August 7 2000

ARTICLE TOOLS

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Liberal Episcopalians lost a battle over symbols in trying to persuade the denomination that homosexual couples deserve the same pastoral blessings as married heterosexuals.When the Episcopal Church's General Convention last met in Denver in 1979, it declared that ordaining active homosexuals (or heterosexuals engaging in nonmarital sex) as clergy was inappropriate.Liberal activists, including Episcopal priests and bishops, have tried to reverse that decision ever since. In recent years, activists have added the cause of winning the church's pastoral blessing on homosexual couples.At this year's General Convention in Denver, a committee of bishops and deputies proposed that the church prepare rites to "support relationships of mutuality and fidelity other than marriage which mediate the grace of God."Three bishops on the committee dissented, expressing concern that the resolution's language gave equal weight to marital and nonmarital relationships.An earlier proposal from the church's Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music (SCLM) urged that individual dioceses decide whether to ordain active homosexuals as clergy or to bless same-sex couples. (Critics call the notion "local option.")But that resolution met with widespread distrust. Conservatives considered it too permissive and liberals considered it too weak. The conservative American Anglican Council (AAC) published Mixed Blessings, a 56-page critique of the proposal.On the left, folk singer Judy Collins abruptly canceled her participation in a concert to raise funds for the Presiding Bishop's Fund for World Relief. In a news release on July 6, Collins said she considered the SCLM's proposal for local option "tantamount to accepting and supporting discrimination."