t have sex outside of marriage. Period.

LAWTON: But supporters argued for a different interpretation of Scripture.

REV. GLADYS MOORE (New England Synod delegate): I think there are some who want to see the Word as a static book that we are to read literally, and others of us see it as a living, breathing, dynamic Word that continues to be revealed to us.

LAWTON: With nearly five million members, the ELCA is one of the largest denominations in the US. Delegates are hoping the debates won’t tear their church apart. They passed a social statement affirming that there is room in the ELCA to accommodate differing views on homosexuality—an issue, the statement said, which is “not central to our faith.”

VOICE OF ASSEMBLY MODERATOR (Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson): The social statement as amended is approved.

REV. MOORE: I don’t think this is a church-dividing issue. There are some who will say that, but I’m not one who believes that.

REV. JOHNSON: I think that there will be some deep hurt, and there will be some pain, and how we move forward and deal with that as a denomination will speak volumes as to our fidelity to the word of God and to the strength of our unity.

LAWTON: Both sides acknowledged more debates about homosexuality are still ahead. I’m Kim Lawton reporting.

DEBORAH POTTER: The Lutheran delegates also passed an agreement to have “full communion” with the United Methodist Church. That means the nation’s two largest mainline Protestant denominations will share ministers, missions, and other church resources. The United Methodists approved the agreement at their general conference last year.

BOB ABERNETHY, Anchor: After decades of debate and division, the US Episcopal Church this week said overwhelmingly that gays and lesbians are eligible to become bishops or serve in any other ordained ministry of the church. At their General Convention, Episcopal leaders also moved toward developing an official rite for blessing same-sex unions. These decisions are likely to widen the divide between Episcopalians and the worldwide 77-million-member Anglican Communion of which they are a part. Kim Lawton has our special report from Anaheim, California.

KIM LAWTON: At their meeting in Anaheim this week, Episcopal bishops, clergy, and lay representatives tackled a host of social issues, from global poverty to justice for Disneyland hotel workers. But the most divisive topic, once again, was homosexuality.

REV. IAN DOUGLAS (Episcopal Divinity School): It wouldn’t be a meeting of the Episcopal Church or the Anglican Communion if we didn’t somehow engage matters of human sexuality.

LAWTON: Despite concerns from many global Anglican partners, convention delegates overwhelmingly voted to move ahead on two of the most contentious questions: whether to ordain gay bishops and whether to bless same-sex unions. On the issue of gay bishops, the delegates asserted that “God has called and may call gays and lesbians to any ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church.” The vote effectively ends a de facto moratorium that was approved three years ago, although it does not guarantee that more gay bishops will be consecrated.

Separately, the delegates also voted to move forward in developing liturgies for blessing same-sex relationships. The issue will be taken up again at the next General Convention in 2012. In the meantime, the measure allows local clergy leeway in blessing same-gender relationships, especially in states where gay marriage is legal.

Reverend Susan Russell is the outgoing president of Integrity, a group that works for the full inclusion of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered people in the Episcopal Church.

REV. SUSAN RUSSELL (Integrity): I think the overwhelming message coming out of this convention, not only for LGBT people but for all who are looking for a community that that embraces peace, justice, tolerance, compassion, and the good news of God in Christ Jesus, is that the Episcopal Church welcomes you.

LAWTON: The measures passed in part because many conservative Episcopalians have left the denomination. Those remaining feel increasingly isolated.

BISHOP WILLIAM LOVE (Diocese of Albany, at press conference): It is very sad for me because I am a lifelong Episcopalian, I’m a lifelong Anglican, but first and foremost I am a lifelong Christian, and it is breaking my heart to see the church destroying itself in the manner in which we seem to be doing.

LAWTON: Many delegates here said they voted for the direction they believe God is calling their church to go in. But those votes pose new challenges for a global Communion that has already been strained close to a breaking point. There’s a lot riding on how what happened here gets interpreted around the world.

Many Anglicans, especially in Africa, Asia, and South America, were outraged in 2003 when the Episcopal Church approved the consecration of New Hampshire Bishop Gene Robinson, the church’s first openly gay bishop. An emergency Communion report called on the US to ban on any future consecrations of gay bishops until an international consensus emerges.

The Communion’s spiritual leader, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, attended this meeting before the controversial votes took place.

ARCHBISHOP ROWAN WILLIAMS: Along with many in the Communion, I hope and pray that there won’t be decisions in the coming days that could push us further apart.

LAWTON: Much of this week’s debate centered on balancing Communion concerns with a desire to move forward.

BISHOP GENE ROBINSON: I believe with my whole heart that we all know where this is going to wind up. It is going to wind up with the full inclusion of all of God’s children in God’s church.

BISHOP PETER BECKWITH: I would concede that if indeed that it is the right thing to do, we should do it now. I do not believe it is the right thing to do.

BISHOP NATHAN BAXTER: While I am very, very much concerned about our covenant with the Communion and our mission, I am also concerned about our covenant with our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters.

BISHOP SHANNON JOHNSTON: The Communion, for me, is too much to lose. There is too much at stake with mission and our ability to apprehend larger, wider truths that go way beyond our own small church and setting in the Western world.

LAWTON: Shannon Johnston, coadjutor bishop in the Diocese of Virginia, said he personally supported the gay ordination resolution, but voted against it because he didn’t want to further divide the Communion.

JOHNSTON (Diocese of Virginia): It was quite wrenching, because it took two of the core values of the church and juxtaposed them against each other, mission and inclusivity on the one hand and then the unity of the church on the other, which is no less a core value of the Gospel.

LAWTON: Episcopal Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori said her church is not fomenting division.

BISHOP KATHARINE JEFFERTS SCHORI: Schism is not a Christian act.

