By Mark Lincoln
About ten years ago, I was working for a large corporation in my hometown of Omaha, Nebraska. The company, like many large corporations, was eager to develop a reputation for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) by supporting groups within the company. Groups already existed for veterans, African-American employees, and those with disabilities. A new employee resource group for gays and lesbians had just been created.
While the campaign for gay rights had been framed as a civil rights issue, I had always seen it as a moral issue. I let my views be made known in our online company chat room. At one point, my manager called me to his office to explain that if I continued airing my views in the company chat room, I could be in danger of losing my job.
Preferring not to interrupt my breadwinner status for my family, I ended my participation in the online discussion. So ended my first public experience with the LGBTQ phenomenon. The issue was highly emotional and politicized; a hot topic with little middle ground.
About five years later, I approached a middle-aged lady in the Family Dollar parking lot asking if she would help us with our One Million Family Blessing campaign. She immediately asked me what I thought about gay people. I told her I felt sorry for them because they could not have children. That offended her. She became upset and complained to the manager. He came out to talk to me because he could see how upset the lady was, but he had received the Blessing a few days before.
So ended my second experience with the LBGTQ phenomenon leaving me dissatisfied regarding my ability to relate with the people of that community.
A few years later, after I retired, I was doing American Clergy Leadership Conference (ACLC) ministerial outreach at an Episcopal Church. I was aware that this denomination had a very liberal policy on gay ordination and marriage. Father John, the pastor, was kind enough to sit down with me for a chat. I brought up the topic of the need for the body of Christ (i.e., all Christian churches) to unite as one and use their combined strength to fight evil in the world. Seemingly out-of-the-blue, Father John asked me what I thought about homosexuals.
This time, I was not in a parking lot talking to a local shopper. We were two ministers with a background in Biblical scriptures; a strong common base, I thought. When I answered that the Bible is very clear about homosexuality calling it wrong (Lev. 18:22), he disagreed with me, arguing that “God is a God of love, not judgment.”
I chose the word “phenomenon” in my title because a “phenomenon” is defined as a fact or situation that is observed to exist or happen, especially one whose cause or explanation is in question. If I have learned anything about the LGBTQ phenomenon, it is that the phenomenon is very complex with a constellation of issues.
A Survey of Unificationist Attitudes
As part of a master’s degree project at HJI (formerly UTS), I conducted a survey to investigate current and former Unificationists’ attitudes toward the phenomenon. A total of 59 out of approximately 150 surveys were returned. 43% of the respondents were male, 57% female; 71% were first generation; 29% second generation; 7% were single, 93% were married; 3% identified as LBGTQ; 97% did not; 69% said they knew persons in the UC community who are LBGTQ; 31% did not.
Three questions on the 10-question survey solicited opinions. The first questioned whether LGBTQ individuals were born that way (7% answered “Yes”), is an orientation that developed over time (64% answered “Yes”), they don’t know (23% answered “Yes”), or Other (5% answered “Yes”). The second questioned whether it is possible to become ex-gay. 90% of respondents answered “Yes.” 10% answered “No.” Two of the three LGBTQ respondents answered that they also believed it was possible to become ex-gay. The final question was open-ended for respondents to write as much or as little as they wished regarding their honest opinion of the LGBTQ phenomenon.
As noted, “phenomenon” implies a fact or situation “whose cause or explanation is in question.” In their written responses, survey respondents commented on the sources of same-sex attraction (SSA). Their responses grouped into five main categories:
- Nature and nurture. These responses suggest that the innate/immutable argument, that homosexuals are born that way and cannot change, is too simplistic. These respondents stated while a person may inherit a certain proclivity toward homosexuality, there are other cultural and social factors that influence whether or not that person develops a same sex attraction.
Comment: In his book, Gay Children, Straight Parents: A Plan for Family Healing, Richard Cohen, former Unificationist and founder of the International Healing Foundation, says SSA springs from many sources: “There is never one thing alone that causes SSA. A combination of several variables leads to homosexual desires in men and women.”
