Court Order Giving Inmates Right to Worship Ends Nine-Year Legal Fight

An official of the homosexual-oriented Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches says that the recent order by a federal judge to allow inmates of federal prisons to request worship services conducted by its ministers “concludes a nine-year struggle” in the courts.

The Rev. Donald Eastman, a member of the board of elders of the Hollywood-based denomination, said that the church had earlier gained permission to conduct services in selected state prisons, but that they had been blocked from the federal prison system, except for the federal facility in Pleasanton, Calif.

The order, signed last week, was made as part of an agreement entered into with the Justice Department, the fellowship and a Leavenworth, Kan., prison inmate.

U.S. District Judge Charles Legge of San Francisco ordered that Metropolitan Community Churches be considered a legitimate church and that inmates who so request be given access to church literature and worship services.

The church, founded in 1968 and based in Los Angeles, has nearly 200 congregations in this country, with the majority in California. Its ministers are predominantly homosexual and minister to the gay, lesbian and bisexual community, a church spokesman said.