LAWTON: The approved resolutions reasserted the Episcopal Church’s desire to remain an active member of the Anglican Communion. But Bishop Jon Bruno of the Diocese of Los Angeles says that doesn’t mean total agreement with overseas churches about homosexuality.

BISHOP JON BRUNO (Diocese of Los Angeles): I think I would explain it to them that the context that we live in is totally different and that they have to be tolerant of our context as well as we are tolerant of their context. I still want to be in relationship with them fully.

LAWTON: Reverend Ian Douglas, a representative from Massachusetts, described the votes as being honest with the rest of the world about what the Episcopal Church stands for.

DOUGLAS: There’s no Communion without genuine relationship, and there’s no genuine relationship without truth-telling. So I see commitments to being in Communion and telling the truth about who we are as being of a whole.

LAWTON: Conservative Anglicans already don’t like what they’re hearing.

BISHOP DAVID ANDERSON (American Anglican Council): I think it signals to the rest of the Communion, the Anglican Communion, that the Episcopal Church wants to be a member only on its own terms, and that if terms are applied to it, then they will go their own way and have things the way they wish, and others can be with them or not.

LAWTON: David Anderson is among the Episcopalians who left the denomination over theological issues. He was ordained a bishop in the Anglican Church of Kenya. Disaffected Episcopalians, including four breakaway dioceses, have formed a rival jurisdiction called the Anglican Church in North America. They’re seeking recognition from the Archbishop of Canterbury.

ANDERSON: I see that as The Episcopal Church continues to go through these earthquakes of adopting things there is going to be a constant stream of both people and churches, perhaps more dioceses, that wind up leaving and coming over into the rest of the Anglican Communion.

LAWTON: But at the same time, many Episcopalians believe their actions here will help bring in other people who may have felt alienated in the past. Both sides say they’re anxious to focus on mission rather than division. I’m Kim Lawton in Anaheim, California.

TIM O’BRIEN, anchor: The issue of gay marriage is on the agenda as the US Episcopal Church holds its once-every-three-years General Convention in Anaheim, California.  For years, Episcopalians have been deeply divided over homosexuality.  One proposal being debated at this meeting would allow Episcopal churches to conduct same-sex weddings in the six states that have legalized gay marriage.  Currently, most mainline denominations do not officially allow same-sex weddings.  But the changing legal environment is adding new pressure.  Kim Lawton has our report.

KIM LAWTON: Boston’s historic Church of the Covenant has been an important place for Anne Crane and Sarah Perreault. The lesbian couple had their first date there in the late 1970s, and by the time Massachusetts legalized same-sex marriage the two had been active members for more than 25 years, so a church wedding seemed the obvious choice.

SARAH PERREAULT: In particular we wanted to be married at our home church with our community and our family and friends.

LAWTON: But it was complicated. Church of the Covenant is dually aligned with two mainline denominations: the United Church of Christ and the Presbyterian Church (USA).  And while the UCC has no problem marrying same-sex couples, it’s against national Presbyterian policy.

ANNE CRANE: Well, it’s painful to know that the church that I’ve been a part of all my life does not recognize our relationship and our marriage as being a legitimate marriage.

LAWTON:  Church of the Covenant worked it out so that a retired UCC minister conducted the ceremony, and the Presbyterian side of the church officially stayed out of it.  Crane and Perreault say their wedding was beautiful and meaningful, but not quite everything they would have planned.

PERREAULT:  I felt badly because there were people that we would have liked to include in our ceremony who could not participate because they were ordained Presbyterian clergy. There was a real loss there.

Man at Protest:  “We are a couple…”

LAWTON:  For decades, mainline denominations have been wrestling over issues surrounding homosexuality: whether to ordain gay clergy and whether to recognize–and bless same-sex unions. Now that six states have legalized gay marriage, those battles are taking on a new urgency. Some church members are pushing the denominations to reassess their policies, while others are fighting to hold the line.

Mark Tooley is president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy, an advocacy group that supports conservative positions within mainline denominations.

MARK TOOLEY:  The church shouldn’t just go along with what the wider society demands of it. But the church is ideally supposed to be faithful to timeless teachings that have been presented to the church through its Scripture and through its traditions.

Minister:  “To have and to hold…”

LAWTON: Currently, while the Unitarians and the UCC conduct gay marriages, mainline Protestant denominations as a rule don’t officially allow it. Clergy who participate in same-sex weddings could face church trials and even risk being defrocked.

Minister:  “I hereby pronounce you husband and husband…”

TOOLEY:  Traditionalists within those churches will strive to help to ensure there is as much fidelity as possible, by the clergy to the official teachings.

LAWTON: In the United Methodist Church, 83-year-old Richard Harding has a long history of activism for gay rights. He helped found Reconciling Retired Clergy, a network of retired pastors willing to perform gay marriages.

REV. RICHARD HARDING: There’s not a whole lot that they can do to we retired clergy, and there’s a whole lot that they can do to active clergy that they can’t do to us. And that’s why we’re stepping in.

LAWTON: Harding says he believes what he’s doing is the right thing, so he’s willing to risk any repercussions.

HARDING: We could be defrocked. I would be now sitting here as Mr. Harding instead of Reverend Harding. And in Massachusetts, a lay person can go for a day to the state house and get permission to officiate at a marriage. So I’d still be able to do it, only I just wouldn’t be a pastor anymore.

LAWTON: At Church of the Covenant, interim minister Jennifer Wegter-McNelly is an ordained Presbyterian pastor. She says her congregation has been put in a difficult position of trying to maintain support for gay members while still respecting the national denomination.