In Coming Out Straight, Cohen lists ten potential variables, some nature and some nurture, that may contribute to same sex attractions: heredity, temperament, hetero-emotional wounds, homo-emotional wounds, sibling wounds/family dynamics, body image wounds, sexual abuse, social or peer wounds, cultural wounds, and other factors such as divorce, death, intrauterine experiences and influences, adoption, and religion.
- Nature. A few respondents stated that LGBTQ people are born that way, and therefore it is not possible to become ex-gay.
Comment: So far, no gay gene has been found by scientists researching the issue. In a study of some 470,000 volunteers from the UK and the U.S. who had reported engaging in same-sex sexual activity, researchers did not find a linked gene or any genetic pattern identifying a person’s sexual orientation. However, a wide range of insects and animals exhibit same-sex sexual behavior. Scientists are not sure why. Different perspectives are being explored.
- Societal influence. With increased social acceptance and the normalization of LBGTQ lifestyles, some respondents emphasized the decisive role of social and cultural influences, particularly in educational environments and media, including recent understandings of gender as a choice.
Comment: The same social and cultural influences that influence choices as to sexual preference render it difficult for those experiencing SSA to find a place in the UC community.
- Spiritual phenomenon. A number of respondents attributed SSA to resentful spirits who had negative experiences with someone of the opposite gender, angelic interference or “last days” phenomena.
Comment: This group of respondents believes the cause for homosexual behavior is predominantly spiritual and see spiritual liberation work at the workshops in Cheong Pyeong in Korea, as the primary way to liberate one from this spiritual imprisonment. While some cases may respond to such spiritual treatment, most reversals of SSA tendencies occur in those who are unhappy with their identity and seek therapy to understand its roots in their childhood and are eager to experience a full flourishing of their heterosexuality.
- Nurture. These respondents attributed SSA to traumatic sexual experience, usually at a prepubescent age, sexual abuse at home or outside the home, or unhealed emotional wounds in the family as well as unmet needs for love in the family.
Comment: These responses point to the central need for parental love in the family. Any problems in the family, leading to lack of parental love towards the child(ren) will impact their growth and may lead to unexpected issues later, including SSA.
Conclusion
It is fair to say that what Unificationists think about the LGBTQ phenomenon has been greatly influenced by what Rev. Sun Myung Moon has said in his various speeches. His viewpoint is well represented by the Unificationist “Position Statement on Homosexuality” which points to the sexual love shared by husband and wife as the supreme example of the joy God wants us to have and that “husband and wife together reflect the image of God as male and female.”
In light of this framework, and consistent with the world’s major religions the statement rejects as sinful all forms of sexual behavior, both homosexual and heterosexual, that take place outside of marriage between a man and a woman. At the same time, it recognizes that “society has maligned and mistreated those who acted upon same-sex attractions, while being much more lenient with heterosexual sin” and defines “such hypocrisy” as “tragic.”
We have to walk a very fine line that honors every person as a child of God while at the same time recognizing the fundamental pair system expressed throughout creation. An elder UC member, who has worked in this ministry for a number of years, noted that falling back on the traditional Christian approach of “loving the sinner, but hating the sin” would not be well-received in the LGBTQ community. It is too judgmental. His more nuanced approach, “love the being, but not the doing,” helps us walk the fine line between truth and judgment.
My wife and I attended a Sunday service at the Metropolitan Community Church of Omaha (a nation-wide gay-affirming church with branches in 40 cities), to establish a relationship with the local LGBTQ community. We were encouraged by an elder brother mentor who has been ministering to the LGBTQ community in the UC for a number of years. He knew it was important to meet some of the people in the gay community in Omaha, even though they were not UC members. The result was what our mentor hoped for, an understanding that gays and lesbians are human beings seeking happiness just like us. So ended my fourth experience with the LGBTQ phenomenon. ♦
Pastor Mark Lincoln was born in 1955 in Omaha, Nebraska, and is the oldest of eight children. His father was the second generation of Russian Jewish immigrants and his mother the first generation of Polish Catholic immigrants. Mark is a 2024 graduate of the HJ International Graduate School with an M.A. in religious studies. Mark and Yoko have one daughter, Katherine, who received the marriage Blessing in 2016 and has given them three grandchildren.
