GA PJC upholds ordination of lesbian minister

The ruling in the Morrison case is significant in part because it speaks with some specificity about the standards involved in questioning candidates who are gay or lesbian, and makes it clear that sexual orientation alone does not preclude someone from being ordained; for the ordination to be challenged, a candidate must self-acknowledge a practice that the Book of Confessions calls a sin.

“Orientation, therefore, alone is insufficient to make a person ineligible for ordination or installation,” the GA PJC ruled. It pointed out that its decision last year in a case involving a gay elder from Florida — a case brought by Ronald Wier against the session of Second church, Fort Lauderdale — “cured the theological defect” of an earlier standard.

In other words, a 1993 GA PJC decision in a Minnesota case, popularly known as the LeTourneau decision, held that when a candidate had self-disclosed that he or she was gay or lesbian, a governing body had a responsibility to inquire further.

But the Wier decision raised the bar — in part because the PC(USA)’s ordination standards, made part of the Constitution in 1997 (four years after the LeTourneau ruling), also state that a candidate who refuses to repent of any self-acknowledged practice which the confessions call sin is not eligible to be ordained or installed.

“If a person does not self-acknowledge a practice that the confessions call sin, then a governing body has a positive obligation to make further inquiry only if it has direct and specific knowledge that such a person is in violation of the ordination and installation standards of the Constitution,” the GA PJC stated in the Redwoods decision. “A hunch, gossip or stereotype is not a sufficient ground to compel a governing body to make further inquiry. Reasonable grounds must include factual allegations of how, when, where and under what circumstances the individual was self-acknowledging a practice which the confessions call sin,” the commission said in language that echoes the Wier ruling.

It also states that the Wier ruling “cured the theological defect” of the LeTourneau decision “through the application of the doctrine of total depravity.” And it states that “the defect in question rested upon the assumption that one category of persons is more prone to sin than other categories of persons. The doctrine of total depravity teaches us that not only do all fall short of the glory of God, but that there is no part of our person that is not in need of the redeeming grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Thus, sexual orientation alone would be no more sufficient or reasonable grounds for further questioning than would singleness, obesity or any other categorization. In other words, stereotypical profiling is not a reasonable or valid ground for singling out a candidate for additional questioning.”

And the ruling states that “in order to faithfully hold the essential tenet of total depravity, there must be a higher pleading specificity as to what constitutes the grounds for reasonable cause prior to inquiry. A hunch, gossip or stereotype is not a sufficient ground to compel a governing body to make further inquiry.”

This is a complicated case. On the one hand, Morrison has been very public — at least after her ordination — about having a partner and about making a distinction between chastity and celibacy. On the other hand, her examination by the presbytery did not get into any of that — so the judicial commission is not being asked in this case to make a determination of whether “chastity” and “celibacy” are the same, or not.

Another key factor in the case is that after Morrison was ordained in 2001 and complaints were filed alleging that Redwoods Presbytery had acted irregularly — complaints brought both by some ministers in Redwoods Presbytery and by San Joaquin Presbytery — the Wier ruling was issued on April 14, 2002.
Not two weeks later, on April 23, Lynne Reade, a lawyer representing Redwoods Presbytery, filed a motion to dismiss the Redwoods case, in light of the Wier ruling. In spite of Reade’s giving notice that she intended to raise the question of whether the standards of the Wier ruling had been met in Morrison’s case, those who’d filed the complaints against Redwoods did not amend those complaints to take that into account.

According to the GA PJC ruling, those bringing the complaints against Redwoods acknowledged that they did not allege in their initial complaint Morrison’s “self-confession as a practicing lesbian” and they didn’t amend their complaint after the Wier ruling because they were concerned they’d have to admit “that their case was ill-founded.”

The ‘Wier’ Ruling – Be Specific

The Wier case involved a challenge to the installation of a gay elder named Keith Barber from Fort Lauderdale by Ronald Wier, a member of the Second church congregation there who was Barber’s neighbor. During Barber’s examination, he was asked if there was any reason, based on the “fidelity and chastity” standard, that he could not serve as an elder. In an interview last year, Barber said he answered no, there was no reason — meaning that he lived alone and intended to remain celibate. But Wier filed a complaint, contending that Barber was a “practicing homosexual” and should not be installed.

In the Wier case, the GA PJC ruled that when a complaint alleges a violation “that may have extreme consequences to a person’s reputation, career or friendships, a greater degree of pleading specificity is required.”

In other words, it’s not enough just for the complaint to say that the candidate for ordination or installation has acknowledged publicly being gay or lesbian. The ruling in the Wier case states that “a complaint making such an allegation must assert factual allegations of how, when, where and under what circumstances the individual was self-acknowledging a practice which the confessions call a sin . . . . In whatever form it may take, self-acknowledgement must be plain, palpable and obvious, and details of this must be alleged in the complaint.”

Citing the Wier case, the Permanent Judicial Commission of the Pacific Synod in May 2002 dismissed the complaints involving Morrison’s ordination, stating that the kind of detailed self-acknowledgment of sin required by the Wier ruling wasn’t presented in the complaints involving Morrison (even though those complaints were filed before the General Assembly PJC ruled in the Wier case). The appeal of that synod ruling is what the GA PJC was considering in Kansas City — and it ruled to uphold the synod PJC’s ruling.

James V. Jones, a California lawyer representing a group of ministers from Redwoods Presbytery and San Joaquin Presbytery, both of which filed complaints alleging irregularities with Morrison’s ordination, argued to the GA PJC that his clients have essentially been put in a “catch-22.” Because Morrison has already been ordained, charges can’t be brought against her unless a disciplinary case is brought, Jones said.

But when his clients try to pursue a remedial case — arguing that Redwoods Presbytery didn’t handle her ordination properly, that those who wanted to ask questions of Morrison involving her sexual ordination and personal life and views on chastity, were cut off or not permitted to ask them — they’re told, he said, that questions involving her sexual orientation belong in a disciplinary case.

Jones told the judicial commission that it should acknowledge that the examination of Morrison was irregular — that the presbytery had made mistakes. “Is that her fault? Absolutely not,” he said. When candidates disclose that they are gay or lesbian, “there is a positive obligation to inquire further,” and Redwoods Presbytery did not permit those who wanted to ask Morrison more detailed questions to do so, Jones said.