# What's happening with SSM in your church? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 28, 2014, 7:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-happening-with-ssm-in-your-church/679976 "2014-01-28T19:45:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2019, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-happening-with-ssm-in-your-church/679976/81 "2019-01-08T00:53:35Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > Is there any statistical basis for this dread, or just another anecdote? [I don’t see anything in this cite about suicide attempts spiking in direct relation to holding the general conference,](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_Mormon_suicides) but it does appear that queer Mormon youth are significantly more at risk of suicide and mental issues which are co-morbid with suicide, then non-Mormon queer youth. Which is weird, given how kind and civil you guys are to gay people. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2019, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-happening-with-ssm-in-your-church/679976/82 "2019-01-08T14:19:30Z")
> [@senoy](#): > > We’re not a church like the Catholics where you just make a ruling and everyone has to fall in line. That’s something Protestants believe about Catholics (the further from us in theology and praxis, the more likely to believe it), but it’s about as true as the notion that people from China and ripe lemons have the same skin tone. ---
**Author:** ![purplehorseshoe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/purplehorseshoe/32/2996_2.png) [@purplehorseshoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/purplehorseshoe)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2019, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-happening-with-ssm-in-your-church/679976/83 "2019-01-08T14:41:36Z")
I keep skimming the title as “S & M in your church” and getting really weird visual images. Or maybe not that weird, given all the flogging etc. constantly depicted. (Raised Catholic.) ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2019, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-happening-with-ssm-in-your-church/679976/84 "2019-01-08T14:56:30Z")
The church I most recently attended was Unitarian, and it was very welcoming of LGBTQ people. ---
**Author:** ![senoy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dbc845/32.png) [@senoy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/senoy)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2019, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-happening-with-ssm-in-your-church/679976/85 "2019-01-08T16:12:51Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > That’s something Protestants believe about Catholics (the further from us in theology and praxis, the more likely to believe it), but it’s about as true as the notion that people from China and ripe lemons have the same skin tone. That’s true and I suppose that I could have worded it better. I guess what I meant to say was that our church is controlled ‘bottom-up’ as opposed to ‘top-down.’ We’re a representative democracy with extensive laity control. We have an executive board of Bishops that are empowered for day to day operations and function as COOs, but the actual legislative power rests in the hands of the membership. All changes to doctrine are decided by a representative council elected from both the laity and clergy. The representation is proportional based on number of members. What this means is that in the US, our power to make change is dying (Religion is one of those rare instances in world affairs where the West is disempowered and the global south controls the dialogue.) My state of 2 million people has 6 votes in an 862 person conference. Katanga province in Congo (a province with a population of about 5.5 million) has 70 votes. If you include all of Congo, they have 140 votes. The UK as an example has 4 for the whole country and Germany has 6 (The entire continent of Europe has 40). The Philippines has 50. The US is still the largest bloc, but as mentioned above, the southern states in the US are not onboard with gay marriage, so that means we need a bloc of northern and western US allied with Europe to vote as a bloc and we still come up short on the votes and realistically, after this year, the growth in Africa and Asia will only further eclipse American votes. So, it’s a struggle. Right now, the hope is something called ‘The One Church Plan’ which lets every pastor and congregation and conference decide for themselves. That means that still the majority of United Methodists particularly in Asia and Africa will be against SSM, but it allows those of us in the North and West US as well as Europe to make our own call on it. That’s what the Bishops and the ‘Committee on the Way Forward’ are recommending, but traditionalists have been pushing back pretty strongly. There will be a vote next month and it we’ll see what happens. ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [June 30, 2019, 5:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-happening-with-ssm-in-your-church/679976/86 "2019-06-30T05:02:07Z")
This just mentioned in the media: > [@](#): > > Leaders of the Evangelical Covenant Church have voted to defrock a Minneapolis pastor and expel his church – for permitting gay marriage. > > The Rev Dan Collison had his credentials removed by a 77% vote at the Evangelical Covenant Church’s annual meeting in Omaha, Nebraska, on Friday night. Leaders also voted to expel Collison’s First Covenant Church, a founding member of the 134-year-old denomination. > > Collison, who became a pastor at First Covenant in downtown Minneapolis in 2009, told the Star Tribune he was “not surprised” but “saddened”. “I feel grounded in the path we have chosen,” he said. “I feel grateful for the pastors and churches who stood up for us. I feel compassion to those caught in the middle.” > > The ECC said First Covenant was free to keep operating and can keep its church building. First Covenant said Collison will continue serving as lead pastor. > **[Minneapolis pastor and his church expelled for permitting gay marriage](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jun/29/minneapolis-pastor-and-his-church-expelled-for-permitting-gay-marriage)** > > Rev Dan Collison had his credentials removed by a 77% vote at the Evangelical Covenant Church’s annual meeting ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2019, 1:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-happening-with-ssm-in-your-church/679976/87 "2019-07-02T01:20:11Z")
