When the 2.5 million-member church met last summer in Long Beach, Calif., delegates approved a ban on same-sex unions by only 17 votes and sent it to 173 regional presbyteries for approval to be added to the church's constitution.
At the time, conservatives said the presbyteries were far less divided on the issue than the voting delegates and promised the measure would pass by a large margin. Liberals said they would aggressively lobby to defeat it.
When the 87th presbytery voted against the so-called ``Amendment O'' on March 14, the measure was effectively killed and the church now finds itself in exactly the same place it was a year ago, with the issue still unresolved.
In this round, the liberals have come out on top.
``We were really on a roll, and this is a defeat, but we have to see this as one defeat in a very large war,'' said the Rev. Parker Williamson, a leader of the church's conservative wing.
In many ways, the Presbyterian Church has become a barometer of how gay issues are playing out in U.S. churches. The back-and-forth decisions reveal a seeming inability to find a permanent resolution.
Because Presbyterians meet annually, the issue never quite seems to go away. Issues left unresolved at one meeting inevitably return the next year. So when the church meets in June in Louisville, Ky., the gay issue will dominate the agenda - again.
Both conservatives and liberals concede the ban failed because it was so vague that presbyteries were unsure what it would ultimately mean. It did not explicitly ban same-sex unions, but rather ``any ceremony or event'' which blesses a relationship other than heterosexual marriage.
