You are correct, Bob. Add to that the moral slide, and the picture is almost complete.
CNN - 10/12/98
RALEIGH, North Carolina (AP) -- In a letter to bishops, 363 United Methodist clergy and laity urged the church to end its ban on
celebrating gay and lesbian marriages.
The letter was released Sunday by the Rev. Jimmy Creech of Raleigh, who was asked to leave a church in Omaha, Nebraska, after
performing a same-sex blessing ceremony for two women in September 1997.
"Clergy colleagues will stand together, supporting one another, in the celebration of these unions," said the letter, signed by people
in 37 states and Washington, D.C.
"Our church is adrift, buffeted by forces that seek to steer our course away from the prophetic, just and compassionate course of
Christ."
In August, the 9.5 million-member United Methodist Church elevated a guideline against same-sex marriages into church canon and
said ministers performing the ceremonies could be defrocked. The action came after a church jury acquitted Creech, who is on a
voluntary leave of absence, of disobeying the church's Social Principles.
United Methodist spokesman Tom McAnally in Nashville, Tennessee, did not immediately return a message at his home.
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