Orlando evangelical leader Hunter heads to White House for gay marriage bill signing – Orlando Sentinel

Central Florida religious leader Joel Hunter will be at the White House on Tuesday to witness President Biden’s signing of the Respect for Marriage bill into law, a measure that will protect gay matrimony in the United States.

“It’s a privilege to be there,” Hunter told the Orlando Sentinel in an interview Monday about the invitation to attend.

“I’m a conservative evangelical, so this is not exactly our wheelhouse,” said Hunter, the president of the nonprofit Parable Foundation in Lake Mary and former pastor of Northland Community Church in Longwood. “But we ought to be the first ones to be a part of the reassurance of the LGBTQ community and others that their marriage rights aren’t in danger.”

The bill, which received enough GOP votes to overcome a filibuster, passed the Senate and House last week.

When signed by Biden, it will require states to accept gay marriages from other states in the event the 2015 Obergefell U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage is ever overturned. The bill also contains language protecting interracial marriages from interference by states.

All Democrats in the House and Senate voted for the bill, as did three Republicans from Florida, U.S. Reps. Michael Waltz, R-St. Augustine Beach, Kat Cammack, R-Gainesville, and Carlos Gimenez, R-Miami. Thirteen other Florida Republican House members voted no, including three who originally voted for the bill in July, as did the state’s U.S. Senators, Marco Rubio and Rick Scott.

The bill was spurred by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas arguing in June that past decisions protecting gay marriage and contraception should be “reconsidered” in the wake of the court overturning the right to an abortion established in Roe v. Wade.

Hunter was already an outlier among the largely conservative evangelical community, having served as a spiritual adviser to former President Obama and giving the closing benediction at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

But he had been opposed to gay marriage rights, as Obama was at the time. Obama eventually changed his position, having been spurred by then-Vice President Biden’s announcement in favor of it.

“When I first was approached by President Obama about this, I came from that place of conservative evangelicalism that immediately spouted scripture,” Hunter said. “But I think that I, along with the rest of the culture, have seen this as a matter of loving our neighbor and respecting them. And so I think there’s been a huge transition in the last 10 years.”

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He believes a majority of U.S. Christians look at gay marriage as a matter of civil rights, “but there’s a polarization going on within the church,” he said. “And so every move that is some sort of compromise, or a bit of grace toward the other side, is looked on as a threat. Or some kind of Chicken Little, ‘The sky is falling,’ kind of move. And that’s simply not the case.”

Hunter said he’s gained some great friends in the LGBTQ community, including the Rev. Terri Steed-Pierce, the gay pastor of the Joy Metropolitan Community Church in Orlando.

“It has been [a relationship] of friendship and appreciation,” he said. “We’re learning about each other and loving each other.”

Steed-Pierce said a prominent evangelical such as Hunter reaching out to the LGBTQ community has helped bridge the gaps between the groups.

“I’m so proud of him and his turnaround and that our friendship played a huge part in that,” she said. “Like I say, it’s hard to hate up close. And when you get to know someone who is openly gay and openly Christian, as I profess to be, it can change things for folks. … You recognize they’re human beings who love the same way you love.”

Hunter said he was looking forward to seeing other religious leaders he’s worked with during the Obama administration.

“It’ll be kind of like a family reunion,” he said.