A Quiet Struggle Within the Gay Marriage Fight Noah Berger for The Bay Citizen Worshippers at a service at Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley. Clergy members and the church are in a battle of their own over gay rights.
By MATT SMITH Straight couples dressed in tuxedoes and pastel-colored gowns were forced to wait in a hallway outside the San Francisco recorder’s office on Tuesday as 10 Bay Area Christian leaders sat in a circle inside singing “We Shall Overcome,” “Chapel of Love,” and “We Shall Not Be Moved.” It has become an annual Valentine’s Day protest of the city’s inability to give marriage licenses to same-sex couples, an authority that is on hold until appeals of a court’s decision to strike down California’s gay marriage ban are exhausted. “We’re just going to keep knocking at the door until justice is available to all people,” the Rev. Karen Oliveto, a Methodist pastor of San Francisco’s Glide Memorial Church, said after sheriff’s deputies handcuffed her and her fellow protesters and led them to jail. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit earlier this month upheld a decision declaring Proposition 8, California’s ban on same-sex marriage, unconstitutional. The ruling represented a milestone in the secular struggle over gay rights. In the shadow of that struggle, however, a quieter battle is being waged within churches over whether gay people can be married and ordained. Long before the issue of same-sex marriage grabbed the spotlight, liberal Protestant pastors in Northern California were fighting against church rules prohibiting ordination and marriage of homosexuals. That internal church struggle is broadening nationwide. In recent years, mainline Protestant denominations — which are different from evangelical Christian churches that read the Bible as literal truth and emphasize a personal relationship with Jesus — have one by one changed rules that had prohibited marriage and ordination of gays and lesbians. The Episcopal Church, Presbyterian Church U.S.A., Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the United Church of Christ at one time all barred same-sex wedding ceremonies and ordination of gay clergy members, but they have changed those rules over time. The last holdout among major mainline Protestant groups has been the United Methodist Church, which had 7.7 million members in the United States as of January 2009. Its doctrine still declares homosexuality “incompatible with Christian teaching,” prohibits ordination of openly homosexual men and women, and bans same-sex weddings, while urging churches not to reject gay parishioners. Methodist clergy members like Ms. Oliveto have led a growing pastoral revolt against those teachings — she has performed more than 50 “holy union” ceremonies for same-sex couples. And in her church’s liberal California-Nevada conference, 114 pastors from Northern California have signed a petition declaring they are willing to perform holy union ceremonies for same-sex couples, and thus risk being defrocked for violating church rules. More than 1,100 United Methodist pastors nationwide have signed the pledge. In response, 2,700 conservative pastors have signed a letter criticizing those pastors’ stance. For both sides, the stakes are high. “It is intense, because people feel very deeply about that issue,” said Maxie Dunnam, a retired Memphis pastor who helps lead national efforts to retain the United Methodist Church’s official position condemning homosexuality. “It’s holistic, it’s human, it’s fair, it’s respectful, and from my perspective, it’s biblical,” he said of the church’s current stance. Randall Miller, assistant professor of ethics at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, is chairman of the commission that organizes the United Methodists’ quadrennial General Conference in April, when bishops and other delegates from around the world will gather in Florida to consider proposed changes to church doctrine, including eliminating the condemnations of homosexuality. “The United Methodist Church is a great bellwether of where opinions are going in the general society on the issue of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender inclusion,” said Mr. Miller, who will also lead the Northern California delegation to the conference. “Moving the United Methodist Church step by step, and removing these barriers, is a greater step in making the larger society more inclusive.” In January 1999, 68 Northern California Methodist pastors gathered in Sacramento to perform in unison a holy union ceremony for a church official and her lesbian partner. The idea was to protest church proceedings that resulted in the defrocking of Jimmy Creech, a Nebraska pastor who had committed heresy by performing weddings for gay parishioners. “I was punished with the hope that would discourage other clergy, but my colleagues were clear about their willingness to be clergy to all people, and in challenging the church,” said Mr. Creech, who later founded a group called Faith in America, dedicated to fighting what it calls bigotry within churches. A nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization providing local coverage of the San Francisco Bay Area for The New York Times. To join the conversation about this article, go to baycitizen.org. Other denominations are also facing turmoil over the inclusion of gays and lesbians. Since the 1980s, the United Church of Christ has officially accepted the ordination of gay clergy members, a stance not accepted by all congregations. In 2003, the Episcopal Church of the U.S.A. appointed an openly gay bishop, leading some conservative members to leave the denomination. In 2009, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America voted to lift a ban on ordination of sexually active gays and lesbians. In May 2011, the Presbyterian Church voted to allow men and women in same-sex relationships to be ordained, a move that infuriated many faithful. “There’s no way I can uphold my ordination vows and be in ministry with those people,” said Carmen Fowler LaBerge, a former pastor at Providence Presbyterian Church in Hilton Head, S.C., who resigned in protest over the denomination’s acceptance of gays and lesbians. She went on to lead the Presbyterian Lay Committee, a group that advocates against acceptance of gays and lesbians within the church. In January, however, that denomination ordained its first openly gay pastor of a church, the Rev. Paul Mowry, pastor of Sausalito Presbyterian Church. “It’s an encouraging moment of the church coming into living in the full promise of God’s grace,” Mr. Mowry said. On Valentine’s Day at City Hall, the Rev. Roland Stringfellow, a former minister with the Fundamental Baptist Fellowship Association who directs ministerial outreach at the Center for Gay and Lesbian Studies at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, sat alongside Ms. Oliveto with his partner, Jerry Peterson, a former Church of the Brethren pastor. Both men quit their churches after coming out, because homosexuality is condemned by their denominations. But both said they believe theology and history are on their side. “Those of us who are progressive people of faith often find ourselves caught in the middle,” said Mr. Stringfellow, whose job at the Pacific School of Religion includes developing a gay-inclusion curriculum aimed at historically black churches. “People in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community look at you with suspicion, or call you naïve because of your faith. And then there are people in the religious community who say you are in violation of the faith because of your sexuality. “In the New Testament, the gentiles were seen as those who were outside God’s promise,” he said. “But the Apostle Paul was preaching to the gentiles. So the very concepts, issues and conflicts they had then in including people who had been received as outsiders, we’re still dealing with today.” More: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/us/within-gay-marriage-battle-a-quiet-struggle-in-churches.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2 -- Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time. Have a great day, Tommy -- Together, we can change the world, one mind at a time. Have a great day, Tommy -- Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. * Read the latest breaking news, and more.