REV. JENNIFER WEGTER-MCNELLY: We have a long history and we’re very active, and so I think there is a lot of really thoughtful hard conversation about how do we be prophetic and remain faithful and connected to the churches that are our larger community?

LAWTON: So far, they’ve been able to do that by keeping same-sex weddings solely under the jurisdiction of the UCC part of their church. Other congregations don’t have that option. Episcopal clergy also can’t conduct gay marriages. In an effort to be even-handed, many Massachusetts Episcopal churches aren’t doing any weddings, gay or straight. Instead, Reverend Pam Werntz at Boston’s Emmanuel Episcopal Church says they provide a blessing for couples who are married by the state.

REV. PAM WERNTZ:  That could happen separately, it could happen at the courthouse and then a couple comes here for the ceremony, or it can happen in the same ceremony where a Justice of the Peace presides over the first part of the service and the priest presides over the blessing and often a Eucharist celebration.

LAWTON: The compromise may have helped circumvent some of the denominational difficulties, but Werntz says it was still painful for many members.

WERNTZ:  There were people that left the church in feeling a lot of sorrow and betrayal that the Episcopal Church couldn’t move as fast as I think it needed to move when same-sex marriage was legalized.

LAWTON: UCC minister Reine Abele, who does perform gay weddings, say churches need to be better at addressing social concerns.

REV. REINE ABELE: Churches generally are not the leading edge of cultural change in our society. They are often not the engine but the caboose.

LAWTON: But despite the new activism, mainline clergy continue to be conflicted over the issue, and those who support gay marriages still appear to be in the minority.

LAWTON: According to a recent survey by Public Religion Research, mainline clergy are generally more supportive of gay rights than Americans as a whole. But that doesn’t hold true when it comes to same-sex marriage. Only a third of mainline clergy support gay marriage. That number is just about the same for Americans overall.

TOOLEY: Often people in wider society are very surprised to learn that the mainline churches don’t already accept same sex marriage, because typically these churches, at least for the last 50, 60 years or more have been on the liberal side of social issues. But they have hung back on the marriage issue.

LAWTON: For many, it’s an issue of basic theology.

TOOLEY: Typically for Jews and Christians, marriage is a metaphor for faithfulness between God and his people and once you begin to redefine what marriage is you ultimately start to redefine who God is and that obviously and understandably is difficult for Christians and Jews.

LAWTON: In the Presbyterian Church (USA), Reverend Mary Holder Naegeli is among those urging the denomination to maintain its stand.

REV. MARY HOLDER NAEGELI: Homosexual practice is not God’s design for humanity. Not being God’s design for humanity, having these clear prohibitions in the Scripture make homosexual practice a sin. Homosexual marriage makes permanent a situation that God wants to redeem.

LAWTON: But others advocate a different interpretation of the Bible.

WEGTER-MCNELLY: Our call to be inclusive of all people comes from scripture.  It comes from faithfulness to God, it comes from understanding that all people are made in the image of God and it’s essential to support people in their relationships, to bless them and support them and nurture them.

LAWTON: For Wegter-McNelly, the issue also comes down to her pastoral responsibilities to the people in her pews.

WEGTER-MCNELLY:  Here gay marriage isn’t an abstract issue. It’s not a political issue.  It’s very much an issue of the people of the congregation being in community together. To tell people that this community that is the compass for your life is not going to bless and support you in your intimate relationship is kind of an impossibility.

LAWTON: But supporters of traditional marriage say pastors also have a responsibility to their faith and to the wider church.

HOLDER NAEGELI: Why would I, a representative of God, help people make permanent with a vow, I take marriage vows very seriously, but with a vow to make permanent then, seal something that God wouldn’t agree with?

LAWTON: As they celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary, Anne Crane and Sarah Perreault are glad their church wedding worked out.

CRANE: It’s a liberating feeling, and it’s enabled me and us to just, to live our lives honestly and openly, and many people don’t have that opportunity and have to continue living a lie. And that’s the sad thing.

Minister: Those whom God has joined together, let no one put asunder.  Amen.

LAWTON: But given the conflicts within the mainline churches, the situation is not likely to change any time soon.

I’m Kim Lawton in Boston.

MARY ALICE WILLIAMS, guest anchor: California’s gay marriage law remains in legal limbo. The state’s Supreme Court judges have less than two weeks to either uphold or strike down the gay marriage ban known as Proposition 8. Prop 8 passed last Election Day, in large part because Mormon churches mobilized for it. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints withstood blistering criticism from outside the faith. Now resentments are festering inside the Mormon community. Lucky Severson reports.

LUCKY SEVERSON: Dr. Pam Chan is an OB/GYN and a lifelong Mormon living in San Francisco. She found herself deeply conflicted when she got the message that her church was going all out in support of Proposition 8 banning gay marriage in California.

Dr. PAM CHAN (Member, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints): There would be little announcements made here and there, announcements about how we might be able to volunteer our time to, you know, go door-to-door, to hand out flyers, to stand on street corners with signs, and these little announcements, you know, I’d hear and I’d look around and wonder, “Is everyone okay with this? Does anyone besides me see a problem with this?”

Pam Chan

SEVERSON: Ron Packard is a lawyer, a former Mormon bishop and former mayor of Los Altos, California. He is now a councilman who supported Proposition 8 and says it’s extremely rare for the church to get involved in ballot issues.

RON PACKARD (Former Mormon Bishop): I think that they made an exception to their general policy of not getting involved because they have a core concern about the protection of families and the possible disintegration of families in modern society.

SEVERSON: The church’s official position is that marriage between a man and a woman is ordained by God, and the formation of families is central to the Creator’s plan for his children. Mormons believe they are led by a modern-day prophet who receives revelations from God, and when the prophet speaks members usually follow. But with this issue Dr. Chan discovered that other active members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were also strongly opposed to the church’s position on gay marriage.

