General Assembly staff made unauthorized changes in report
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, September 27, 1999
DALLAS – The staff of the stated clerk’s office made unauthorized changes in a minority report that was approved by the 1999 General Assembly, Don Mitchel told participants at a workshop during “Gathering IV.”
The most significant change, said Mitchel, a commissioner from the Huntington Presbytery and one of the architects of the report, was the insertion of a phrase calling for a study and a report on the constitutional ban against ordaining self-affirming, practicing homosexuals in the Presbyterian Church (USA).
Mitchel said the idea of another study was never mentioned by him or others who drafted the report. After the General Assembly, Mitchell complained to Stated Clerk Clifton Kirkpatrick, who responded with a letter of regret but said he did not know who appended the phrase – or why.
Committee voted to lift ban
The minority report was offered after Mitchell’s committee – called the “Sex Committee” by many but more formally known as the Committee on Church Orders and Ministry – approved an overture from Milwaukee asking the General Assembly to end the constitutional ban against ordaining homosexuals.
The 1999 commissioners voted down that recommendation and approved the minority report which called for conferences across the nation to consider the church’s “Unity in Diversity.”
Mitchel said the stated clerk’s office took several liberties in its revision of the minority report, including lifting his signature from the original report and attaching it to the revised report without his approval. In response to Mitchel’s written complaint, Kirkpatrick apologized but emphasized the press of time as the reason for the unwarranted changes and the improper use of Mitchel’s signature.
Mitchel said he could agree with one revision by the stated clerk’s office. The original draft of the minority report called for a two-year moratorium on consideration of overtures to change the constitution’s ban on ordaining homosexuals. In his response to Mitchel, Kirkpatrick pointed out that one General Assembly could not restrict the overtures considered by a future General Assembly.
Despite the study called for in the report approved by the General Assembly, no such study will be made, Kirkpatrick told Mitchel.
So why didn’t Mitchel and others who drafted the minority report flag that erroneous inclusion when the report went to the floor of the General Assembly? The sponsors chose not to seek an amendment for fear that would open the door to wholesale revision of the minority report and its possible defeat, he said.