There is something about LGBTQ lives that brings out the activism in the Judicial Council (J.C.) so they set precedents without having to work through General Conference.
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Injustice Scales
Injustice and discrimination as a legal system concept for breaking the law and performing unfair illegal acts as a pencil eraser erasing a justice scale as a metaphor for inequality and the stress of oppression.
The "self-avowed practicing" language came into the Book of Discipline in 1984. During that session the Judicial Council (Decision 542) stated, "neither ordination nor appointment was precluded by the addition of those seven words." Later that year the Judicial Council (544) affirmed their decision while noting the addition, "does not attempt to define the term 'self-avowed practicing homosexual.'" By October 1993 the confusion sown in 1984 brought the Judicial Council (702) to instruct, "self-avowed practicing homosexual" must be defined by either the General Conference or the various Annual Conferences". In 1994 the Judicial Council (722) ruled on a case from our West Virginia annual conference and gave more direction to General Conference to clarify the language, "an adequate definition of 'self-avowed' must address the question of to whom the avowal shall be made so that identification is not dependent on the testimony of others".
General Conference finally acted to define "self-avowed" but the issue of "practice" is very difficult because relationships cannot be pinned down to simple physical acts. Silence over several quadrennia should warn wise people away from trapping human beings inside a legal system that will always be too small for the good gifts God gives. However, in the absence of definition by General Conference the Judicial Council began to take action that substituted for legislative processes.
In their Fall session of 2001 the Judicial Council (920) decided on a definition of practicing that reduces a relationship to genitalia: "As part of the review which must occur under such circumstances, the person making such a statement must be asked whether she is engaged in genital sexual acts with a person of the same gender. If such a person responds to that question affirmatively, she would have openly acknowledged to one or more of the persons enumerated in footnote 1 to ¶ 304.3 that she is a self-avowed practicing homosexual." Keith Boyette (J.C. 2000–2008) was instrumental in this genital-oriented definition.
This has proved to be unhelpful because of the common decency most people have in "probing" another person's privates, even if only by a question. It became the very reason a later charge of "practicing" could not be proved, because this question had not been asked up to the time of trial.
Now, in Spring 2017, favoring the oral argument of Keith Boyette, the Judicial Council (1341) has taken a further definition of "practicing" upon themselves with no legislative action by General Conference to say a marriage license assumes enough about a person's "practice" to substitute for the grosser genital test. The council for the Western Jurisdiction repeatedly pointed out that marriage is about fidelity to another, not the particulars of how they enact their relationship, that "practice" cannot be assumed or inferred from a marriage license.
It is always instructive to look at interlocking directorates. Keith Boyette, who has been a part of both judicially-active definitions of "practice", is now the President of the Wesley Covenant Association which keeps holding out the splitting of The United Methodist Church as its bottom line (United Methodist News Service— http://www.umc.org/news-and-media/evangelical-group-plans-for-whats-next). The obsession with controlling sexuality has gotten to the point of dividing that which God had brought together and we too easily separate—piety and mercy.
There is something about a legalistic approach to Spiritual Gifts of call to ordination, to sexuality (whether chastity is chosen or not), to acts of mercy and piety, to not doing harm, etc. that continues to foul up our ability to discern healthy and unhealthy calls, sexuality, discipleship, values, and more. When these are turned into either/or categories of universal answers by an activist court instead of assisting decisional responses open to evaluation of belovedness that leads to a changed life or deepened relationship with God, Neighbors, and All of Creation, then both individuals and the Church suffer.
To be clear, all the legalisms about funding, defining terms, and other outgrows of the purity approach of calling one behavioral reality "incompatible with Christian teaching" have built wall after wall that need to be removed. The latest definition that a legal license is sufficient to judge a particular practice is one more roadblock to coming to a common understanding of the variety of ways the Spirit of a Living God can be lived out. Given the hurt done, particularly to youth, we are past walking them back one at a time. It is time to come to grips with the reality that the fearful, protective, language of "incompatible" would not fly were it introduced for the first time today. It is time to revoke "incompatible" and all its offspring.
If it is only politically feasible to walk back one thing, General Conference needs to claim its right of definition and explicitly correct the Judicial Council by its own definition of "practicing". If they are not able to do this after more than 20 years of encouragement to do so, it is time to rid ourselves of the whole phrase of "self-avowed practicing" and its faulty justification which grows from the 1972 language of "incompatible with Christian teaching" that in one moment shifted our focus of discrimination from race (a segregated Central Conference) to sexual orientation.
The Rev. Wesley White is a retired clergy member of the Wisconsin Annual Conference.