Dr. CHAN: Our church is the church of Jesus Christ, first and foremost, and my understanding of the Gospel of Christ is that it’s a Gospel of love and acceptance. So it seems like a policy that’s about discrimination, which often goes hand in hand with fear and hatred, not about love and acceptance, and that for me is really troublesome.

SEVERSON: Bob Rees is a retired professor of literature at UCLA, a former Mormon bishop and a church scholar.

BOB REES (Former Mormon Bishop): In reality, this is an issue which has divided our society. It’s divided churches. It’s divided families, and some individuals are divided within themselves.

LISA FAHEY (Member, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints): So during the rallies I had some signs that said “Straight and Active Mormon for Marriage Equality” because I wanted to let people know, and I got a lot of attention for that. People came up and shook my hand and hugged me and told me, “Thank you very much.”

SEVERSON: Lisa Fahey and Kim McCall are also active Mormons, also conflicted.

Ms. FAHEY: That’s my whole point for speaking out — letting other people know that you can vote “no” or you can be for gay marriage and still be an active Mormon.

Ron Packard

Mr. PACKARD: The church has a long tradition of encouraging thinking members to not be afraid to speak up — beginning with Brigham Young. He said doesn’t want blind allegiance. He wants people to pray about it, think about it, and come to their own conclusions.

SEVERSON: In the year 2000, a majority of California voters approved a proposition stating that only a marriage between a man and a woman was valid. Eight years later, the California Supreme Court ruled that the ban on gay marriage violated the state’s constitution, and that’s when the drive began to amend the constitution with Proposition 8, and that’s when church leaders sent out a letter to its members calling on them to donate their time and money to an unequivocal moral cause. Although many churches and a majority of Californian’s supported Proposition 8, Mormons were probably the most organized and donated almost half the $19 million generated for the campaign.

Mr. REES: And I think there’s no question that the church’s involvement in this was determinative. Many people were unprepared for the effectiveness of the church in doing what it does. I think the church was probably unprepared for such a strong negative response to its involvement.

SEVERSON: The church may also have been unprepared for the number of members who opposed the church’s proclamation. Members who are still active like Laura Compton, a church organist and mother of two, who operates a Web site called Mormonsformarriage.com. She says the site still gets lots of attention and in the run-up to Proposition 8 was getting thousands of hits a day.

LAURA COMPTON (Mormonsformarriage.com): The comments that we have gotten are a lot of members who say, “Thank you so much for creating this community. I felt so alone.” A lot who said, “Because you have this site, I’m able to continue going to church.” A lot of people who have called us to repentance for what we have been doing, and a lot of outside people who’ve said, “Thank you for showing us that not all Mormons, you know, want to take away our rights to marriage.”

Ms. FAHEY: It’s been really difficult to be a member of the church during this time. I’ve had a lot of people tell me that possibly I should be excommunicated, and that’s really hurt me, because I feel like I’m really a very loving, forgiving person.

Kim McCall and Lisa Fahey

Mr. REES: The most unfortunate thing for me in all of this thing that happened over Proposition 8 was the divisiveness, the acrimony. Each side began in some sense emotionally and spiritually dis-fellowshipping or excommunicating the other side.

SEVERSON: Ron Packard says the most fierce opposition has come from gay rights advocates that have rallied against the church around the nation. He’s says he on a blacklist because he supported Proposition 8.

Mr. PACKARD: There’s some people who’ve lost their jobs because they supported Proposition 8.

SEVERSON (to Mr. Packard): Really?

Mr. PACKARD: Yeah.

KIM MCCALL (Member, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints): So one of the dynamics of the church over the last hundred years is to move more and more mainstream. Okay, we looked very sort of un-American. You know, Brigham Young was opposed to the Pledge of Allegiance [Editor's Note: Mr. McCall's statement about Brigham Young is in error. Brigham Young died in 1877. The Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1892], and we looked really outside the mainstream, and there’s been a, you know, more American than thou now we’re the most patriotic people. Okay, we weren’t very monogamous. Now we’re more monogamous than everybody else. You know, we’ve got to be. You know, we’re so worried about polygamy in our history and how odd it makes us look that maybe we need to overreact.

Mr. REES: I think there is little question that a from a public relations point of view the church has suffered over its involvement in Proposition 8, and I know of people who have had second thoughts about joining the church over this issue. I know some of our missionaries have had a difficult time finding open doors and open hearts because of this.

Mr. PACKARD: A majority of the people of the United States don’t want same-sex marriages. So for the majority we may have, instead of getting a hit we get a halo. Whenever any organization gets involved in the political process, there’s going to be some who consider it a hit and others who feel that they’re a hero.

SEVERSON: Ron Packard says the church does not discriminate against gays, that his niece and some of his friends are gay, and that the church does not have a policy of denying the sacrament to homosexual members. But Lisa Fahey says there are still members who don’t understand what it means to be gay.

Laura Compton

Ms. FAHEY: I even had some friends say that they still think that homosexuality is a choice. I don’t think the church leadership feels that way but members — some members feel that way, wrongly of course.

SEVERSON: Bob Rees says as a bishop he counseled gay and lesbian members who felt they were not wanted in the church.

Mr. REES: We have congregations who are not inclusive of the homosexual members of their congregations. We have families in which brothers and sisters don’t speak to one another over these issues, and I as a Christian, I can’t understand that. It breaks my heart.

SEVERSON: Laura Compton says since Proposition 8 the church leadership has become more flexible, making it known that members can still be in good standing even if they oppose the church’s position.

