A Letter From The President

From the January 2003 Newsletter

 Bob Dorr, PFLAG Omaha

 Posted on January 1, 2003

There was a time when some Christian churches defended slavery, using the Bible as their justification. Today the Bible is used to exclude gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons from the full ministry of their religious faith. They aren't permitted to become an ordained minister. They can't have their same-sex commitment ceremony performed by a minister in their church.

Some ministers rebel--often at high personal cost. Omaha PFLAG holds its monthly meetings at First United Methodist Church, where Jimmy Creech conducted a same-sex Holy Union ceremony in 1997. As a result the Methodist bishop in Nebraska refused to reappoint Jimmy as senior pastor of FUMC even though many members in that church supported him.

Creech returned to his native North Carolina. He conducted another same-sex Holy Union and, for that, he lost his credentials as a United Methodist minister. He no longer can do the work he loves in the United Methodist Church.

Last year, inspired by the example set by Creech, a United Methodist minister in Lincoln and his wife took their own stand against the United Methodist Church's refusal to permit its pastors to perform same-sex commitment ceremonies.

The Rev. Jay Vetter and his wife, Maureen, rebeled without directly disobeying the Methodist prohibitions that apply to ordained ministers. Maureen, who isn't an ordained minister, conducted a Holy Union service that blessed the lifetime commitment of two gay men. Jay led a service of lamentation that preceded the Holy Union service but didn't take part in the commitment service itself.

Because same-sex commitment ceremonies aren't permitted in United Methodist churches, the service was held at a campus Episcopal Church in Lincoln.

The Lincoln Journal Star ran a feature story the day after the ceremony. The story stimulated a great deal of public comment and conflict within Christ United Methodist Church where Jay is senior pastor.

At our Feb. 13 support meeting, Jay and Maureen will tell their story and answer questions. It should be a stimulating time.

The meeting, as always, will begin with social time at 6:30 p.m. Our support/sharing will begin at 7 p.m., with the program starting at 8 p.m.

In his book, Stranger at the Gate, Mel White tells his powerful story as a gay person raised in a deeply conservative religious family. He married a wonderful woman, they raised two children, he made prize-winning religious films, he worked as a ghost writer for Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Billy Graham.

For more than 30 years White lived an up-and-down, tormented existence, struggling unsuccessfully to change his sexual orientation or at least to keep it in check--coming close to suicide several times.

Although the book was published in 1994, I hadn't read it until recently. I will recommend it to anyone who wants to understand how one's attitudes and values often are shaped by their upbringing and by their religion.

If you would like to read this book, you can check it out from our library at our meeting place at FUMC. Thanks primarily to volunteer librarian Mary Spurgeon, we now have a library that is people friendly. We intend to display two or three books at each meeting. Flip through the pages and decide if you might enjoy reading the book.

And then you can do all of us a favor by writing a brief review, as I have done here, and emailing it to me for use in our next newsletter. We need to know about books so we can be more helpful to new people who come to our meetings with lots of questions.

Read a book and email a review to me at: bobcdorr@aol.com

Bob Dorr, president