Posted: 6/13/03
Presbyterians avoid
fight over homosexuality
By Kevin Eckstrom
Religion News Service
DENVER (RNS)–The Presbyterian Church (USA) stepped back from another divisive fight over homosexuality May 30, rejecting a third church-wide vote on whether to allow non-celibate gays and lesbians to serve as pastors and elders.
Delegates to the church's annual general assembly voted 431-92 to refer all questions on gay ordination to a blue-ribbon task force that is studying the “peace, purity and unity of the church.”
The task force, appointed two years ago, will make its final report in 2006 on how to bridge the deep differences on sexuality and theology within the 2.5 million-member denomination.
In voting to defer the issue to the task force, the delegates rejected a resolution from churches in Des Moines, Iowa, that would have overturned a six-year-old ban against non-celibate gay clergy.
The current policy requires pastors and elders to live in “fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman, or chastity in singleness.”
Two previous assemblies in 1997 and 2001 voted to repeal the ban, but both efforts failed in ratifying votes by regional bodies called presbyteries. The 2000 assembly rejected an attempt to rescind the ban.
Delegates also voted 354-160 to keep intact another church policy that prohibits “self-affirming practicing homosexuals” from serving as clergy.
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Both liberals and conservatives said the church is weary from constant debate on the gay issue and seemed to agree that another round of voting would only cause the church further pain.
Church policy allows gay clergy as long as they agree to remain celibate. Liberals in the church said the denomination is continuing an unspoken policy of discrimination by keeping active gays out of the ministry.
While the ordination issue loomed over the assembly all week, conservatives and liberals within the church also tasseled on a number of other minor issues.
Delegates voted to refer a controversial report on “non-traditional families” back to its authors for further study. Conservatives said the 47-page report downplayed the importance of traditional nuclear families and gave too much credence to gay parents and other “committed relationships” among non-married adults.
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