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NY Times, Aug. 29, 2018
Robert Wood, 95, Dies; Urged Christian Acceptance of Gay People
By Richard Sandomir
The Rev. Robert W. Wood, who boldly urged Christian clergymen in a 1960
book to welcome gay men and women to their churches in a time of
widespread prejudice against them, and went on to march in early
gay-rights protests, died on Aug. 19 at his home in Concord, N.H. He was 95.
Rejean Blanchette, a friend who helped care for Mr. Wood in recent
years, confirmed the death.
Mr. Wood’s book “Christ and the Homosexual” was a rare plea by a gay
clergyman for equality at a time when local and state laws criminalized
the sexual acts of gay, lesbian and bisexual people, and churchmen
condemned homosexuality from their pulpits.
Mr. Wood was a United Church of Christ minister in Spring Valley, N.Y.,
when he decided to write the book. He was reluctant at first, believing
there were others more qualified. But when no one else wrote such a
book, he borrowed against his life insurance policy to pay for the
publication of a few thousand copies by a vanity press.
Blending social science and cultural analysis with his experiences
ministering to closeted gay men, Mr. Wood made a powerful appeal for the
full acceptance of gay people by churches and American society.
“The yardstick for Christian behavior is always: What would Jesus Christ
do in this situation?” he wrote.
Christ’s teachings made the answer obvious to Mr. Wood, who concluded
that the “saving message of Christ and the freely flowing grace of God
are as much for the homosexual as the heterosexual,” and that “the
church must minister equally to both; that the demands of Christ apply
to both; that both are capable of being moral, as well as immoral and
amoral.”
Mr. Wood’s book came well before the gay-rights movement gained traction
with critical moments like the riots at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich
Village in 1969. But “Christ and the Homosexual” did not make much of a
ripple outside of largely positive reviews in gay publications and the
granting of an award of merit to Mr. Wood by the Mattachine Society, an
early gay-rights organization.
There were several reasons for the book’s lack of impact, according to
Bernard Schlager, a professor of historical and cultural studies at
Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, Calif. In a 2015 article for the
journal Theology & Sexuality, Mr. Schlager said a lack of promotion for
the book led to a lack of reviews in major publications; gay men and
women were still largely invisible to mainstream society in the early
1960s; and Christian denominations were still a decade or so from
forming advocacy groups that educated church members about homosexuality.
But he suggested a fourth reason: Mr. Wood did not out himself in the
book. In fact, he would not do so until he retired as a pastor in 1986,
although he lived openly for many years with his partner, Hugh Coulter,
a former rodeo cowboy and artist, at parishes in Spring Valley, Newark
and Maynard, Mass.
“Perhaps had he written as an ‘out’ gay author who spoke openly from his
own experiences,” Mr. Schlager wrote, “the book may have attracted a
wider readership.”
Mr. Wood was at ease with his decision to remain quiet about his sexuality.
“We chose not to ‘out’ ourselves but to live our lives as a caring,
loving couple and let parishioners and everyone else accept us as they
found us,” he said in an interview in 2007 for a 50th-anniversary book
published by the United Church.
Mr. Coulter died in 1989. Mr. Wood leaves no survivors.
Robert Watson Wood was born in Youngstown, Ohio, on May 21, 1923, to
Harold and Edith (Beard) Wood. His father was an electrical engineer,
his mother a homemaker.
Mr. Wood left the University of Pennsylvania to fight in World War II in
North Africa and Italy with the 36th Infantry division. He was wounded
in battle — earning a Bronze Star and other medals — and spent nearly
two years recovering. After being discharged, he completed his
bachelor’s degree at the University of Pennsylvania and later graduated
from the Oberlin School of Theology in Ohio.
He encountered prejudice in school and the military. In an interview in
2000 for an Oberlin L.G.B.T. history project, he recalled a meeting with
fellow undergraduates who frightened him by quoting negative Scripture
verses about homosexuals.
“I realized they were using these texts to bash me and other
homosexuals,” he said, “so I decided that when I went to seminary, I
would learn my Bible as well as or more than they did so I could use
Scripture to confront them.”
He was ordained in 1951 and joined the staff of the Broadway Tabernacle
in Manhattan before becoming pastor at the First Congregational Church
(now the United Church) of Spring Valley. While there, he wrote an
article in 1956 called “Spiritual Exercises” for a gay physique magazine
that prompted letters from “men frustrated at having to hide their
gayness in order to keep their Christian faith.”
That, in turn, helped him formulate the simple basis for his book: that
it was O.K. to be a gay Christian even if your church disagreed.
Within a few years he had turned his attention to more overt activism.
He protested in Washington in June 1965 against anti-homosexual hiring
practices by the federal government. Soon after, on July 4, he was in
Philadelphia with a small group of gay and lesbian protesters who
gathered outside Independence Hall, connecting the promise of
constitutional equality to the gay civil rights movement.
It was the first of five protests at Independence Hall through July 4,
1969, that came to be known as the Annual Reminders.
“The fact that he was willing to to use his name and appear in his
clerical collar was astounding,” Malcolm Lazin, executive director of
the Equality Forum, an L.G.B.T. rights group, said in a telephone
interview. “He was putting his job on the line by virtue of his
willingness to appear in public at these protests.”
Mr. Wood kept his job, ministering quietly to his parishioners, as gay
rights advanced on an arc that almost certainly could not have been
predicted when he wrote “Christ and the Homosexual.” In his advocacy of
same-sex marriage, he wrote that he would insist that any gay couple
enter premarital counseling with him before he would agree to officiate
at their wedding.
He did not think at the time that many gay couples would want to marry.
But, he wrote, “to say without reservation that homosexual marriages are
immoral and should not be sanctioned by the clergy is to sacrifice the
homosexual upon the altar of the status quo.”
Decades later, he officiated at same-sex marriages when they became
legal in Massachusetts and then, New Hampshire, where he had moved after
his retirement. Mr. Blanchette’s wedding to Robert Paradis was the last
such union performed by Mr. Wood.
“It was in our backyard, with probably 35 people there,” Mr. Blanchette
said in a telephone interview. “He did refer briefly to his history, but
he didn’t want the spotlight to be on him.”
He added: “He just wanted people to know that gay people are just like
everybody else. We just have a different sexual orientation.”
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