Hubby and I won’t bother with religious organizations that are hostile to our lives as gay men, with respect to the polity of the congregation concerned. That means a gay-agnostic congregational-polity church in a hostile association is better than gay-affirming church in a hostile connectional system. This makes affiliating with a connectional or episcopal church (from the ones available to us locally) almost impossible.
The power plays one sees at these meetings . . . . Heavens!
So, should I be surprised when blogger and ministerial colleague Debra W. Haffner (Sexuality and Religion: What’s the Connection?) reports that the 2008 General Conference of the United Methodist Church passed a spate of measures “to affirm their teaching that homosexuality was incompatible with God’s teaching”?
Here is something that baffles me: the Book of Discipline of the United Methodist denomination prohibits any celebration of a same-sex blessing of any kind on their organization’s property. That means that if a church that is not United Methodist rents space from a local United Methodist congregation, that church cannot hold a same-sex wedding or other blessing, regardless of its own doctrine or policy.
Despite this, there is a Metropolitan Community Church (which came into being specifically to minister to lgbt folk) near me that rents the fellowship hall of a dying United Methodist congregation, having set it up as their own sanctuary. But if a couple in the Metropolitan Community Church wants to get married, they have to go somewhere else!
My own congregation (fully inclusive Independent Catholic) meets in a Unitarian Universalist church’s building. They have fully welcomed us, and same-sex marriages are probably the LEAST weird thing we do in their eyes! (We get funny looks during Lent when we bring in the large crucifix . . . ) We would never dream of subsidizing a United Methodist congregation, regardless of the local organization’s views.