Bay Area Reporter: Methodists refuse to change anti-gay stance

According to the Bay Area Reporter:

The United Methodist Church decided to keep the anti-gay language in its church laws at its General Conference in Forth Worth, Texas last week.

The decision to reaffirm homophobic language also allows pastors to reject lesbian and gay people who seek membership in the church.

The General Conference, held every four years, is the sole venue for altering rules that guide the church. The conference voted to keep the current law against homosexuality as stated in the Book of Discipline, where laws guiding the Methodist Church are recorded.

"The United Methodist Church does not condone the practice of homosexuality and considers this practice incompatible with Christian teaching," is the church law that the conference affirmed on April 30.

The amendment to affirm this language passed by only 84 votes. A total of 900 votes were cast.

"I am heartbroken ... by the spiritual violence done to lesbian and gay people by the United Methodist Church, the denomination in which I once pastored, my parents were married, my nieces and nephews baptized, and out of which my beloved grandmother was buried last June," said Harry Knox, director of the Human Rights Campaign's Religion Faith Program, in a press release last week.

Despite the church's anti-gay stance, the church laws, which explicitly support "laws in civil society that define marriage as the union of one man and one woman," does support rights usually granted under domestic partnership laws, including rights of inheritance and pensions for gays and lesbians.

"Certain basic human rights and civil liberties are due all persons. We are committed to supporting those rights and liberties for homosexual persons," the church law reads. It then goes on to endorse rights such as pensions claims and rights of inheritance.

In a separate vote, the General Conference refused to adopt anti-transgender language proposed in another suggested amendment.

The conference also voted to reject "all forms of violence or discrimination based on gender, gender identity, sexual practice or sexual orientation."

Two hundred Methodists, including three dozen ministers, attended a same-sex commitment ceremony in Forth Worth on May 2 to protest the church's failure to revise its position on gay and lesbian relationships, according to the Associated Press.

Despite the protests of individual church members and clergy, and the narrow margin by which the anti-gay language was affirmed, the Methodist Church should not be read as becoming more progressive, according to the Reverend Cecil Williams of Glide United Memorial Methodist Church in San Francisco.

"They are not interested in changing the church to meet the times," Williams said, adding that the church could have and should have changed its position on gay and lesbian relationships years ago.

"They don't relate to the margins of society," Williams said, including social segments as varied and broad as the homeless, the Third World, the poor, and political progressives as other groups marginalized by the church.

"They keep losing members on the national and international level," he added.

Williams was careful to distinguish Glide's view of the LGBT community from that of the larger Methodist Church. Glide has a large LGBT membership and offers programs for people living with HIV/AIDS and other issues.

"Glide has a strong commitment to unconditional love. We love people as they are and we encourage people to define themselves," Williams said.

"I believe very strongly in an inclusive, not an exclusive church," he added.

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Methodists refuse to change anti-gay stance
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