[Vision2020] Lesbian Minister Wins Appeal

[Tom Hansen]

>From today's (April 30, 2005) Spokesman Review.

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Lesbian minister wins appeal 
Methodist panel finds rules on homosexuality unclear

Alan Cooperman
Washington Post
April 30, 2005

WASHINGTON - A Methodist minister who was defrocked because she admitted to
living in a lesbian relationship won her appeal Friday and was reinstated by
a church court on narrow procedural grounds.

A regional appeals panel of five United Methodist Church ministers and four
laypeople concluded that a lower church court committed legal errors last
December when it convicted the Rev. Irene Elizabeth "Beth" Stroud of
violating the church's ban on "self-avowed practicing homosexuals" in the
clergy.

For Stroud, 35, the decision was a victory that could prove temporary. In
theory, she could immediately put on her clerical vestments and resume her
duties as an associate pastor at the First United Methodist Church of
Germantown, a liberal parish in Philadelphia. But she said she would not do
so, because she expects her bishop to appeal the case to the church's
highest court, the Judicial Council, and will wait for its decision.

"To me, ordination is something very sacred and very holy, and to take it
up, knowing that I might need to lay it down again, would feel like
trivializing," she said. "It was hard to take the robe off and stop
celebrating communion once. Before I take it up again, I want to know that
the United Methodist Church is really ready to affirm my ministry."

 
For the nation's second largest Protestant denomination, with 8.3 million
members in the United States, the decision guarantees more arguments over
the possible contradictions between its nondiscrimination policy and its
stand on homosexuality.

Like many mainline denominations, the United Methodist Church has been
wrestling for years over the ordination of gay clergy members. The Stroud
case is just the latest test of its "don't ask, don't tell" policy, which
has proved difficult to enforce.

In March 2004, a jury of Methodist ministers near Seattle acquitted the Rev.
Karen Dammann, even though she had declared in a letter to her bishop that
she was living in a same-sex relationship and did not deny it at her trial.

In response to that ruling, delegates to the church's quadrennial General
Conference, its highest legislative assembly, voted in Pittsburgh last May
to reaffirm a passage in the Methodist Book of Discipline that says "the
practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teachings." At the
same time, the Judicial Council ruled that Methodist ministers who are found
in a church trial to be "self-avowed practicing homosexuals" cannot hold any
appointment in the church.

Stroud was the first minister to go on trial for homosexuality since the
church tightened its rules. She has publicly acknowledged on numerous
occasions, including an April 27, 2003, sermon to her congregation, that she
is living in a "committed, covenanted" relationship with another woman.

Last December, a jury of 13 fellow ministers voted to convict her of
"engaging in practices declared by the United Methodist Church to be
incompatible with Christian teachings" and removed her credentials as a
minister. She stayed on at the Philadelphia parish as a lay employee.

In Friday's 8-1 ruling, the church's Committee of Appeals for the Northeast
Jurisdiction did not question the lower court's findings of fact. But after
deliberating for a day, it said the decision had violated Stroud's right to
due process because the church has never clearly defined the terms
"practicing homosexual" or "status."

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Take care, Moscow.

Tom Hansen


"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving
safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in
sideways, chocolate in one hand, a drink in the other, body thoroughly used
up, totally worn out and screaming 'WOO HOO. What a ride!'"