In a late night session, the Presbyterian Church USA voted to allow partnered gay and lesbians to be ordained but refused to allow same-sex blessings in their denomination.
The AP reports:
Hours after giving their blessing to ordaining noncelibate gays and lesbians, leaders of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) declined late Thursday to change the church’s definition of marriage, in effect refusing to allow same-sex marriages within their denomination.
If the proposal had been approved, the church’s definition of marriage would have changed from a commitment between “a woman and a man” to “two people” and allowed church weddings in states that have legalized gay marriage.
The late-night decision to table the proposal and subject it to two more years of study caught many delegates at the denomination’s gathering at the Minneapolis Convention Center by surprise, and there was a stunned silence as delegates absorbed the action.
The proposal was to turn aside the church’s definition of marriage would have changed from a commitment between “a woman and a man” to “two people” and allowed church weddings in states that have legalized gay marriage. The issue will continue to be studied for the next two years.
The late-night decision to table the proposal and subject it to two more years of study caught many delegates at the denomination’s gathering at the Minneapolis Convention Center by surprise, and there was a stunned silence as delegates absorbed the action.
One, Virginia Thibeaux of San Anselmo, Calif., said she was “devastated and disappointed” by the shelving of a decision on whether to change the church’s definition of marriage. “It’s the M.O. for Presbyterians to do more studying,” she said.
Cindy Bolbach, the general assembly’s moderator, said the proposal’s failure indicated that delegates just weren’t ready to make a decision on the marriage definition question, and “want to continue to talk about it.”
The next step for the ordination proposal is for it to be approved by the majority of the denomination’s 173 local “presbyteries,” or district governing bodies, within the next year before it can take effect. Had the marriage measure passed, it, too would have had to be approved by the presbyteries.