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Applied Unificationism 
Thank for your phenomenal story, Mark. It is crystal clear to me that the fundamental teaching of our movement, via the Divine Principle, is that that the ultimate ideal for each mature individual is to find a spouse of the opposite sex, build a relationship, and join in a sacred, committed (eternal) relationship that can create new life.
Not many people reach any ideals in life, but ideals are certainly worth striving toward.
Like most of us, gay people have crossed my life and many of them are very likable beings and we should treat everyone irrespective of their nature with love and respect. I believe it is also the basis for change.
In your comment, you mention about the CP work and add that more transformations are taking place by willing submission. In my understanding, the liberation is fundamental, whether desire for change is first, the conscience or the liberation motivated by faith.
Those who argue that they are born gay have received a corresponding spirit from birth who influenced life profoundly and became part of the personality. Hinduism and reincarnation are based on such observation and experiences.
Imagine you take out a stone from dough. Depending on the condition of the dough, it will submerge the print mark quickly or slowly. If it has hardened it will not change unless it is kneaded.
Likewise, a central evil spirit that is taken out from a person does not necessarily stir up attention and let a person become oneself immediately because the victim has already formed life around it and developed habits that need to be broken up.
Restoration goes over several generations if this situation continues unchecked; therefor the CP work is so great. The great advantage of the Spirit World is that they see us and our disadvantage is that we do not see them.
Thank you, Pastor Lincoln!
I for one appreciate it that you dealt with the issue of SSA and all that comes with it, in a factual and scientific way, not only on the basis of religious concepts and believes or emotions.
My view has been for a long time that only clear and indisputable scientific facts about these phenomena will allow us to deal with them in the proper way.
My personal encounters and experiences with a few people who belong in the group of SSA people and with two who shared their struggles with pedophile attractions led me to believe that there is something deep inside the human soul that we don’t know and understand yet.
Your work might well contribute a step forward to uncovering what it is we still need to find out.
Dear Mark,
I have some observations and thoughts I like to place before you.
1. Can we really get to the truth by asking people responding to a questionnaire? No human has the ultimate handle on (the) truth.
2. The approach to the analysis seems rather external to me, almost just physical.
3. No study of the reality of the spiritual world has been taking into account.
4. The teachings of the UC/DP has been accepted as the ultimate truth. Can we be so sure?
5. Rev. Moon, from the spiritual world has asserted that only LOVE matters, not externals, and Jesus has said the same thing about LOVE, that would even replace the entire Old Testament.
6. It has to be LOVE that matters to God, not genitals.
7. Humans and animals have sex drives, while in the spiritual world we apparently do not have that, but where love operates on a non-physical, non-genital, level. A so-called UC Blessing does not guarantee you will be with your spouse after you pass, if there was not sufficient love between them. Only LOVE determines the quality of eternity.
8. Many religious teachings and many near-death experiences and many mediums and psychics affirm reincarnation. If a person was a woman before in a previous life, but is a man in this life, as a “he” now, he may be attracted to another man, and vice versa. DP is a belief, and there is no proof that reincarnation is not a reality. Why are people otherwise attracted to the same sex?
9. Most people do not understand that God is Unconditional Love. God loves you, no matter your sexual orientation. When gays truly love each other, it’s that love that matters, not their physical activities.
10. When one truly meditates about the Unconditional Love of God, one will come to new insights and realizations.
11. Even Jesus said that prostitues might be in heaven before all those so-called religious guys who clung to dogmas, rituals and judgments. Again, hearts speak louder than bodies.
12. Jesus also said that if you look at another person with lust, you have already committed adultery. Instead of making a judgement against such looking, he was basically saying: don’t worry about it, because sexual attraction exists in this physical world, and you can’t stop it anyway. People who fight themselves against such so-called “sins” drive them themselves unnecessarily crazy. Just laugh about it and go about your daily life. Remember, Jesus is not into the judgment business.
