As marriage becomes increasingly accepted as routine in many countries and states, churches are left with the task of devising appropriate responses. In New York, a senior Methodist minister faced with a very personal dimension of the issue, resolved it by personally conducting his own son’s same – sex wedding, in spite of church regulations that forbid these.
While he would not be the first United Methodist minister to face discipline for performing a same-sex wedding, he could well be the one with the highest profile. He is a retired dean of Yale Divinity School, a veteran of the nation’s civil rights struggles and a scholar of the very type of ethical issues he is now confronting.“Sometimes, when what is officially the law is wrong, you try to get the law changed,” Dr. Ogletree, a native of Birmingham, Ala., said in a courtly Southern drawl over a recent lunch at Yale, where he remains an emeritus professor of theological ethics. “But if you can’t, you break it.”For Dr. Ogletree, the issues are not just academic. He has fully accepted, he said, that two of his five children are gay. His daughter married her partner in Massachusetts, in a non-Methodist ceremony. So when his son asked him last year to officiate at the wedding, he said yes.
via– NYTimes.com.
The official Methodist position is similar to that of the Roman Catholic Church: “homosexual activities” are seen as sinful, but homosexual people are seen as people of worth, who should be welcomed and included in all church activities. The big difference between the two, is in the nature of church governance. Without the strictly hierarchical power structures of the Catholics, many more Methodists are willing to speak up in opposition to the rules – and a sizeable number have publicly stated their willingness, as a matter of conscience, to ignore the relevant church regulations and conduct same – sex weddings if asked. It is believed that many have done so, without attracting the public attention that Dr Ogletree did.
Current AffairsNYC St Patrick’s Day parade drops ban on gay groups Nick Duffy 29th September 2015, 7:59 PM(Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)The New York St Patrick’s Day parade will allow an LGBT contingent to march under their own banner for the first time.The annual Catholic event – which attracts over a million tourists each year – has a long-held ban on allowing gay groups to march – but the 2014 parade faced a large commercial boycott over the exclusion of LGBT groups.In 2015, the LGBT groups of one of the parade’s biggest sponsors, OUT@NBCUniversal, was allowed to march as part of NBC’s contingent – but other groups remained banned.
