UMC ends 52-year-old anti-gay stance
Kaleigh Corbett and Thomas Lank of the UMC's Greater New Jersey Conference embrace after general conference delegates voted on May 2 to eliminate the denomination's longtime anti-gay stance. (Photo by Larry McCormack, United Methodist News)
The United Methodist Church’s condemnation of homosexuality—which sparked a half-century of conflict—is now no more.
By a vote of 523 to 161 after about an hour and a half of debate, general conference delegates eliminated on Thursday the 52-year-old assertion in the denomination’s Social Principles that “the practice of homosexuality . . . is incompatible with Christian teaching.”
In the same vote, delegates affirmed “marriage as a sacred, lifelong covenant that brings two people of faith (adult man and adult woman of consenting age or two adult persons of consenting age) into a union of one another and into deeper relationship with God and the religious community.”
