PCUSA’s 212th General Assembly targeted for civil
By John H. Adams, The Layman Online, May 15, 2000
LONG BEACH, Calif. – Some of the gay-rights protestors who used acts of civil disobedience to disrupt the General Conference of the United Methodist Church say they will stage a similar protest at the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) in Long Beach.
The General Assembly will begin on June 24. The first public event during the assembly will occur at 10:30 a.m. Saturday, June 24, when noted conservative Dr. William J. Bennett will speak. Bennett’s presentation will be sponsored by the Presbyterian Lay Committee.
Disobedience a new strategy
According to The Los Angeles Times, gay rights leaders said the protests in Cleveland – including the arrests of 200 people outside the convention hall and 31 demonstrators on the floor of the convention – were a turning point in their strategy for getting mainline denominations to ordain practicing homosexuals and allowing ministers to conduct same-sex holy unions.
The delegates to the United Methodist Church, an 8.4-million-member denomination, voted 2-1 against ordination of practicing homosexuals as ministers and against allowing ministers to conduct same-sex “holy unions.”
Along with the United Methodist Church and the Episcopal Church, the PCUSA has become the target of Soulforce, an ecumenical activist organization led by the Rev. Mel White, former speechwriter for Jerry Falwell, and a gay minister with the predominantly homosexual Metropolitan Community Churches.
White told The Times that he is an heir of the 1960s civil rights movement which used nonviolent civic disobedience as a protest against segregation.
Past assembly protests
The General Assembly of the PCUSA has had disruptions at past meetings, but principally by Presbyterians who took over the assembly floor to promote their views. The last disruption was in 1998 in Charlotte, where the National Network of Presbyterian College Women, an organization that promoted lesbianism, was given the green light by then-moderator Douglas Oldenburg to stage a protest.
The issues of demonstrations, ordaining practicing homosexuals and recognizing same-gender unions are all on the agenda for the 212th General Assembly.
The Presbytery of San Joaquin sponsored the overture that would “prohibit spontaneous or planned protests and demonstrations by individuals or groups in the building in which the General Assembly is meeting.”
The overture would allow for peaceful protests and demonstrations “twenty-five feet or more from entrances to the building in which the General Assembly meets.” It also would instruct the moderator of the General Assembly “to recess the General Assembly to a fixed time and place should protesters and demonstrators fail to disband immediately in response to the moderator’s declaration that their demonstration is out of order” and “prohibit reconsideration of any item of business to which the demonstration or protest is directed.”
Same-sex unions opposed
Three overtures call for constitutional amendments prohibiting Presbyterian ministers from conducting same-sex unions and forbidding the use of Presbyterian church facilities for the ceremonies.
Another overture calls for deleting the denomination’s “fidelity and chastity” ordination standard from the constitution. The standard, which requires church officers to live in fidelity in marriage and chastity in singleness, was adopted in a national vote of presbyteries in 1997. It was reaffirmed by a 2-1 margin in 1998 when presbyteries voted against a proposed amendment that would have diluted its language.
The demonstrations against the United Methodists attracted some big-name demonstrators, including Yolanda King, oldest daughter of the late Martin Luther King, and Arun Ghandi, the grandson of Mahatma Ghandi.