Ms. COMPTON: This has not challenged my faith, no. My faith is independent of the morality or the politics of gay marriage. It’s deeper. My faith is in a Christ who loves everybody and wants everyone to come to him, and a God that loves the world no matter whether they are Mormon or Muslim or Jewish or Catholic, and wants all of us to be there and all of us to treat each other like we’re brothers and sisters and not like we’re them and us.

Mr. REES: The function of faith communities is to make a home a for us, and I think that many of our Latter-day Saint brothers and sisters feel homeless, because we haven’t created a home for them. But I see that changing. I think there is much more understanding.

SEVERSON: As other states take up the issue of gay marriage, Mormon church leaders this time around have not asked members to get involved. Meanwhile, the California Supreme Court is once again considering the constitutionality of the ban on gay marriage. Their decision is expected soon.

For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I’m Lucky Severson in San Francisco.

JUDY VALENTE: A basement bar near the campus of a major Eastern university Thursday night around 10 p.m. Some of these young people, after having a few drinks — or more than a few — may later become physically intimate in some way, possibly with someone they barely know. It’s called “hooking up,” and it’s not uncommon behavior these days.

Prof. Christian Smith

Dr. CHRISTIAN SMITH (William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Sociology, University of Notre Dame): A lot of universities at 5:00, 5:30—almost every adult has left the campus. I mean literally it’s a small village that’s taken over by 18- to 22-year-olds, and so what they want to do there, they do.

Dr. LORI S. WHITE (Vice President for Student Affairs, Southern Methodist University): I think it exists on every college campus. I think this is how students develop relationships with one another on college campuses nationwide.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE STUDENT #1: Hardly any of our friends are in a serious relationship. Most people have, you know, steady hookups, but they would never consider them their boyfriend or their girlfriend.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE STUDENT #1: Most guys love to go out and look for the hookup. I think it’s a lot better than having a relationship, personally.

VALENTE: Why?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE STUDENT #1: Because there’s more excitement. I mean, you don’t really have the monotony of just going out to dinner with same girl or just hanging out with her every single night.

VALENTE: Hooking up can mean anything from kissing to sexual intercourse, or something in between. It comes with no emotional involvement and certainly no commitment. In other words — no strings attached.

Dr. SMITH: I would say the hookup culture is very pervasive. Most young people have to deal with it. It’s around them even if they never hookup. Even if they think it’s immoral, they have friends that are or they know people that are.

VALENTE: Christian Smith is a sociologist at the University of Notre Dame. He’s been studying the emotional and spiritual development of young people from their early teenage years to college age and beyond.

Dr. SMITH: The intimacies of physical involvement and sexual involvement among college-age students these days — they don’t know what it means. They don’t expect much from it. It doesn’t have much significance. It seems to be another form of entertainment that doesn’t have too much attached to it.

VALENTE: What ever happened to dating, to romance? Why is there what some have called “a crisis of courtship”?

SARAH (Student): My mom is always, like, Sarah, you know, I can’t believe you don’t have a boyfriend. You know, college is the time where you can meet your, like, potential husband. But in fact really like not a lot of like dating, traditional courting, goes on.

“It’s about just meeting random people and having fun.”

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE STUDENT #1: I went to all-girls school for 13 years. I thought coming here, you know, you’d meet a lot of guys and you, hopefully, you would leave with having a boyfriend. But now I think that, after being here for two years, I think that it’s more about just meeting random people and having fun.

Dr. SMITH: The media has just been more explicit about sex and casual relationships, “Sex in the City”— whatever it might be. Young people have just picked up this is just a normal part of life. It’s no big deal. You just, if someone is attractive to you anything’s fair game as long as both people are consenting.

VALENTE: Laura Sessions Stepp is a journalist who has written about how hooking up impacts the young women who are involved in it, and why they do it in the first place.

LAURA SESSIONS STEPP (Journalist and Author, “Unhooked”): There are several factors. One is the empowerment of women — women feeling like they can do anything a man can do. We’ve seen that in business, and now we see it in their social lives. Their parents have told them relationships can wait. They’re hard. You get emotionally involved with someone—that distracts you from your studies. Put that aside. Go for your career.

VALENTE (to Dr. Smith): Why would a young woman engage in this behavior?

Dr. SMITH: Well, if you ask them they would say it’s fun. They would say it’s pleasurable for a time. I think beneath that there are deeper levels of wanting to be accepted.

VALENTE: Hookups often follow heavy drinking. Laura Sessions Stepp got this letter from a young man who had read her book.

Ms. STEPP (reading from letter): An often-occurring event, at least to me, is a drunk girl throwing herself all over me and frequently asking me to take her home, or similar. But I have found that girls are offended if I do not sleep with them, which is usually the first night I meet them.

VALENTE: The prevalence of the hookup culture may come as news to many people. But is it seriously harming those who participate in it, or is it just another generation sowing its wild oats?

Donna Freitas, now an assistant professor of religion at Boston University, has written about the spiritual and sexual lives of college students.

Professor DONNA FREITAS (Department of Religion, Boston University and Author, “Sex and the Soul,” lecturing students): To have a successful hookup you’re able to shut yourself down emotionally so you do not care when you physically engage with someone in some way —basically you don’t care about it the next day. So that’s a successful hookup.

“Most guys love to go out and look for the hookup.”

Ms. STEPP: The point is not that they’re having sex. Young people have always had sex. Certainly my generation did outside of marriage. That’s not the point. The point is the relationship. What is this teaching them about being in relationship to others?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE STUDENT #2: I think it’s a stage in our lives — just a college stage. But hopefully we’ll mature.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE STUDENT #1: Yeah, we’re just looking to have fun. No regrets.

