Chapter Nine
Rev. Dr. William K. McElvaney

In more than 40 years of ministry as a pastor, seminary administrator and professor in our church, I have been privileged to know talented and dedicated gay and lesbian theological students eager to serve in our denomination, many of them lifelong United Methodists baptized and raised in our church. Yet, unless silent and secretive about loving relationships, they have been denied ordination, excluded by the church in the name of God as being defective and unworthy.

If truth be known, lesbians and gay men have been practicing ordained ministry in the United Methodist Church since the beginnings of ordination. The stumbling block is not in their ability to practice ministry faithfully and effectively but in the blindness of the heterosexual community to recognize and credit God-given gifts, call, and commitment. "Don’t ask, don’t tell" has been the functioning principle of a fearful church, even though our Social Principles call for inclusiveness (Section IX, paragraph 117):

"Inclusiveness means openness, acceptance, and support that enables all persons to participate in the life of the Church, the community, and the world. Thus, inclusiveness denies every semblance of discrimination."

It’s time to walk this talk.

There is not a shred of evidence that lesbians and gay men — whether "out" or not — are any less able or willing to love God and neighbor than heterosexuals; no evidence of their being less adept at feeding the hungry, welcoming the stranger, or visiting the sick; no evidence of less commitment to the weighty matters of justice, mercy, and faith. In relation to ordination, there is no evidence that lesbians and gay men are less capable in service, word, sacrament, and order, nor in conviction and confidence in God’s call to ordained ministry.

The church should be concerned with being biblical in the deepest sense. The ranking of a few questionable statements by Paul above all the pervasive, magnetic fields of texts related to God’s radical love in Jesus can hardly qualify as serious biblical inquiry and authority. To be profoundly biblical from a Christian standpoint is to give prominence to what Jesus lifted up as discipleship and authentic life in response to God’s love: Love God and love your neighbor. Automatically barring gay men and lesbians from ordination because they love "the wrong neighbor" is incompatible with the Gospel of God’s love expressed in Jesus Christ.

In recent years, gay men and lesbians have begun to come out of their closets and enter our seminaries. By rejecting them for ordination, we are robbing the United Methodist Church of a God-given talent base, in much the same way we denied our church the gifts of ordained women pastors for far too long. The rejection of qualified gay and lesbian candidates also has the effect of unwittingly, yet inevitably, colluding with a society too often bent on individual and collective violence toward homosexuals.

In the name of God, we are called to be community-makers and barrier-breakers. The time is at hand.