The latest example of taxpayer-supported celebration of the gender alphabet came on Friday’s PBS NewsHour. Host Geoff Bennett: We turn now to a seismic shift within the United Methodist Church. It recently voted to lift bans on LGBTQ clergy and same-sex marriages. I spoke to a Methodist pastor about these changes, but, first, a bit of background.
Bennett ran down the evolution of the church’s teachings on gay matters, including a 1996 prohibition on churches officiating gay marriages but explained the rules weren’t always enforced, resulting in conservative branches leaving the denomination even before the vote to end the church’s gay bans: “By 2022, the United Methodists had 5.4 million members in the U.S., less than half their peak in the 1960s. The recent departures have seen that number drop even further.”
But after laying out those grim facts, Bennett didn’t grill his guest, Rev. Valerie Jackson, about the mass exodus from the denomination or invite an opposing religious conservative voice into the debate. There was no debate about the import of LGBTQ acceptance in the churches. Instead he asked about how lifting the bans in 2019 had “resonated with her” personally.
