Gay Churches Laud Disney’s New Policy

A denomination of gay churches Friday honored the Walt Disney Co. for extending insurance coverage to the domestic partners of gay and lesbian employees--the same policy that in part prompted Southern Baptists to call for a boycott of the entertainment giant.

Executives of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches, holding its annual leadership conference at the Burbank Airport Hilton, presented a plaque of appreciation to a representative of the Disney League, the gay and lesbian employee group at Disney that urged the company to institute the benefits.

The Southern Baptist Convention voted in June to call for a boycott of Disney parks and products “if they continue in this anti-Christian, anti-family trend.”

Subsequently, the American Family Assn., self-described crusaders for the “biblical ethic of decency,” said it was urging a boycott in mailings to its 500,000 members. And the editor-publisher of Charisma, an influential magazine in Pentecostal and charismatic churches, backed a boycott if Disney did not satisfy Southern Baptist objections.

But the Rev. Troy Perry, founder and moderator of the 32,000-member Metropolitan Churches, said his denomination has been delighted with the policy change.

“We are also thankful that the Walt Disney Co. recognizes the reality and value of all families through their films and products,” he said.

The Metropolitan Churches, which Perry began with a small congregation in Huntington Park in 1968, has grown to nearly 300 congregations in 18 countries.

The denomination recently bought a $3.8-million office complex in West Hollywood for its first permanent headquarters as well as a new home for the Los Angeles church, which was displaced by the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

In a speech opening the meeting Thursday, retired United Methodist Bishop Leontine Kelly, the first African American woman to be elected a bishop in a major church body, commended the Metropolitan Community Churches “for your continued witness to the Gospel.”

Kelly, who served as bishop in Northern California from 1984 to 1988, was among 15 United Methodist bishops, including Roy Sano of Los Angeles, who this spring surprised their denomination’s quadrennial convention by signing a statement expressing “their pain” over the Methodists’ continued denial of clergy status to qualified gays and lesbians.