Some thoughts on ULS

Trigger warning—Conversion Therapy, Gaslighting, and Rape.

So, first off, here is some background from wiser and more informed people than I about what is currently happening at ULS, a new seminary built out of LTSP, where I attended, and LTSG.

Here are the closest thing to official notes we have.

Here are some really good unofficial notes from Pastor Lura Groen.

Here are Pastor Groen’s follow up reflections.

Here, as well, is ELM’s statement.

Finally, here is where a bunch of letters in support of Dr. Latini from the board and bishops were, but have since been taken down.

A History of This

            In my first year at LTSP the non-first year students would occasionally mention a rape that was “covered up” on campus. It was my first year and there was so much going on that I never dug any deeper.

            Then a well-known and beloved campus security officer was fired, and the students were not told what that was all about. He may or may not have taken petty cash. I distinctly remember some students fighting against the administration’s silence by setting up a camera hovering over a 20-dollar bill in the quad.

            Then there was a passive aggressive fight between faculty and students in favor of “Black Church and Multi-cultural” Worship and those who favored “Orthodox Lutheran” (read European) Worship. The whole thing felt like it was done in whispers and shadows and was really dysfunctional. This conflagration eventually heated up to the point that the administration let it be known that there are things students just don’t need to be aware of, the seminary isn’t our home, it is only a place we’re at for a while, so students should just stick to their studies.

            Then a campus group hid a rat infestation in the compost, the administration cleared it out without telling anyone—and somehow this open secret and lack of communication led to a completely unnecessary blow up on campus.

            Still later, there were rumors that the Seminary had no money and none of us would get a degree because Philly was going to lose its accreditation on account of this lack of funds.

            Then there was all the semi-secrets that floated around about the creation of ULS—I was gone by then, but hear tell it fit the pattern above.

            All that to say, LTSP had an ongoing transparency and communications issue. It seemed to be fused into its DNA. So, one of my deepest hopes for the dissolution of LTSP and LTSG and the forming of ULS was that that part of LTSP’s DNA would be left behind.

The Present Situation

            And along comes the revelation that Dr. Latini, ULS’s first president, was the CEO and poster child of a gay conversion organization. She did not disclose this on her resume, because she didn’t include anything about herself before she was ordained. She later told Rev. Dr. Elise Brown, the chair of ULS’s board, about her past. Rev. Dr. Brown made some inquires on her own and then did not pass this information on to the board. Then, either in November or December, she did so, maybe after a board member was informed of Dr. Latini’s history. Fast forward to February, somehow this information got out, and everyone feels betrayed or worse. 

A few thoughts:

-Reparative Therapy is unconscionable.

-In the 1990’s, living in Wyoming, I was at a very different place in my understanding of sexual orientation and gender issues writ large and might have bought Reparative Therapy as a humane way to help gay folk. Moving out of Wyoming, the enormous cultural shifts in our country during that time, and frankly exposure to LGBT+ people (especially at LTSP) has made such a position seem disgusting to me today.
-I feel for Dr. Latini. Reading between the lines I’d imagine part of the reason she applied to work for an ELCA seminary was because folk from all sides of her own denomination (PCUSA) had used her “conversion” and then her repudiation of conversion therapy as a bludgeon against one another. I can imagine just wanting to start fresh, let the Lutherans take me as I am now without using my person and past in polarizing ways.

-Having gone through the candidacy and call process of the ELCA—I was under a microscope for 6 years just to get interviewed for a call. Then before the “job interview” they googled my name, they read multiple pages of search results, and read basically every one of my blog entries (poor call committee, I’m freakin’ tedious). I wish ULS’s board had done at least that in this situation regarding Dr. Latini’s online footprint.

-Within that process, at my call vote, the congregation I serve asked me about my sexual orientation (which I refused to reveal). I’m a straight white cis-guy and that line of questioning made me feel uncomfortable and angry. I wonder how Dr. Latini is feeling as East Coast Lutherandom scrutinizes that aspect of her life.

-I wonder too how LGBT+folk at ULS are holding up? What would they like folk connected but outside the institution to be doing?

-Reading the notes from the Q and A session, the ULS board seems out of touch with a world where Google exists and LGBT+folk ought to be respected like everyone else. I’m especially surprised by Dr. Brown’s part in all of this. As a board member of ELM I wouldn’t expect that she would hide information about gay conversion therapy or be part of a group who would write off such a thing as “no big deal.”

-I’m astonished the board and bishops who wrote letters defending Dr. Latini would take them down—this isn’t 1984, there are no memory holes.

-There needs to be a non-board group that establishes a clear timeline of what happened and who knew what when, because the official one has holes in it and feels like something is being hidden.

-I pray for ULS.

My question:

The way in which Dr. Latini was hired seems to fit LTSP’s pattern of miscommunication and resistance to transparency. ULS is still a very young institution, how will ULS use this particular blow-up as a place from which to brake this pattern you’ve inherited from one of your parent institutions?