Dr. SMITH: Young people today draw a very strong line between their fun years and their settling-down years: What happened in my early to mid-20s will stay there, and then I will magically become happy, faithful, committed, monogamous person, and what happened three years ago won’t affect my life in the future. I personally think that that’s quite naïve.

Prof. FREITAS (speaking before audience): One hookup, one hookup, depending on the scenario, depending on where it happens, depending on who finds out, depending on who it’s with and what they say afterwards or who watches it happen, can make or break your college experience. I heard that over and over again, and think about that: one night could make or break your college experience.

VALENTE: But social psychologist Pepper Schwartz, who studied the sexual behavior of students at 11 U.S. campuses, says hooking up doesn’t necessarily cause emotional damage.

Dr. PEPPER SCHWARTZ (Professor of Sociology, University of Washington): I think that when we say people are hurt from hookups, compare that to a situation where every relationship has to be important. He’s the love of your life or vice versa. It breaks up. They get suicidal. They feel terrible about it. That’s a really terrible thing when you’re talking about adolescence and people just maturing. Is it a hookup by its nature? Has it proceeded to an extremely important emotional connection? When it’s over, you know, so be it.

VALENTE: But is it, really?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE STUDENT #1: Well, you know, with the hookup someone’s always going to get attached and so that leads to a little bit of heartbreak for one side. For me, personally, I try not to get too attached at all.

Dr. SMITH: When people are physically intimate, that’s powerful. That affects their emotions in ways they may not be able to control. It impacts on their relationships.

Dr. SCHWARTZ: People go on usually in their early 20s to mid-20s and just say “enough of that,” and then go and look for something more important. It’s not like they’re damaged forever. They do, in fact, make relationships, and they get tired of this. It’s not like they’re now doomed to always have sterile, passing-by sexual relationships that mean nothing.

Laura Sessions Stepp

VALENTE: A woman in her 30s, describing herself as “scarred” by her sexual experiences, wrote this letter.

Ms. STEPP (reading from letter): I think our culture has no idea just what we women feel inside. We put this pressure on them and let them turn from girls to women without any help. It is too much, what we do to our daughters.

VALENTE: What about religion’s role? Do its teachings about individual dignity affect sexual behavior? Donna Freitas found that hooking up is just as common at Catholic universities as at secular schools, but much less so at evangelical schools. Christian Smith says a religious upbringing may deter hooking up, but not always.

Dr. SMITH: There are a lot of young people who just compartmentalize. They completely compartmentalize that, meaning my religious faith is something over there, and how I behave at parties and in my dorm room is just unrelated.

VALENTE: One reason hooking up is as prevalent as it is is that on many campuses administrators long ago gave up seeing themselves as substitute parents or moral police. Lori White is vice president for student affairs at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Dr. WHITE: At the end of the day each individual is responsible for the decisions that he or she makes, and we’re very clear with that when we have initial conversations with students during orientation. So I don’t see myself in any way as a parental figure. I see myself as an educator in helping students through this next phase of their life. I’m just not quite sure where it’s going to go from here. You know, it may well be that we have a counter-revolution, that we get so far out there that people begin to really feel uncomfortable with that and decide that we have really gone too far and that we need to really get back to some of the core values of our grandparents’ generation.

VALENTE: There are hints of reaction. Donna Freitas says students in her study would claim at first that they liked hooking up, only to admit later on that they wished things were different. And it wasn’t just the women.

Prof. FREITAS (speaking before audience): Probably one of most surprising things I got from the study was that men do not like cultures of casual sex. Men do not like hookup culture, and men really love romance but don’t know how to sort of get themselves in situations where it’s OK to be romantic.

Ms. STEPP: We don’t talk enough about love in this society. We are — it’s somehow become a word that people are afraid to use. But in essence that’s what every one of those young women that I talked to and have written me want — and the young men as well. They want to be loved and to love. And the question they have to ask themselves is, is hooking up the way to get there?

VALENTE: College administrators say parents should not assume it’s too late to talk with their children about sex and relationships, even when they’re in college, and more colleges are engaging in dialogue with students about hooking up. But ultimately it will have to be the students themselves who decide whether there might be a better way.

For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, this is Judy Valente in Washington.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Now a special report on teaching about sex and gender issues in theological seminaries—or really not teaching about them: sexual problems in marriage; gay, lesbian and transgender questions; kids having sex at ever younger ages. Some religious leaders are concerned that many seminarians are not being taught what they need to know to become good counselors to their future parishioners. Judy Valente reports.

Professor LAUREL SCHNEIDER (Chicago Theological Seminary, teaching class): Sex and sexuality is of course a very significant part of our experience.  And I put the question up here, “Is sex divine?”

JUDY VALENTE: Professor Laurel Schneider of Chicago Theological Seminary teaches an evening course in systematic theology. Most of the time, it’s hardly sexy stuff. But this evening the topic is sex. This seminary is one of the few where human sexuality, in all its facets, is openly discussed.

UNIDENTIFIED TRANGENDERED STUDENT:  My oldest son right now won’t even talk to me, won’t have anything to do with me. His comment to me was, “God created you as a man and God does not make mistakes.”

UNIDENTIED FEMALE STUDENT: The male who has become a female, that part of you inside that wants — that feels female — that wants to be female, that’s still a part of you. That’s still — God made that too.

VALENTE: Sexual mores have been changing. But how well are seminaries preparing future pastors and rabbis to address these changes? The Religious Institute on Sexual Morality is a nonprofit group that helps promote sexual health in faith communities. The Institute recently studied 36 seminaries across denominational lines. The study found an “overwhelming need” to better educate and prepare future religious leaders in the area of human sexuality.

