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You all must be THRILLED to be keeping those who seek God away from HIM. I wonder what HE thinks of this? I wonder if you even care?

Morality indeed, Heterosexuals. Morality indeed.

Does the Methodist church also forbid others who are involved in other sexual sins (adultery, pre-marital sexual relationships, most types of divorce) membership? I hope so as it would only be appropriate. Otherwise, focusing on one form of sexual sin would be pretty discriminating. I know little about the Methodists though so I honestly am curious as to what their policy is.
That said, I do agree with the choice they made especially witnessing how far down the Episcopal Church has gone in liberalism.

Is one who refuses to change his or her life for Christ truly seeking God? Certainly they shouldn't be barred or shunned from the church, but it isn't too much to expect one who wants to be a member to be obedient to what that church believes is necessary for a proper Christian.

Wow! I can't believe that the same church that I grew up in has taken such a segregated position against humanity.
This, from a church that still runs advertisements claiming "Open doors, open arms, open hearts" (or something like that). Now we can be certain, that Methodists don't have open minds.
I can only be saddened that the US church has decided to join the regressive and segregated attitude that is still entrenched in Africa, (and in some primordial minds here in the US).
Mark Tooley has heralded the way for the Lynch mob to see this defeat of humanity. Just when you think we had come out of the Dark Ages, and elected a black President, some Olde World attitudes emerge to set us all back into the days of contrived communities that pretend to care about people.
It's painful to watch this great denomination drive such a prejudiced agenda upon a sincere sector of "our society".
God is LOVE. It's that simple, Love, not judgement from some archaic relic or document written by men. I'm hopeful that LOVE will survive, but I'm not sure the United Methodist Church will. But then I can't worry about those who choose ignorance over love.

It is easy to follow the current zeitgeist and claim to be prophetic and open and gain media favor. It is more difficult to embrace obedience to Scripture and 2000 years of lived Christian experience. The current hyper-individualism, the attempt destroy Christian wisdom concerning marriage and family by running it through the shreder of manufactured individual rights is an attempt to create a post christian religion tailored to our individual wants. May God strengthen the Methodists who are seeking to be faithful.

God is indeed love, and God loves all persons including self-avowed homosexuals, as is stated in the UMC Discipline. All persons are welcomed into the fellowship of a local church, and that will never change. This issue however is about membership. A discussion of how Methodists view membership is long overdue and I hope this sparks a thorough discussion that would hopefully result in clarification and codification.

"Homosexuality" is an obsolete social construct, and largely thanks to religious-right abuse of the word and concept, now often pejorative to boot. It should be removed from religious material. The Bible does not condemn it, as it didn't exist then, In the USA, "homosexuality" exists pretty much only inside of anti-civil rights organizations, such as CT, for abuse as a straw man and scapegoat.

Demanding that a person "change their sexuality" is an outrageous abuse of authority, and a good reason for the abuser to be reprimanded, or at least sent to a mainstream science educational organization to update counseling skills. Moral people don't really care if someone is Gay or not. On the other hand, as I always say, "Gay makes life a little more interesting."

The Bible has an antipathy to homoeroticism, to be sure, but it's an antipathy based upon a false correlation with idolatry, and such an antipathy is not a condemnation of all same-sex relationships. It's a reason to think about the Golden Rule, not promiscuously shoot clobber verses around like a Gatling gun with a hair trigger problem.

There is an antipathy towards many things in the Bible, which many, of not most of us, don't share anymore, such as making a campfire on the Sabbath, or where no iron, poly/cotton blend shirts (well, I know people with an antipathy towards them, for non religious reasons).

We have an antipathy towards some things today, such as with slavery, which the Bible condones. What hasn't changed is the importance of the Golden Rule over unthinking general antipathies and legalisms, as the Parable of the Good Samaritan illustrated so well. The people who passed by the injured man had "The Law," "Chapter and Verse" (if those concepts had existed) on their side, but not morality, not the Golden Rule. Many Jews of the day had an antipathy towards Samaritans, for that matter.

