I don’t think the answer to this question really matters, unless you base your ability to enjoy Handel’s Messiah on it.  Or any of Handel’s works, for that matter.

I didn’t know there was a controversy, but if you read this delightful piece by John Ito, “Handel–Another Gay Anglican?” in Books & Culture’s November/December 2009 issue, then you’ll get a wonderful exposition of the problems we must face as a church, if we are to be loving (as Jesus wanted us to be)…and non-judgmental (as Jesus wanted us to be).

John Ito (a self-professed conservative Episcopalian) and his wife, through various circumstances, invited John Corvino, a regular contributor to the online Independent Gay Forum, to dinner, and Corvino wrote about his experiences here.  [The emphasis of this situation being on John’s wife Sarah’s prayer to bless Corvino and his partner Mark.]

A strong and quick rebuke came from Peter LaBarbera (from the site Americans for Truth about Homosexuality), which you can read here.  Labarbera claimed it was not possible for gays to be blessed, and that Sarah was wrong for not pointing out Corvino’s grave sin, let alone blessing him and his partner.

John Ito, the author of the Handel article, goes on to present an important question:

“Now I certainly agree that a gospel that fails to confront sin is no true gospel, and on one point I’d even say that LaBarbera’s statement is too soft—surely sin’s wrongness is more fundamental than its consequences. But my question here concerns the sequence: “the essence is to warn … and then offer.” Do we always need to warn about sin before talking about the love of God? Does this put the most fundamental part first? And is this what Jesus himself modeled?

“To press the point further, is it with all sinners that warning must come first, or only with those who commit certain specific sins? I have no idea if Peter LaBarbera is consistent about this, but I do know that a number of Christians aren’t—for them, confronting the sinner about his sin seems a much higher priority with some sins than with others. A gay friend from Boston once told me about how leaders of his youth group treated him when he revealed his struggles with same-sex attraction. Though he had not yet acted on any of his desires, the fact of the desires was taken as evidence that he didn’t really have a living relationship with God; he was treated lovingly, but as an outsider, and subjected to a variety of measures aimed at removing his same-sex desires. He eventually left the church once all parties had become frustrated with the failure of these efforts, and for a number of years he gave up on faith altogether. At the time we spoke, he had recently started attending a Unitarian church; it seemed like a pale shadow of the kind of worship he had known before, but it was the closest he felt he could come. Although I think this kind of treatment is the exception rather than the rule, stories like this are hardly rare. “Love the sinner, hate the sin” can look like a pious smokescreen if it is perceived that some (heterosexual) sins are not consistently hated nor some (homosexual) sinners consistently loved….”

“My primary concern is that the perception and reality of anti-gay bias may, in a variety of ways, be seriously hampering the witness of the church. We face several important questions. To the extent that the perception is false, how we can change it? And to the extent that the perception is true, how can we change ourselves? For that matter, how can we tell the difference—how do we know if we have anti-gay biases?”

He goes on to say that most people believe that homosexuality can be “slowed, stopped, or even reversed” but that it’s not going to happen anytime soon.

“Not all Christians are ready to be welcoming, and not all gays and lesbians are ready to hear a qualified welcome—and with stories out there like that of my friend from Boston, who can blame them? From my perspective, segments of the evangelical church blessing same-sex unions (in the stamp-of-approval sense) is not a positive development, but it’s also inevitable; and so it’s comforting to know that God routinely works through situations that aren’t ideal. In this case, such a church would provide a spiritual home for some people who might not otherwise find one….”

“The best thing we can do today to reduce the force of this trend is to subject ourselves to rigorous self-examination, both individual and corporate, seeking to root out both anti-gay bias and ways of expressing ourselves that could easily be mistaken for it. The more we tolerate homophobia, the more evangelicals will be driven toward heterodoxy and heteropraxis.”

Now back to Handel.  Ito goes on to explain that in Ellen Harris’s book Handel as Orpheus: Voice and Desire in the Chamber Cantatas (Harvard Univ. Press, 2001), the focus is on Handel’s chamber cantatas, which have been studied and found to contain clearly established codes of same-sex activity in them.  So if we grant that Handel wrote pro-gay songs for gay friends, does that mean he was gay?  Not necessarily, but it’s a possibility.

And here’s why it’s important for the church, especially (in Ito’s words):

“So a ‘gay’ Handel (to use the term anachronistically) is far from certain, but it does seem a real possibility. How do we react to this?

“This question can provide us with just what we need—a litmus test for detecting anti-gay bias. Handel, the composer of Messiah, is seen by many evangelicals as a member of the family, not just one of us but one of our heroes. Thus a gay Handel might give some of us a sense of what it’s like to have a close friend or family member come out of the closet.

“I wouldn’t think that a degree of sadness in contemplating a gay Handel would betray bias, nor would some degree of ‘ick factor.’ But what about vehement anger or refusal to even consider the possibility? What about concluding that a homoerotically inclined Handel couldn’t have been a real Christian or that Messiah was somehow invalidated? These reactions, and other similar ones, do strike me as signs of anti-gay bias.”

It’s something to ponder, I think.

Why does it matter to us if gays can or cannot marry?  Why do we want to tell others how to live their lives?

What others do before God is their issue, not ours.

We are only responsible for how we live our lives before God (or however we choose to live our lives–with or without God).

[Post image: George Frideric Handel by Balthazar Denner]