Its interesting that [the ECC describes itself as](https://covchurch.org/who-we-are/) > [@](#): > > Evangelical, but not exclusive > Biblical, but not doctrinaire > Traditional, but not rigid > Congregational, but not independent Not a description normally used by denominations who take a hard stance against same sex marriage. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2019, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-happening-with-ssm-in-your-church/679976/88 "2019-07-02T13:24:23Z")
We have a trans pastor! (Yeah, I’m basically bragging here. So nice of him to transition so that we get street cred with our liberal friends…) The surprising part is that he/now she and her wife have stayed married and completely in love. Oh, it’s a Lutheran church, but it’s ELCA, not the closed-minded synod down the block. Our state doesn’t allow same-sex weddings, so our pastors have to do a road trip with all the wedding guests (kind of annoying, I swear our grandkids are going to be listening slack-jawed to our tales of the dark ages… “Tell us again about the…what were they? Prepublicans?”) ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2019, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-happening-with-ssm-in-your-church/679976/89 "2019-07-02T13:25:47Z")
All states allow ssm now and have for a few years. ---
**Author:** ![StusBlues](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@StusBlues](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StusBlues)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2019, 7:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-happening-with-ssm-in-your-church/679976/90 "2019-07-02T19:34:32Z")
> [@digs](#): > > Oh, it’s a Lutheran church, but it’s ELCA, not the closed-minded synod down the block. Our state doesn’t allow same-sex weddings, so our pastors have to do a road trip with all the wedding guests (kind of annoying, I swear our grandkids are going to be listening slack-jawed to our tales of the dark ages… “Tell us again about the…what were they? Prepublicans?”) Is the state-level prohibition a church thing? SSM has been explicitly legal in all 50 states for four years now. ---
**Author:** ![Omar\_Little](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omar_little/32/269_2.png) [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2019, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-happening-with-ssm-in-your-church/679976/91 "2019-07-03T14:51:35Z")
> [@digs](#): > > Our state doesn’t allow same-sex weddings Where’s the facepalm emoji! ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2019, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-happening-with-ssm-in-your-church/679976/92 "2019-07-03T17:03:30Z")
> [@StusBlues](#): > > Is the state-level prohibition a church thing? SSM has been explicitly legal in all 50 states for four years now. Oh! Ignorance fought, I’m ashamed to say. I was remembering a trip taken by two parishioners and a pastor (and guests, I assume), thought it was recent, but that was five years ago. ---
**Author:** ![Mdcastle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/958977/32.png) [@Mdcastle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mdcastle)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2019, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-happening-with-ssm-in-your-church/679976/93 "2019-07-03T21:44:43Z")
I went to a school that was closely affiliated with First Covenant Church (You may have heard about it- Minnehaha Academy, the one that blew up when some workers fucked up replacing a gas meter) So I knew a lot of people that went there and some things about the church. It used to be the “flagship” ECC in the region, one of the charter members of the denomination and by far the largest. When all the white conservatives moved to the suburbs they continued to drive to First Covenant every Sunday at first, but over the decades the older people died off and younger people quit making the drive rather than go to church in the suburbs. In the 1990s First Covenant saw the writing on the wall and thought about itself moving to the suburbs, but with people driving from all over the metro there wasn’t a consensus which suburb to go to. That’s the same reason the school never relocated and is in fact rebuilding on the same site. First Evangelical Free Church faced the same issue, and eventually just folded, while First Evangelical Covenant reinvented themselves as a community social justice oriented church for downtown residents. They now operate a homeless shelter in their church, something that would have been unthinkable in the 1990s when I was there. The ECC Covenant has been accepting of denominations that didn’t fit their traditional mold, Jesus People USA of Chicago is another Covenant Church. But the Covenant Church views the Bible as saying homosexuality is sinful, and obviously they felt that the church and the minister crossed the line from being accepting of sinners to endorsing sin. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-happening-with-ssm-in-your-church/679976.md?page=4)