Posted on 03/18/2004 1:05:41 PM PST by writer33
BOTHELL, Wash. - Police outside a United Methodist church arrested dozens of supporters of the Rev. Karen Dammann on Wednesday after they tried to stop a trial on whether the lesbian pastor could continue her ministry.
About 100 people protested loudly but peaceably outside Bothell United Methodist in this northeast Seattle suburb, and many tried to block church officials from entering the building. Police arrested 33 people who refused to move.
Dammann and church officials were able to get inside the building, where a jury of 13 pastors will determine whether she can remain a church minister. Three years ago, when she held a church position in Seattle, she disclosed that she was in a lesbian relationship.
Dammann, 47, is charged with "practices declared by the United Methodist Church to be incompatible to Christian teachings." Church law prohibits ordination of openly gay and lesbian people, although the church's social principles support rights and liberties for them.
She is now on leave as pastor of First United Methodist Church in Ellensburg, 95 miles east of Seattle. Last week she married her partner of nine years, Meredith Savage, in Portland, Ore., where officials began allowing gay marriages earlier this month. The couple has a 5-year-old son.
Dammann entered the suburban church without commenting to reporters. She pleaded not guilty, and in an opening statement to the jurors, her church counsel, the Rev. Bob Ward, compared the struggle of gays and lesbians to the struggle that women and minorities had in gaining rights.
The difference, he said, is that "with gays and lesbians, they are encouraged to hide, as we have adopted a policy of 'don't ask, don't tell."'
He said homosexuals are relegated to a life of "hiding and lying."
"Karen has chosen not to live the lie," Ward said.
But the Rev. James Finkbeiner, representing the church, called on the jury to find Dammann guilty of the charge of being a self-avowed, practicing homosexual. He told jurors that because Dammann disclosed her homosexuality to the bishop as well as to the entire church, that is all the proof they need to find her guilty.
"Remember that this is a judicial process and not a legislative process," Finkbeiner said. "It is not the law of the church that is on trial here."
I can see the police brutality to gays and lesbians cropping up now.
"Church law prohibits ordination of openly gay and lesbian people, although the church's social principles support rights and liberties for them."
So its okay to be a closet gay and lesbian pastor? That's what it sounds like. I didn't think you could John Kerry something like this, but I guess you can.
Because they are here to destroy what others have and not to build for anyone.
I know a lot of good Bible-believing Methodists, and count them as friends. (Strange, isn't it, that both our splendid President and Hitlery claim to be Methodists?) I think some of my friends are staying to try and remain a light in a church that is going the wrong way. God bless them.
We left, though, for some other reasons...but the leftwingnuts running the administrative headquarters of the UMC weren't much reason to consider staying within the denomination.
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