In 1967 my partner was in the last year of Perkins Divinity School at Southern Methodist University and was considering of how and where to apply for full inclusion into the active ministry into the church. Upon the advice of one of his clergy friends who was in full connection to the church, he decided to disavow his seminary training and not proceed with the procedures specified because of the fact that he recently had come to understand the fact that he was gay and all of the implications that would portend to his becoming an effective pastor. He left the Methodist Church for the Presbyterian Church and eventually ended up at the Cathedral of Hope in Dallas, which is affiliated with the United Church of Christ, where he actively participates in the worship service very week and leads a circle of friends in weekly study. In other words, he became a lay minister rather than face the hypocrisy of being a closeted clergy.

In 1976 Gene Leggett, an ordained minister of the Southwest Texas Annual Conference, was asked by the Bishop to relinquish his credentials because he had affirmed that he was a self-avowed, practicing homosexual. He refused; therefore he was brought forward in a public hearing before the Bishop at Trinity Methodist Church in San Antonio that resulted in a near riot outside of the church when the local community learned of the bishop’s actions. The media portrayed the church as bigoted and inflexible, and many potential members were turned away.

In the 1980’s Bishop Finis Crutchfield, a personal friend, died of AIDS and was outed on the cover of Texas Monthly magazine. Although his family denied the fact that he was gay, he was well known in the gay community and was in fact the pastor who had advised my friend of the liability of serving as a pastor while in the closet. Not only did he and his family suffer from the hypocrisy of the church, the resulting uproar from the media report caused some Texas clergy to “go off the rail” and become radical homophobes. It was a terrible and painful episode for everyone.

So how long, O Lord, must the people of the church struggle with accepting the injunction of Jesus to accept all who profess their faith and are baptized? Why must the different interpretation of a handful of verses in the Bible so divide us? Why must we 40 years later still battle with the idea that “if one side of the debate wins, then the other must lose?”

I have been cautioned that social changes comes slowly both in society as a whole and within the church and that we should be patient and not push the GLBTQ issue too hard and too fast because it threatens the beliefs of some people who are rigid in their understanding that the church can never change. In fact, it already has changed not only on this issue but also many others. My father was the pastor of a church in Wortham, Texas in 1939 where he was assigned to preside over the re-unification of two congregations of the Methodist Episcopal Church South and the Methodist Protestant Church, the split that occurred during the Civil War. In 1956 women were finally accepted into full authority in the Methodist Church even though women were some of the first apostles of the First Century Church. When can we get past some of the myths and traditions that have hampered the church where so many people are left outside the doors and beyond the redemption that Christ offers to all? Why must so many people continue to be driven out of the church and suffer in spiritual isolation? Why is it so difficult to accept that “All Means All?”