“The church not only does harm to loving and qualified people for ministry in taking such action, but makes a profound theological statement by essentially claiming that God is mistaken for calling someone into ordained ministry who is in every way qualified for ordained ministry as a heterosexual would be but must be disqualified because she is attracted to the “wrong” gender. I’m very embarrassed that this happened in my own conference of the United Methodist Church but it is certainly nothing new and not a surprise.

God bless you, Mary Ann. God didn’t make a mistake in calling you to ordained ministry; the Southwest Texas Conference Board of Ordained Ministry and the voting clergy of the conference did moral harm to you and us all by reducing your call, my call, and each of our calls to ordained ministry to the one thing that seems to matter most about the practice of ministry–the gender to whom we’re attracted. Shame on us for not practicing the core ethic of our faith: the Golden Rule.”