wfn.org | Decision Allowing Installation of Gay Elder Is Appealed

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19-March-1999 
99115 
 
    Decision Allowing Installation of Gay Elder Is Appealed 
 
    by Alexa Smith 
 
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - An appeal has been filed in Southern New England 
Presbytery contesting its permanent judicial commission's decision  to 
allow a gay man to be installed as an elder on his church session. 
 
    The installation of Elder Wayne Osborne to the Session of First 
Presbyterian Church in Stamford, Conn., cannot proceed until the case is 
heard by the Permanent Judicial Commission of the Synod of the Northeast. 
 
    The appeal was filed on March 18. 
 
    The case is the first test of a new provision of the denomination's 
constitution - G-6.0106b, commonly known as Amendment B - that bars 
practicing homosexuals from being ordained or installed to church offices. 
 
    Judicial action was initiated by two members of First Church - Mairi 
Hair and James McCallum - who argued that Osborne's election to the session 
violated G-6.0106b, which requires "fidelity within the covenant of 
marriage between a man and a woman, or chastity in singleness." 
 
     The presbytery's PJC handed down a 4-1 decision on March 6 upholding 
Osborne's election - contending that First Church's session inquired both 
about Osborne's sexual orientation and his practices. Although Osbourne 
declined to answer when asked whether he was in a "sexually active 
partnership," the commission ruled that the constitution requires 
"voluntary self-disclosure," and that to interpret it otherwise would put 
sessions and other governing bodies on a "slippery slope that leads to 
inquisition." 
 
    G-6.0106b forbids the ordination of men and women who refuse to "repent 
of any self-acknowledged practice which the confessions call sin." 
 
    Elder William Prey of the Old Greenwich Presbyterian Church, who 
represented the complainants in a daylong trial on Feb. 26, told the 
Presbyterian News Service that there are three grounds for the appeal. He 
said he couldn't discuss specifics of the case until all parties have 
received notice of the appeal. 
 
    Dan Sassi, a spokesman for First Church, said a phone call he received 
from the Associated Press on March 18 was the first confirmation he'd 
received that an appeal had been filed. 
 
    "Until I see the appeal - and see on what basis it is made - I can't 
comment on it," he said. 
 
    Prey told the Presbyterian News Service that the case goes beyond the 
denomination's long-running debate on the ordination of practicing 
homosexuals to address the question of how seriously church members - 
heterosexuals included - take the church's polity and confessions. 
 
    "We're dealing here with our constitution ... `The Book of Order' and 
`The Book of Confessions,'" he said. "And it seems there's a desire to 
trivialize both (polity and confessions)." 
 
    The 700-member congregation re-elected Osborne, 38, to the session last 
May. Osborne, already ordained as elder, finished his first three-year term 
on the session in 1994. He reportedly began living openly with another man 
between then and now. 
 
    Although the complaint came from within First Church, Sassi said 
worship and other activities are going on there normally, with no open 
disagreements. He said pledges and membership are up. 
 
    G-6.0106b was approved by the denomination's presbyteries in 1997 by a 
97-74 vote. An attempt to alter the language of the amendment the next year 
was defeated 114-57. 

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