Folks have been looking the other way and tending to their own careers for a century or so, and the denomination has implacably charged for the cliff. Cherchez l'argent. Follow the money. The denomination holds the retirement plans of its full-time "ministers."
As Bill Clinton put it, "Drag a $100 bill through a trailer park ..." Or as Jesus said, where your treasure is (and let's not go all metaphory and sugar-coat that blunt statement of fact), there your heart will be also. You can't serve God and mammon. A bribe blinds the eyes of the wise.
In 1977, I held a UMC license to preach, and thought the denomination had enough residual integrity to be redeemed. A wise pagan friend told me, "Tom, you are like a man who sees a freight train heading for a cliff. And you don't know the first thing about freight trains. You just know it's going in the wrong direction. And you are determined to jump on board and turn it around." Bobby was right. The denomination had already tolerated its hijackers for most of a century, and had acquired too much Gadarene inertia.
That was James Carville, defending Clinton by trying to disdain either Clinton's rape accuser Paula White or his mistress Gennifer Flowers.