13. A more thorough study of the spiritual world will help clear up the worldly confusion about LGTBQ and the entire gender phenomena.
14. No one is ever lesser a child of God by what they do sexually.
15. So-called Anti-Family is not necessarily Anti-God, or Anti-Love.
16. In the spirit world, your family is much larger and far more inclusive than any earthly family or clan or tribe. Because Love lasts forever and is the only True Reality anyways.
17. God only cares about us loving each other unconditionally, and with Jesus and other ascended masters, would love to see the end of religion, dogma, and religious wars.
18. Rev. Moon realizes this, has regrets, is sorry for mistreating members, says the DP is not entirely true, that the so-called Fall of Man is not what the OT says, etc. He just wants us to practice love. He says that the Blessing is not a noun, but an action verb: you bless everyone you meet in your life.
Bless you all; thanks for considering this response.
Thank you, Rev. Lincoln, for your honest and humble sharing.
The way I look at these brothers and sisters of our human family is that they are the ones who most need True Love. The more True Love is being shared on our planet Earth, the faster this phenomenon will disappear … on its own.
Mark, thank you for your article. This is an important topic to address. We often tend to avoid this issue, but I have met enough gay second generation to know that this needs so much sensitivity and love for both the second generation and their families. Internalizing an external religious perception of failure and separation from God is a source of trauma for all involved.
For me a crucial sentence in your article is this one in the conclusion: “We have to walk a very fine line that honors every person as a child of God while at the same time recognizing the fundamental pair system expressed throughout creation.” This removes the issue from the political, moral and religious spheres where it is usually discussed and places it where Unificationism can begin to address it: in ontology. That we are children of God and the pair system of Divine Principle (DP) are ontological not moral or political.
It therefore behooves us to examine this pair system of DP in more detail. The ontology of DP begins from the understanding that every being except subatomic particles are complex beings that arise from a relationship of many parts. These complex beings in turn then engage in relationships with other complex beings. Pair relationships of complex beings are necessarily more complex than pair relationships of simpler beings. We begin to see this emergent complexity in atoms and the periodic table of the elements.
Atoms are all composed of the same three subatomic particles – two types of quark (which combine into protons and neutrons) and electrons. Each atom arises from a strict pair system of relationship between positive and negative electrical charge, protons are positive and electrons negative, yet there are about 90 different naturally occurring types of atom and a number of artificially created ones, each with different properties. These are classified and organized in the periodic table of elements. In this table, there is a broad categorization of elements into metals, which give electrons (so are “male”) and non-metals that receive electrons (so are “female”).
However, even within these general categories there is a variation of properties such that there is actually a spectrum of behavior throughout the table. Atoms are derived from a strict binary pair system but in turn present a spectrum of properties. It seems counterintuitive that a pair system can lead to a spectrum, but it is a consequence of DP’s relational ontology. In that spectrum, there are also a few elements that exhibit intermediate properties (the metalloids) and are neither metal nor non-metal. These elements are some of the more important ones and are a natural and necessary part of God’s creation. Nature shows us that even though based on a strict pair system, the behavior of complex particles is not necessarily binary.
Human beings are more complex than atoms. Since atoms exhibit a spectrum of behavior and a spectrum of masculinity and femininity it should come as no surprise that this is also evident in the human population. There are indeed consequences of nurture and we can’t discount effects of trauma. There must be effects of trauma on sexual attraction, but even without trauma or a Fall there would still be a natural and God-given variation in the human population, one that includes homosexuality.
I believe that a basic First Blessing need of all people, including LGBTQ+ and their families, is to hear that there is nothing wrong with their God-given nature. That God accepts us all as we were created without requiring us to change what we were given. Our own individual nature does not separate us from God nor is it a consequence of some failure that needs to be reversed.
Although the first page of the Bible has mentioned for millennia that “God created mankind in his own image, male and female He created them” … It seems that many religious people have forgotten over time this reality that God expresses himself through all the masculine and feminine components that exist to varying degrees in every human being….