Dr. KATE OTT (Associate Director, Religious Institute on Sexual Morality, Justice and Healing): We see these issues every day and the harm that can be done around sexuality issues — either a kid who’s questioning their orientation, a couple whose marriage is failing. I think when those folks are coming to us in faith communities for real information and for real help, we need to make sure we have the training to be able to address that.

Dr. Alice Hunt

VALENTE: Many pastors say issues such as teen sexual activity and marital infidelity are among the most common topics about which congregation members seek guidance. Yet few seminaries offer courses in sexuality, and fewer still require these courses.

Dr. ALICE HUNT (President, Chicago Theological Seminary): It’s a challenge. It’s controversial. It makes people feel uncomfortable. It makes people feel insecure. So it’s just taking time for schools to come on board with addressing these issues.

Dr. OTT: When seminaries don’t offer the courses, they’re still talking about the issue. They’re just talking about it from silence and from a negative perspective, and seminary students understand that. They hear both messages loud and clear, and we would just prefer that they get a positive, open message rather than a silenced or dismissive message.

VALENTE: Some clergy have criticized the Religious Institute’s report saying seminaries can’t teach everything, that students aren’t there primarily to obtain “how to” skills, but to study biblical texts, to reflect and pray. Dr. Hunt says it’s a legitimate point.

Dr. HUNT: You have to, then, change your whole curriculum. If you want to incorporate issues of human sexuality and race and gender, you have to examine everything you’re teaching in your educational context, and that’s a lot of hard work.

VALENTE: As a result, graduating seminarians are often expected to “learn on the job.” Reverend Lillian Daniel is the senior pastor of First Congregational United Church of Christ in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. She recalls one of the few classes at her divinity school where sex was discussed.

Reverend LILLIAN DANIEL (Senior Pastor, First Congregational United Church of Christ, Glen Ellyn, IL): The teacher goes “Never, ever, ever — with anyone in your congregation.” We all thought, “Did we miss the verb? What is it? Go skiing? Go dancing?”  I mean, he couldn’t even bring himself to say the word, and that was the extent of the conversation.

Reverend Lillian Daniel

VALENTE: And the word would have been?

Rev. DANIEL: Don’t sleep with.

VALENTE: Daniel says seminaries often discuss gender rights, sexual harassment, and how pastors should maintain proper boundaries with their congregation members. But, she says, they rarely train students to deal with the complex, intimate questions congregation members are likely to bring to them.

JENNY GRESKO (Therapist, Central DuPage Pastoral Counseling Center, speaking to group): “We don’t have as much sex as he wants and we have more sex than I want and we’ll never fix this.” That’s a very, very common issue between couples.

VALENTE: As part of a Sunday afternoon series on sexuality, Daniel’s congregation has been examining a variety of issues connected with marriage.

JOE FORTUNATO (Congregant): Sexuality isn’t bad. It’s something that’s a good thing. It’s a gift from God, which is the cliché, but it is a gift from God, and to deal with it honestly and openly is very, very important, I think, to a lot of people here.

Rev. DANIEL: I’m all in favor referring people on to folks with more expertise if they’ve got sort of issues that are ongoing. But a lot of times people come in to see a pastor because they want to tell something one time. Or they just want a reality check. Or they just want some kind of comfort or someone to listen to them. Sometimes it’s almost in the area of a confession. So in those cases, we may be their only stop.

VALENTE: Chicago Theological, a United Church of Christ seminary, received a high rating in the Religious Institute study. But even this school doesn’t require students to study human sexuality. It does, however, offer several sexuality courses. Alice Hunt says the seminary wants its graduates to be able to minister to the “whole person.”

Dr. HUNT: Understanding what your tradition says about human sexuality, being sexually healthy yourself, understanding what religious texts say, being aware of counseling issues, knowing how human development happens with sexuality, being aware of societal constraints and the fear that people face for not being able to fully express who they are — all of those are crucial in becoming a mature minister.

Mark Winters

Rev. DANIEL: The problem is it really falls upon the pastor to seek out that knowledge, and if you were somebody who wanted to shut yourself away from this, you really could, and your church could become a place where none of this is able to be talked about.

VALENTE: But there does seem to be a shift in generational attitudes. Today’s young seminarians, who grew up in a more sexually liberal culture, seem eager to address these matters openly.

MARK WINTERS (Student, Chicago Theological Seminary): I think that, generally speaking, younger folks tend to see, for instance, homosexuality as basically a non-issue, whereas older folks come from a different time and a different place where you weren’t as open about sex and sexuality, and I think I would include heterosexuality in that as well as homosexuality, as you alluded to in the question, in terms of cohabitation for heterosexual couples. I think, generally speaking, we are in a more nonjudgmental time, and I consider that a very good thing.

VALENTE: Many pastors would disagree. Nonetheless, questions of gay marriage and whether to ordain gay clergy have moved sexuality issues to the forefront in many churches. Alice Hunt says there is a far more fundamental reason for making sex a topic of discussion.

Dr. HUNT: I hope another imperative is the imperative of God’s love, a kind of radical inclusivity of everything that promotes human flourishing. I hope we’ll take it — a good look at what we need to do to get to the space where we can fully minister to our congregation.

Dr. OTT: Our sexuality is part of our spirituality. We’re embodied beings, and most of our faith traditions believe that God gave us the gift of sexuality, so it has deep theological meaning for us.  So I don’t think we can say sexuality isn’t a religious issue. It deeply is a religious issue.

VALENTE: The Religious Institute recently received a grant to help seminaries introduce sexuality courses and provide continuing education classes for those already in ministry. One young seminarian described this as a “coming out time” for sexuality discussions in faith communities. “If sex is a common topic in the Bible,” he asked, “then why shouldn’t it be talked about in churches and seminaries?”

For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I’m Judy Valente in Chicago.