However, as I was rudely reminded just the other day, the Golden Rule isn't always simple to practice in our complex lives and societies, just because it's a simple little rule. What to do, what to do...well, I guess, think about it some more, for starters.

Oh, one of my security words is "holocene," of which we live in today, if memory serves. Yup, memory served, according to the Wiki anyway, though it should have been capitalized. The Holocene started about 11,000 or so years ago, and someday, a very distant, recognized after the fact day, there will be another geological epoch, though whether humans will be around to recognize it, is an interesting question. If a new geological epoch happens, and there aren't humans or high-tech intelligences to notice and label it, has it actually happened? And where was the "intermediate" epoch?

God is indeed love, and God loves all persons including self-avowed homosexuals, as is stated in the UMC Discipline.>

But God's Word says homosexuality is sin. So how do you reconcile that?

The Bible does not condemn it, as it didn't exist then,>

Homosexuality is condemned by God in Lev 18 and 20, and Jesus affirmed the Law in Mat 5:17-18, and Mk 10.

Once one verse is compromised, whose to say the rest of the Bible cannot be compromised? Inerrancy is mandatory to be a Christian.

None of your infamously abused clobber verses actually condemns "homosexuality" in MY Bible. Read them again, and every word in Leviticus and Matthew. The Letter of the Law that Jesus is affirming is, I think, to honor your parents and to love your neighbor as yourself...as best you, I, can anyway.

In any case, if I have to follow Leviticus...you put down that ham and cheese sandwich, right now, and tear up any stocks or business agreements that involve interest payments. Usury is an abomination, after all.

I think it's safe to say that Jesus is not affirming the religious-right's traditional, disgusting, depraved, shameless greed for unearned privilege and hegemony...their agenda to unjustly segregate and manipulate "the other," and to blackmail, steal undercut or abolish and destroy Gay jobs, Gay resources, Gay property and Gay integrity; as they use to do to Black people.

If Jesus was affirming your "inerrant" reading of Leviticus, there would have been no 'Parable of the Good Samaritan.' Everyone who carefully ignored the injured man was very carefully, and erroneously, following the letter of the Law that you claim condemns "homosexuality," a social construct/obsolete sex-science theory which simply didn't exist when Leviticus was being put together.

Sure, there was same-sex sexual activity...but that's not the same as "homosexuality," a much later and quite obsolete understanding of same-sex sexual relationships...and and now a pejorative word thanks to the abusive use as straw man and scapegoat by the religious-right.

If Joseph had followed the letter of your Law, as you demand it to be followed by "the other," there would have been no Jesus. Joseph would have had Mary and her unborn child promptly stoned to death as soon as he found out that she was pregnant not by him..but he didn't. He was a good man, after all, not a legalistic man.

What your clobber verses likely condemn are what were thought to be idolatrous practices, real and imagined, such as temple prostitution. The Leviticus verse may also be about the enslavement of men by treating them like women...who were in a "state of perpetual submission." (To quote that completely disgusting, pro-slavery Rev. Rousas John Rushdoony, if memory serves.)

Patriarchs did not sleep with their equals, but with their human property...the mothers of their children...and their concubines. If someone slept with a patriarch, one of them had to be "the woman," regardless of actual gender. One of them had to be subservient and submissive, like a woman, to him.

The Bible condones slavery, but up to a point...and enslaving men by raping them into submission, as in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, is that point...so don't sleep with a man as to make him your slave, your inferior, to make him submissive to you against his will.

It's uncontroversial that many of the religious right's favorite anti-"homosexual" clobber verses are really about condemning what was thought to be the rituals of idolaters. It's safe to say that idolatry doesn't cause "homosexuality." But, it may have inadvertently shoved some people into some religions that allowed same-sex relationships, as they were understood in those ancient day in far away places.

Gay men don't sleep with a man as with a woman, anyway. A Gay man obviously doesn't usually want to sleep with a women, so why would he want to sleep with a man as with a woman? He wants to sleep with a man as with a man. Only "straight" men want to sleep with a man as with a woman...and often then, I think, for ulterior motives. Think "prison."

