Ministers Face Church Trial Over Gay Rite

The Methodist bishop for Northern California filed a complaint Tuesday against 69 ministers who participated in a lesbian “holy union celebration” in mass defiance of a church ban on same-sex marriages.

The complaint is the first step toward a possible church trial for the Rev. Don Fado, who presided at the Jan. 15 celebration, and the other ministers. If convicted, they could be removed from the clergy.

Bishop Melvin Talbert, head of the 375-church California-Nevada United Methodist Conference, said he brought the complaint with sorrow and regret.

Talbert said the church’s ban on ceremonies recognizing gay relationships is unjust. But he said church law required him to act on a complaint brought by two pastors.

“I will uphold law, but I will not be silenced. I will continue speaking out against the law and will continue working to change the position of our church to be more in keeping with the teachings and compassion of Jesus,” he said.

Fado said Talbert had no alternative to filing the complaint. “I wish we didn’t have to go through all this, but this is the way it is dealt with. The fact that we had so many participate . . . was to make a statement to the church that it needs to reevaluate this policy,” he said.

The conflict over same-sex weddings has been simmering for years within the United Methodist Church, which with 8.5 million members is the nation’s second-largest Protestant denomination after the Southern Baptists.

Fado led the wedding-like celebration for Jeanne Barnett, 68, and Ellie Charlton, 63. The women have long been active in Fado’s church, St. Marks United Methodist, and have been a couple for more than 15 years.

More than 1,000 members of the clergy, lay leaders, gays and others attended the ceremony, which was held at the Sacramento Community Center and included folk songs, dancing and poetry.

Talbert’s complaint will be sent to a committee of clergy and lay people to investigate and decide whether the evidence merits a church trial.

In 1996, the church’s legislature, the General Conference, added a provision to the Methodists’ Book of Discipline that says: “Ceremonies that celebrate homosexual unions shall not be conducted by our ministers and shall not be conducted in our churches.”

Later this week in Chicago, the Rev. Gregory Dell, a minister for 28 years, is scheduled to go on trial before the United Methodist Church for presiding over the marriage of two men.

In 1997, the Rev. Jimmy Creech performed a blessing for a lesbian couple in his Omaha congregation. Last March, eight of 11 members of a Methodist tribunal decided to take no action against Creech, one short of the majority required to defrock him. Though acquitted, Creech was not given another church assignment and was put on leave.