"Coward!"

That one word condenses all the charges leveled at me in response to a recent interview. I had said, "I avoid abortion, homosexuality, and any other topic where there is so much polarization that nobody will do any fresh thinking."

Readers who might otherwise doze come alive to that kind of talk. "Evader!" was another epithet assigned to me. "How can you comment on religion and evade the most urgent topics of the day?" Translation: "You have to stand up and be counted in the 'culture wars' of world and church." Or: "You owe us some ammunition for our side (whichever side that might be) in the culture wars."

Of course, no responsible commentator on religious issues can avoid topics such as homosexuality. Even if not an expert on sexual themes in religion, one cannot avoid asking why such themes dominate the spiritual conflicts of our time. Evade controversial topics? No: The issue is when and why and how to bring them up. Sound bites in interviews are not places to set these topics into helpful contexts.

And yet, I do believe the time has come to establish what a helpful context might be. And that is simply to question what it is that we, as Americans and people of faith of one stripe or another, really do think, feel, and believe about the issue of homosexuality, which is the controversy that comes to mind in light of Alan Wolfe's new and instantly celebrated book, One Nation, After All: What Middle Class Americans Really Think About.

Wolfe singled out homosexuality because it was virtually the only agenda item that tore apart the broad middle class that he surveyed. About the others, "What culture war?" was the question most citizens who do not belong to the elites of the left or right kept asking. But attitudes toward homosexuality provide what Wolfe calls "the ultimate test" of would-be tolerant moderates, and the American majority fails it. Wolfe found some mitigation in the form of statements such as, "Hate the sin but love the sinner," or, "Homosexuality is less offensive if it's inborn than if it's a matter of choice," but these don't count for much. Many of Wolfe's respondents called homosexuality "abnormal," "immoral," "sinful," "unacceptable," "sick," "unhealthy," "untrustworthy," "mentally ill," "wrong," "perverted," and "mentally deficient." On other debated issues in religion, most citizens hold to their "live and let live" attitude. But here the majority comes down hard and negatively.

Why? Wolfe doesn't answer that question, and there is no satisfying answer. The best response right now might well be, "I don't know," or, "We are studying that." Could three thousand years in a culture dominated by a few scriptural texts condemning homosexuality have something to do with it?

To answer that question, it might be helpful to look back at those Levitical texts and to ask ourselves why they are so hard on homosexuals. Some anthropologists theorize that the ancient Hebrews, who gave us the scriptures, had trouble with all anomalies that challenged simple "either/or" thinking. In the language of an old hit song, "You Gotta Be This or That." Male cross-dressing (Deut. 22:5) was another condemned instance. Stick to either/or.

A second reason connected sexuality and the ownership and purity of the land, as in the case of the land of Israel, where the pagan Canaanite culture still lured and threatened. John Boswell argued that toevah, an "abomination" in many translations of laws forbidding male-male sexual acts, really means "ritually unclean." Incest, homosexual acts, sex with animals, and prostitution were toevah, and transgressions resulted in land pollution.

Prohibitions and inhibitions that go back to such long-ago themes have become part of western tradition, even though they have their roots in forgotten practices. Perhaps that is why the charge that homosexuality is "unnatural" often comes up among those in the middle class who don't fight for "natural" on other fronts.

Some elements of what Wolfe's majorities would call "homosexual lifestyles" deserve to be condemned. But those who condemn and fear these tend to be less condemning of the "heterosexual lifestyle's" violations of all kind of moral codes, texts, traditions, and taboos.

Merely to charge that "homophobia" is at the root of these troubles, because some kind of "phobia" is at the root of everything, helps little. The frequently made charge that groups are held together by hatred of "the other," and that homosexuals serve as convenient "others," doesn't shed much light either, because at issue is not the generic capacity to hate but the specific hatred of the homosexual "other." Other fears and hatreds did not violate the genial and loose consensus of Wolfe's citizens of One Nation, After All.

We are left then with many helpful clues and some enduring and plaguing "I don't knows" in the search for answers to the question of why homosexuality remains "the ultimate test" of middle-class American majorities who pass other tests of their tolerance. But to admit this ignorance or the existence of this half-light does not mean that generations can remain in the dark or evade the issue entirely when a test comes to disturb peace, discourse, and religious community life.

That is how this issue of the Bulletin and many of the Park Ridge Center's projects demonstrate ways in which the Center can contribute to broadening our knowledge and understanding. The Center's personnel know that ill health, unfaith, and bad ethics need to be exposed if the roots of the various phobias, suspicions, and hatreds are to be understood and addressed.