Even though during a large part of human existence God was viewed as a woman, this female version of the Divine was later supplanted by the male dominant interpretation of God …and woman became the source of evil, the main culprit for mankind’s misery.
It can be noted that religious fanaticism, sexism and homophobia are three real scourges. Over time, they have become three solid cultural pillars that would derive their legitimacy from a so-called higher authority of male Divine right, and would then impose on all, norms thus made absolute.
It will therefore be very difficult to sanitize messianic religious people’s homophobic and sexist positions, and to make them appear today as authentic envoys of God, who are full of compassion towards the victims of homophobia.
How could they now pretend they have come to lighten the burdens of all the unfortunate, of all those who have been unjustly ostracized?
Dear Mark,
Thank you for your sensitive introduction to the LGBTQ issue. You aspire to help us understand that all are children of God and should be treated as such. You raise various issues.
For example, my own research found what Richard found – that there are a variety of reasons why people end up in same-sex relationships. For example, research around the time that AIDS first appeared consistently showed that around 40 percent had been sexually abused during childhood. Also, many YouTube videos from men who have moved away from this lifestyle share similar stories – for example, a distant father/possessive mother. In essence, some form of counseling/therapy can often be helpful. Also, many Christian male groups have been successful in helping a considerable number of same-sex attracted males find their inner masculinity.
As for actually acting on one’s sexual urges – the Principle is clear that it really is in the best interest of community life if our sexuality is solely expressed within a marital relationship. In the past, many Christian singles, both heterosexual and same-sex attracted, acted nobly and practiced restraint for the benefit of all. The modern culture of sexual expressiveness is not helping our communities at all.
And long ago, we moved to a point where the vast majority of Christians and non-Christians from all walks of life served everyone who walked into their lives – no matter their sexual orientation. We all are sinners.
However, the primary issue we experience as a society today regarding LGBTQ has little to do with the above issues.
The central social debate has not been about the LGBTQ lifestyle. It has been about the law – about whether a handful of politicians (or judges) – have the authority to redefine the social purpose of marriage from a child-centered focus to an adult-centered one.
The change from a child focus to an adult centered one has serious implications. Redefinition leaves no place in the social fabric where children’s well-being can be placed ahead of adult whims. Hence, children suffer a range of negative outcomes as a result.
My research has uncovered four major groups of children who are negatively affected by the redefinition of marriage – children who will, on average, suffer worse life outcomes because the marital norm has now been moved away from its natural base.
Here is not the place to explain how children are extensively harmed through redefinition. The reality of this challenge, however, does highlight the question as to whether Unificationists should work to help societies worldwide understand why redefining marriage is a seriously unhelpful path to follow.
The move to redefine the social purpose of marriage is not to be taken lightly.
In communist Russia, the Marxists sought to redefine the social purpose of the third blessing. They moved it from its natural base – “It is your responsibility to develop yourself so you can feed yourself and your own family” became “It is your responsibility to make sure that every family in society is fed.” It didn’t work out for them. Also, the authoritarian and brutal methods they used to try to make this unnatural definition into a social reality killed the life spirit of the Russians.
The redefining of the social purpose of the second blessing comes with similar authoritarian overtones – such as hate speech laws – and a similar move towards social decay (through the harming of diverse groups of children).
The same destructive goal is being pursued by the progressives in the field of transgenderism, where progressives are seeking to redefine the first blessing from being based on mind and body unity to a world based purely on the abstract world of feelings. Placing this idea into the law will lead to devastating outcomes in wide parts of society.
So, Mark, thank you for sharing your journey. It is one thing to seek to love all as children of God. It is a completely different thing for laws to seek to overturn natural law and violate the Principle.
Stephen, natural law includes homosexuality.
Really enjoyed your very thoughtful and insightful experiences with the LGBTQ community over the years. Thank you for taking the time to express the problems and difficulties in working with this group of people, while at the same time expressing your personal beliefs about God’s purpose behind the creation of men and women and their roles in God’s ultimate plan within the family. It’s obvious your struggle is a difficult, but also a very rewarding one.