Your verses are recklessly ripped out of context by you and refashioned as a weapon to use against people you want to control for your own ends, not for their salvation. Are you coveting Gay jobs, Gay property, Gay businesses, Gay influences, Gay solidarity...Gay sex? Are you jealous of what you think they have that you think should be yours?

"Inerrancy" is the dogma of biblio-idolatry, and idolatry is far from mandatory for Christians. The Bible may be innerant, but that's a claim that cannot be proven by humans, as humans can't know what that is, really, or recognize it if they should see it.

"Inerrancy" as used by the religious-right is just a wicked, self serving pronouncement to force people to conform to their legalistically legitimized immoralities, to undercut the personal integrity of "the other," and to overrule the Golden Rule. If the Bible was innerant, it would be God. If the Bible is not God, then claiming it is inerrant is making it into an idol to worship instead of God. Confusing authority with authoritarian is not a good thing.

I truly feel sorry for you, you poor thing. I'll smugly and condescendingly, with an air of unearned moral superiority, put you in my prayers, OFT.

Let's see..."open minds...open hearts...open doors." As a gay man who is actively involved in his Methodist church in Wisconsin...a member of the lay leadership...I find it incredibly hypocritical that we see the words about openness...and yet, open does not really mean open. Now does it. As someone stated on here...is there now a litmus test for membership...like "living in sin," pre-marital sex, adultery...and so forth? You get the message.

"If the Bible was innerant, it would be God." Not so. The Bible is innerant in all that it affirms. However, understanding the Word of God (not merely reading, referring to and writing from the words of God) requires applying of it in one's life and much studying of it in context. You don't seek to understand and then you will do, you seek to do and then you will understand. The ultimate purpose is to have a closer walk and relationship with the Author, the Living Word.

All manner of sexual expression is subject to sinful temptations and acts. God, who loves us greatly, never leaves us in the jaws thereof. He tells us what is right and best, and moves us in that direction with the help of the Holy Spirit, if we let Him. The design of male and female (physical, mental, emotional, etc.) and God's purposeful plan for heterosexual marriage are manifestly obvious to anyone seeking to be unbiased and objective. This is the ideal.

The reality is that sin has corrupted all of humanity, including it's institutions which are comprised of sin affected individuals. The answer for all aberrant sexuality is for us to be accepting of (which means loving) our fellow sinners while not affirming them in their sinfulness (which is unloving). All who accept God's only provision for the forgiveness of sin (Christ crucified and risen) and are seeking to forsake practice of sin in thought, word and deed (sanctification) are already 'members' of the body of Christ, whether or not a given pastor or denomination is willing to receive them as a fellow 'member'. To refuse church 'membership' and full participation therein to anyone who is truly repentant of sin and born-again is an affront to Christ himself and His command that we "love one another".

Lastly, the Episcopalians have not only welcomed gays, but affirmed them while they are unrepentantly following sinful lifestyles. Now they're rising up in the ranks of their clergy. The Methodists, on the other hand, are unwelcoming of gays and with legalistic membership requirements are effectively saying to part of the body "we have no need of you". Thankfully, in Christ Jesus there is healing and forgiveness for everyone's sin and hopefully everyone will repent and return to the clear teachings and practice of God's Word and to knowing and being like God, who is love.

I am thankful that the UM church (democratically mind you)has felt the movement of God to uphold scriptural standards. I find it irritating that those who want to change the Discipline, like blaming the church when it through the guidance of the Holy Spirit and the will of the people decides to say "no" to the winds of culture! The UM church has again and again said "no." If pro-gay lobbists want a church to belong to, there are three choices now: UCC, Episcopal, and the ELCA! (Of course they are apostate/heretical churches now) I totally agree on the issues of divorce, marriage and other sins that were raised; to be sure they need to be confronted as well as homosexuality. Methodism was built upon the premise of holiness of heart and life! Lets get back to what the early Methodist societies were about!

It seems to me the following scripture, Romans 1: 24-27, shows the biblical view of homosexuality:
24Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.

26Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. 27In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.