{"id":1385,"date":"2009-04-29T17:27:39","date_gmt":"2009-04-29T17:27:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2009\/04\/methodist-court-rejects-moves.php"},"modified":"2009-04-29T17:27:39","modified_gmt":"2009-04-29T17:27:39","slug":"methodist-court-rejects-moves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/04\/methodist-court-rejects-moves","title":{"rendered":"Methodist Court Rejects Moves to Support Gay Marriage, OKs Bush Library"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>(RNS) The United Methodist Church&#8217;s highest court has ruled that clergy may not officiate at same-sex unions, even in states where such marriages are legal, and gave the final OK for the George W. Bush Library to be built at Southern Methodist University.<br \/>\nThe church&#8217;s nine-member Judicial Council rejected separate resolutions passed by the California-Nevada and California-Pacific Conferences that voiced support for clergy who officiate at such unions.<br \/>\nLast year, the 8.3 million-member church upheld rules in its Book of Discipline, or constitution, that Methodist churches cannot be used to host same-sex unions and clergy are prohibited from officiating at them.<br \/>\nThe latest court ruling rejected a California-Nevada resolution that supported retired clergy who volunteered to conduct gay weddings, and a California-Pacific resolution upholding the &#8220;pastoral need and prophetic authority&#8221; of clergy to do so.<br \/>\nBetween May and November, 2008, California allowed same-sex couples to marry until voters banned the practiced with a constitutional amendment.<br \/>\n&#8220;An annual conference may not legally negate, ignore or violate provisions of the Discipline with which they disagree, even when the disagreements are based on conscientious objections to the provisions,&#8221; the court ruled, according to United Methodist News Service.<br \/>\nIn a separate case, the court said it found no reason to halt construction of the planned George W. Bush Presidential Center at the church-owned school in Dallas.<br \/>\nCritics contend the library complex and affiliated policy center will promote policies that the United Methodist Church officially opposed, including the Iraq War. The former president and his wife, Laura, are both United Methodists.<br \/>\nThe court said there was nothing in the lease agreement with SMU that violated church law, United Methodist News Service reported.<br \/>\n<em>By Kevin Eckstrom<br \/>\nCopyright 2009 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(RNS) The United Methodist Church&#8217;s highest court has ruled that clergy may not officiate at same-sex unions, even in states where such marriages are legal, and gave the final OK for the George W. Bush Library to be built at Southern Methodist University. The church&#8217;s nine-member Judicial Council rejected separate resolutions passed by the California-Nevada&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Methodist Court Rejects Moves to Support Gay Marriage, OKs Bush Library<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/04\/methodist-court-rejects-moves\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Methodist Court Rejects Moves to Support Gay Marriage, OKs Bush Library\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"(RNS) The United Methodist Church&#8217;s highest court has ruled that clergy may not officiate at same-sex unions, even in states where such marriages are legal, and gave the final OK for the George W. Bush Library to be built at Southern Methodist University. The church&#8217;s nine-member Judicial Council rejected separate resolutions passed by the California-Nevada&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/04\/methodist-court-rejects-moves\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-04-29T17:27:39+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"nsymmonds\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Methodist Court Rejects Moves to Support Gay Marriage, OKs Bush Library","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/04\/methodist-court-rejects-moves","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Methodist Court Rejects Moves to Support Gay Marriage, OKs Bush Library","og_description":"(RNS) The United Methodist Church&#8217;s highest court has ruled that clergy may not officiate at same-sex unions, even in states where such marriages are legal, and gave the final OK for the George W. Bush Library to be built at Southern Methodist University. The church&#8217;s nine-member Judicial Council rejected separate resolutions passed by the California-Nevada&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/04\/methodist-court-rejects-moves","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2009-04-29T17:27:39+00:00","author":"nsymmonds","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/04\/methodist-court-rejects-moves","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/04\/methodist-court-rejects-moves","name":"Methodist Court Rejects Moves to Support Gay Marriage, OKs Bush Library","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-04-29T17:27:39+00:00","dateModified":"2009-04-29T17:27:39+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/04\/methodist-court-rejects-moves#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/04\/methodist-court-rejects-moves"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/04\/methodist-court-rejects-moves#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Methodist Court Rejects Moves to Support Gay Marriage, OKs Bush Library"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2","name":"nsymmonds","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","caption":"nsymmonds"},"description":"Nicole Symmonds is Beliefnet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Prayer editor and also covers Christianity. A New Yorker by birth but a Floridian by tenure, Nicole graduated from Florida A&M University with a B.S. in Public Relations and a minor in Sociology. She moved to NY to pursue a career in journalism which started at In Style magazine. There she learned the ropes of magazine reporting, researching, and writing\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand became exponentially more stylish. But what seemed like a deep interest in fashion and entertainment would soon be revealed as merely the vehicle that moved her closer to discovering her purpose, writing and covering matters of the Christian faith. While in her purpose-driven vehicle she can be found traveling between Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens for life, work and worship, respectively. 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