Episcopal Bishop Leads Cause to Allow Gays to Become Priests : Religion: Head of L.A. diocese emerges as a spokesman for the changes, which would also permit church blessings for homosexual couples.

Bishop Frederick Borsch, who heads the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, has emerged as the key spokesman for controversial proposals before the denomination to allow homosexuals to become priests and to permit church blessings for gay and lesbian couples.

Borsch lost the uphill battle Monday, however, when church leaders postponed action indefinitely at the denomination’s national convention because they could not reach a consensus. They urged that questions about homosexuality be studied further by local congregations.

“I am fearful that the issues will be just pushed aside,” Borsch said. “But if people really look seriously at the issues it could be good.”

The normally cautious Borsch has surprised some Episcopalians by promoting the changes that are resisted by what surveys say is a majority in the 2.4-million-member denomination.

Borsch told 3,000 delegates and visitors to the convention Sunday night that the Bible is not clear on the question of homosexuality and that gay and lesbian priests would not become a threat to conventional family life.

“As a pastor and a bishop,” Borsch said, “I have had many more problems with heterosexual persons misusing their sexuality, attempting to seduce underage persons and abusing positions of authority.” Although known as liberal-to-moderate on sexual issues, Borsch has not sided with changes in church policies that many people have considered radical and decisive stances.

Borsch is a member of the Standing Commission on Human Affairs that proposed the changes. During the Sunday hearing, Borsch made the principal appeal for the commission’s recommendations.

“He is a careful leader,” said the Rev. George Regas, rector of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena. “But he has played his role in an intelligent and courageous way,” Regas said.

Before he became bishop of the 77,000-member, six-county Los Angeles diocese, Borsch was dean of the chapel and religion professor at Princeton Theological seminary. Earlier, he taught New Testament at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley.

In a 40-page essay written recently by Borsch for his diocese on “Christian Discipleship and Sexuality,” he repeated the contention of many mainstream biblical scholars that the sin of Sodom was inhospitality, not homosexual behavior, and that St. Paul’s admonitions may not be applicable to committed homosexual relationships today.

Borsch said that many Christians place greater weight on broader Christian teachings about the primacy of love and the “inclusive character of the Christian community” rather than particular Biblical verses about homosexuality.

In the first floor debate on the proposals Monday, many bishops urged that a decision be delayed because of wide differences of opinion.

“We need time,” said Bishop Roger White of Milwaukee. “We should try to establish the will of God and not the will of God’s people,” White said, referring to the 1,100 delegates.

Bishop William Frey, dean of Trinity Episcopal School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pa., who opposed the proposals, said that church law should declare that the clergy must “abstain from sexual relations outside of holy matrimony.”

Frey, and a number of his supporters, contended that many homosexuals can be healed of their sexual orientation. “God’s word is to repent,” Frey said. “Acceptance (of homosexuals) is too small a thing to ask from a God who makes all things new,” he said.

Even though the debate over the ordination of homosexual priests and the blessing of same-sex unions was not resolved, some Episcopalians think that some bishops and priests will continue to defy the denomination by performing unauthorized rites.

Most recently, Bishop Ronald Haines of Washington ordained an openly lesbian priest and Bishop Robert M. Anderson of the Minnesota diocese said that he has ordained sexually active gays and lesbians since 1978.

Unofficial blessings of gay or lesbian unions have occurred in several dioceses.

Pasadena’s Regas reiterated that All Saints, the largest Episcopal parish on the West Coast, will proceed on its earlier declaration to begin such blessings.