May 2 wrap-up: Delegates declare homosexuality no longer ‘incompatible’

The day after a historic plenary session that saw General Conference delegates end the church’s prohibition on ordaining “self-avowed practicing homosexuals,” the church’s top legislative body on May 2 voted to remove the denominational stance that declares homosexuality to be “incompatible with Christian teaching.” That language has been in place since 1972.

By a vote of 523 to 161 after about an hour and a half of debate, General Conference delegates eliminated 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.”

Read more at this link.