I traveled recently to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand to visit the New Life Center, a faith-based group working to help young women escape or avoid victimization.

This dress rehearsal for a soap opera is full of drama: drug abuse, rape, guns, and prostitution. But for the performers acting out the scenes, this stuff is not necessarily fiction.

These performers reside in a shelter for girls in northern Thailand. Most are at risk for, or actual victims of, human trafficking. The skit is aimed at tribal communities in the surrounding mountains. That message will come in one of six languages spoken by different hill tribes that inhabit the vast region where Burma, China, Laos, and Thailand converge. This shelter was founded in 1987 to serve as a safe haven for tribal girls who’d been exploited. Since then, the New Life Center has housed about 1,500 girls.

Karen Smith

KAREN SMITH (Director, New Life Center): The New Life Center was opened by missionaries who were also anthropologists — Paul and Elaine Lewis. They saw countless women coming down out of their villages into the cities and being stuck in exploitative labor, and the needs were so great for education, for training, for knowledge for these tribal women, and they saw such great suffering. They saw women working in fish factories for 18 hours a day, and they saw the women who were getting forced into prostitution.

DE SAM LAZARO: The trouble for hill tribe communities begins with their isolation. Faye Wimon, a member of the Lahu community, works at the New Life Center.

Faye Wimon

FAYE WIMON (New Life Center): The road is not developed yet. That’s why there’s no school. So many of the hill tribe people — and also they didn’t get put into good schools and also the young people, especially the young women. So they have to stay home. They have to help their parents to take care of their younger brother and sister when their parents work in the field. And also the other problem is about citizenship.

DE SAM LAZARO: In Thailand, which has seen impressive economic growth in recent decades, half of the three million hill tribe people are not recognized as full citizens. That means many cannot buy land, vote, travel freely, or work legally.

Ms. SMITH: The citizenship issue in Thailand is a complicated one. If you are a tribal mother for whom the nearest hospital is five hours away, you are not able to go down to that hospital to give birth, and when a child doesn’t have birth registration, that starts the cycle.

DE SAM LAZARO: Many young women fall prey to traffickers and the underground economy.

Ms. SMITH: They might find a situation where they’re promised a particular job, and they end up moving to a particular place, and the job they end up with is not what they were promised, and they end up being a victim of human trafficking.

Girls at New Life Center

DE SAM LAZARO: That’s what happened to Mali who left her village and by age 13 began working in one of Bangkok’s notorious sex trades.

MALI (Former Victim, through translator): I didn’t know what kind of work it was, but she said it was a good salary, and I didn’t have to work too hard. I went to work in the show bar, and they wouldn’t let me leave. They beat me. It was very hard work. One day the owners forced me to go with a guest. The guests were usually foreigners, and I usually went with two or three guests a night.

DE SAM LAZARO: After five years in prostitution at the bar, Mali was approached by a faith-based anti-trafficking group that offers to help women who work in the sex industry.

MALI: They came like regular customers. They watched my dance show, and when my dance was finished they came up and started talking to me. I told them that I didn’t want to be here, that some people did want to be here, but I didn’t. I felt that it was shameful. Even though I made a lot of money, I thought there were other things I could do.

DE SAM LAZARO: Each day the young women spend time with activities like music lessons and homework. There’s also training in cooking, sewing, and cosmetology, skills that could land them a job when they leave the center.

MALI (through translator): When I was at the New Life Center I studied, I went to school, I learned a lot of things: how to sew, read, and write. I became a different person, and I have a new future.

DE SAM LAZARO: In the evening they’re off to night school, a program set up by the government to teach young adults with little formal education. Along with education and job skills, some 20 to 40 percent of residents here also acquire a new faith, converting to Christianity from traditional tribal religions in which they were raised.

Ms. SMITH: Every other year we have a baptism ceremony for the girls who do become followers of Jesus, and this past November there were 24 girls who were part of that baptism ceremony.

DE SAM LAZARO: But she and the resident chaplain insist the young women reach that decision on their own.

Rev. Kit Ripley

Reverend KIT RIPLEY (Resident Chaplain, New Life Center): Our residents have come from situations where they have experienced — many of them have experienced tremendous coercion and manipulation. So they know what that’s like, and they can put their finger on it pretty quickly. They’re very savvy when someone is trying to manipulate or force them to make a decision or to do anything with their life and often very resistant to that. So I feel like it’s just important be open to where they are spiritually, and a lot of that is waiting until they ask questions. I pray for residents at home and pray for their healing and their growth, and at that point I believe it’s up to God to work in their lives throughout their spiritual development.

DE SAM LAZARO: Spiritual development, sexual abuse counseling, education and job training are all part of the healing process, but so is legal advocacy. The center employs a full-time staff member to work on obtaining citizenship for the girls. That process takes between two and 10 years.

MALI (through translator): I’ve had lots of job offers, people asking me to work in different places, but I don’t have citizenship, so I can’t work anywhere legally.

Ms. SMITH: The situation if very, very complicated. In fact, right now in Thailand the Thai government has 23 different levels of status for its ethnic minorities.

DE SAM LAZARO: One major complication is the widely disparate economic and human rights conditions between Thailand and less prosperous neighbors like Burma and Laos. It prompts tribes’ people from those nations to travel across the mountain borders into Thailand. Long term, things could get even more complicated in the larger region.

Ms. SMITH: Just recently, new roads were opened between China, Laos, and Thailand, and they are huge eight-lane highways, and we know that whenever new roads are built that opens up an opportunity for business and the exchange of goods, but it also opens up the opportunity for the exchange of humans, and so I think there are still lots of risks for ethnic minorities.

DE SAM LAZARO: But for a hundred or so of these vulnerable young women, the New Life Center will continue to be a refuge.