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Press Release from May 9, 2000 FAITH LEADERS STAND IN SOLIDARITY WITH UNITED METHODIST LESBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL AND TRANSGENDERED INDIVIDUALS EQUAL PARTNERS IN FAITH ENDORSES SOULFORCE CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE ************************************************** Washington, DC - On the eve of a historic civil disobedience act organized by Soulforce, Inc. during a heated United Methodist General Conference, leaders of the national faith organization EQUAL PARTNERS IN FAITH prayed in solidarity this evening with more than 200 Soulforce volunteers, Methodist bishops and civil rights leaders. Rev. Steven Baines, Executive Coordinator of EPF and a Southern Baptist minister, stated: "We pray tonight that our voices and our actions will be heard by not only the delegates to the United Methodist General Conference, but by Christians and other people of faith around the globe. If we are silent, we as faith leaders have failed again in our greatest mission to love our neighbors as God has first loved us. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people are our neighbors." As 992 delegates from around the world meet tomorrow morning in the Cleveland Convention Center, Soulforce volunteers and civil rights leaders, including Arun Ghandi, Mahatma Ghandi's grandson, and Yolanda King, Martin Luther King's daughter, will lead their prayer vigil directly to the floor of the conference center. Cleveland police will be on hand to arrest those who participate in the action which is designed to show the destructive force of excluding LGBT individuals from full participation in the life of the church. "We are using this civil disobedience and mass arrest to deliver a clear message to leaders of all the Christian churches," said Rev. Dr. Mel White, co-founder of Soulforce (www.soulforce.org) and an EPF Advisory Board member. "This tragic debate about God's lesbian, gay bisexual and transgendered children must end. The suffering has gone on far too long. We are hoping and praying the United Methodist Church will reverse its anti-homosexual position and lead the entire Christian community to justice, mercy and truth for sexual minorities." Since 1972, the UMC General Conference has issued increasingly stricter positions against homosexuality stating: "the practice is incompatible with Christian teaching (1972);" "self-avowed practicing homosexuals are not to be accepted as candidates, ordained as ministers or appointed to serve in the UMC (1980);" and "ceremonies that celebrate homosexual unions shall not be conducted by our ministers and shall not be conducted in our churches (1984)." Most recently in 1999, Rev. Jimmy Creech, a Methodist minister and EPF Advisory Board member, was stripped of his ordination credentials after performing a same-gender holy union. Rev. James Lawson, Jr., a retired United Methodist clergy and leader in the 1960's civil rights movement as advisor to Martin Luther King, issued the following statement to the delegates in Cleveland: "In going to General Conference as a delegate in these last two decades, I have been persistently dismayed that a relatively small group are willing to divide the Church over the issue of gay and lesbian persons. Let us end this issue by accepting our homosexual sisters and brothers as full members of the community of faith and get on with God's work." ### Founded in 1997, EQUAL PARTNERS IN FAITH is a multi-faith, multi-racial network of religious leaders and people of faith committed to equality and diversity. Our diverse faith traditions and shared religious values lead us to affirm and defend the equality of all people, regardless of religion, race, ability, gender or sexual orientation. As people of faith, we actively oppose the manipulation of religion to promote exclusion and inequality. EQUAL PARTNERS IN FAITH is helping mainstream and progressive people of faith promote a more inclusive vision of religion and society. Equal Partners in Faith Circulated by Laura Montgomery Rutt, EPF National Board of Directors
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