June 7, 2017

Dear Members of the Commission on a Way Forward,

In May, Love Prevails received an invitation from you claiming that because you “value our voice,” you’d like us to, “Describe your constituency’s preferred future for our denomination regarding the nature, conditions and extent of the inclusion of LGBTQ people within the Church.”

The United Methodist Church’s decades-long attempt to silence our voices and to destroy our community and culture have proven that LGBTQ lives are not valued in the least.

For 45 years, LGBTQ people and our allies have made countless theologically sophisticated and cogent arguments about why church-perpetuated and church-sanctioned injustice against LGBTQ people makes a mockery of God and the Gospel – and we will not rehearse that again in this suffocating and duplicitous context.

We will only say, what we have said ad nauseum:

The only proper and Christian corrective to the unjust and prejudicial treatment our people have received at the hands of the United Methodist Church is the full and complete removal of all language in the Book of Discipline which categorically discriminates against LGBTQ people. When, and only when, that is accomplished will we be able to move forward as equal and valued members of the Body of Christ.

May the Holy Spirit frustrate your attempts to use LGBTQ people as a bargaining chip toward some imaginary level of acceptable discrimination and exclusion.

Love Prevails,

Laci Lee Adams
Rev. Amy E. DeLong
Rev. Will Green
Rev. Sue Laurie
Rev. Tina Lang
Laura Ralston
Brenda Smith White
Dr. Mary Lou Taylor
Rev. Dr. Julie Todd
Rev. Wesley White

PDF of Response to the Commission on a Way Forward