Methodists Retain Ban on Gay Ordination

The United Methodist governing conference today voted strongly to retain its rules forbidding ordination of “self-avowed, practicing homosexuals.”

After an hourlong, tense debate, delegates voted 676 to 293 to maintain the restriction, assailed by some as unfair and even unenforceable.

Attorney John Stumbo of Topeka, Kan., a delegate, said the regulation was a “legal nightmare in terms of provability” since self-incrimination violates the concept of due process.

Another lawyer-delegate, Scott Williams of Muncy, Pa., argued, however, that the rule was essential and that “many people would leave the church if it is not retained.”

Liberal Section Rejected

The action came shortly after the delegates also had voted overwhelmingly not to substitute a more liberal section about the ordained ministry.

Several other questions related to homosexuality still were before the conference, including a section of the church discipline calling “the practice of homosexuality . . . incompatible with Christian teaching.”

United Methodists have struggled for 18 years with the status of homosexuals in the nation’s second-largest Protestant denomination. Delegates called the issue the most important before their quadrennial governing conference.

The 9.6-million-member denomination, larger than any Protestant body in the country except for Southern Baptists, first established standards against active homosexuality in 1972, following several years of debate.

The church’s bishops have urged maintenance of the present standards.