Pastor's 'playbook' keeps gays on bench

With a pen stroke, Gov. Chris Gregoire on Wednesday signed into law the expansion of domestic partner rights.

That's noteworthy progress for gays and lesbians.

One man, I assure you, isn't giddy. He doesn't see this being a step in the right direction.

"Homosexuals are asking for special rights," he says.

	Hutcherson

With those words, Pastor Ken Hutcherson began to heat up. I dropped by the Redmond offices of his Antioch Bible Church the other day to hear him out and, with luck, broaden his view.

Hutcherson, 55, is the region's most vocal critic of homosexuality. But he says secular media folks like me have got him misunderstood, which is why he was eager for the face-to-face.

Just because he doesn't approve of homosexuality doesn't mean he hates gays and lesbians. He says it is un- Christian to hate. He points out this irony: Critics who call him a hatemonger make threats on his life and send vicious e-mails.

A former NFL linebacker for the Cowboys and the Seahawks, Hutcherson likens religion to sport.

There's the coach -- God.

There's the team -- the fellowship of believers.

"And there's the playbook. You got to know his playbook," he chortles, referring to the Bible. "You've got to run the play as it is written."

He opens a Bible on his desk to show where homosexuality is discussed.

"Oh my goodness," he says with excitement. "You got Genesis. You got Leviticus. The Old and the New Testaments."

He traces a page with a finger and reads aloud: "Their women exchanged the natural sex relations for unnatural ones, and likewise the men ... were inflamed in their passions for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men. ..."

He looks up at me. "Homosexuality is a sin," he says with a smile. "God hates sin."

It would be easy to dismiss him if he didn't have such a strong following at his Eastside megachurch, if millions of folks across America didn't share his doctrinal beliefs.

Last year, Hutcherson made headlines by calling on evangelicals to buy Microsoft shares to pressure the company to embrace "traditional values."

He made a splash a few years back, too. He took on the Redmond software giant for lobbying for domestic partner rights in Olympia.

"I said (to Microsoft), 'When you stepped outside of your four walls, you gave me the right to step inside your four walls because you're trying to make your policy my policy by pushing state law,' " he recalls.

He jokes that Microsoft ought to focus on debugging software "because I still have problems with my computer. Fix my computer before you try to get into politics."

Microsoft, he says, "stepped out of bounds."

Hutcherson fails to see he's doing the same thing. He's stepping out from behind his bully pulpit, full of fire and brimstone and righteousness, telling us what to believe.

Whatever happened to Jesus' call for compassion, tolerance and humility in faith?

The pastor isn't the fuming-mad type. He's jovial, with a cornball sense of humor.

But he enjoys his power as a self-appointed morality cop too much. What are those old Bible lines? About a haughty spirit before a fall? About casting judgment?

And why such intense focus on gays? Leviticus talks about banishing couples if a man sleeps with his wife while she is having her period. I don't see anyone chasing down sinful couples.

Faith is not spiritual nonsense. But runaway or arbitrary faith is dangerous.

And as a black man who grew up in segregated Alabama, Hutcherson ought to have empathy for victims of discrimination.

He sloughs off this suggestion, saying homosexuality is, um, a choice. There are people in his congregation who were gay at one point, he offers as proof.

"Because it's a choice and because people can get out of it, how can it be equal to the same struggle black people went through?

"I can't take a 'don't ask, don't tell policy.' I walk in a room and you know I'm black. The only way I know someone is homosexual is if they tell me, or if their mannerisms give them away."

Folks are devoting big money to fight anti-gay ignorance.

The late Ric Weiland, who helped launch Microsoft, left $65 million to the Pride Foundation in Seattle and other organizations that help gay and lesbian causes.

Hutcherson either doesn't get it or doesn't want to -- that the church can be used to fight hate thoughts and actions.

And other churches are changing with the times and applying the old Gospel to a modern and diverse world.

But he clings to a shrinking island of conservative faith.

Now more than ever, he says, evangelicals must show spiritual vertebrae and strictly heed the Bible.

"When you understand the call of the playbook," Hutcherson says before praying for me, "you don't care what others think."

I think about him reaching the Pearly Gates and his coach shaking his head, saying the good pastor misread the plays -- and fumbled.