During the couple of months since conference I have been pre-occupied with the debate over health care reform. It is the first serious proposal we’ve had in16 years, and it is facing the same opposition from the insurance industry and its wholly owned subsidiary the Republican Party. I don’t know why I’ve been surprised at their level of lies and dirty tricks since that is their standard political tactic, but it seems worse this time.

Before you get upset about my political leanings and my self-avowed support for universal health care, I hope that in the remaining weeks in August we can see a genuine debate and not just hysteria. Health care is a moral issue as much as it is a political or economic issue, and our group supposedly is addressing morality even when it isn’t specific to gender or sexual orientation.

I made my small sacrifice this afternoon to give up a time in the beautiful sunshine to watch four hours of speeches on C-Span from the National Equality March on Washington broadcast from the west steps of the U.S. Capitol today. However heartfelt the speakers were, most were amateurs and not polished orators. They were genuine in their enthusiasm, but the hours dragged on anyway with only one short musical break. Not exactly the strategy for a party. The only luminary to show up was Julian Bond.

The cameras didn’t reach beyond the reflecting pool so it was impossible to judge the numbers of people who showed up. The effort to be inclusive stretched the limits of time and endurance for a public event. In an effort to appear mainstream, I fear the organizers lost some of the joy of the pride parades and lacked the slick commercialism of television to effectively get their message across and to make the emotional connection with their audience. Let’s face it, C-Span reached far more than the numbers of people gathered on the mall. It was a coup to get that coverage, but the presentations were not geared to TV.

I hoped for a local report of the Estes Park convocation, but apparently that is not forthcoming. Some of the energy did return to our area, however, and the two recent RUM-NC planning sessions focused on developing a plan for 2010. We discussed advocacy and pastoral care and how they both play a role in our mission. We provide witnesses not only at annual conference but also in our local church. We tend to the hurt and wounded who have been damaged by the hostility of our church. While many see us as proselytizers, our mission is to reach out and welcome everyone --- even those with whom we disagree. We’re not trying to divide the church; we’re trying to heal the church from a grievous schism of hypocrisy.

I have friends who have left the Methodist church for more welcoming congregations. One even gave up the ministry, and another who was a minister died without ever acknowledging the lies he had lived with throughout his career and the damage that had done to him and to his family. We not promoting a debate about a handful of bible scriptures; we’re not going to change any minds about that. The theologians don’t even consider it a valid argument anymore. The morality we address is about double standards, dishonesty, distrust, and discrimination based upon a 19th Century social standard. It took the Methodist church 78 years to heal from the split over slavery. We ordained women 53 years ago, but in many cases, they still do not receive equal treatments in terms of appointments even though we do have women bishops. We’ve dragged our heals on nearly every social issue for generations and as such we have lost much of the enthusiasm and relevance to attract the unchurched. They point with some justification to our hypocrisy.

For centuries the institutional church has had a history of having a difficulty in dealing with human sexuality. The Apostle Paul was ambivalent about it. The monastic movement preached that abstinence was the ultimate holiness and devotion to God. Theologians and philosophers taught that the body was evil and that the spiritual life must repress bodily urges, especially sex. The goal was personal salvation of our soul and not service to humanity as we were commissioned by Jesus to do.

Although celibacy of the clergy is still the policy of the Catholic Church, that was abandoned in the Protestant Reformation 500 years ago yet that is the policy of the United Methodist Church if you are a member of the clergy who also happens to be gay or lesbian. But that repression is not limited to the clergy; it also is applied to lay members. You can be gay or lesbian, but you can’t act on your sexual orientation and be accepted by the church into full membership. You cannot participate in all of the rituals of the church. Such restrictions are not placed on any other group or class of people by the church. The Book of Discipline implies that homosexuality is a sin although it uses a more hesitant phrase that it “is inconsistent with Christian teaching.” It is a perversion of the mission of the church to evangelize the whole world while excluding a select group of people simply because they traditionally have been social outcasts. We are put in the same class as alcoholics, prostitutes, drug addicts, and pedophiles that can achieve redemption only by repenting of our “sin.”