{"id":3495,"date":"2011-06-20T16:45:13","date_gmt":"2011-06-20T20:45:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/?p=3495"},"modified":"2011-06-20T16:37:11","modified_gmt":"2011-06-20T20:37:11","slug":"lesbian-minister-to-face-methodist-church-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/06\/lesbian-minister-to-face-methodist-church-trial","title":{"rendered":"Lesbian minister to face Methodist church trial"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By DANIEL BURKE<\/strong><br \/>\n<em>c. 2011 Religion News Service<\/em><\/p>\n<p>(RNS) United Methodists will begin a trial Tuesday (June 21) against a Wisconsin minister who&#8217;s accused of breaking church rules by celebrating a same-sex marriage and being in a lesbian relationship.<\/p>\n<p>The Rev. Amy DeLong, 44, of Osceola, Wis., could be defrocked if the 13-member jury composed of local clergy finds her guilty of either charge.<\/p>\n<p>A minister for 14 years, DeLong agreed to officiate at a same-sex ceremony in 2009, the same year she and her partner registered as a couple under Wisconsin&#8217;s domestic partnership law, according to United Methodist News Service.<\/p>\n<p>The United Methodist Church, which has about 11 million members &#8212; about 7.7 million in the U.S. &#8212; calls homosexual activity &#8220;incompatible with Christian teaching.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The denomination bars &#8220;self-avowed, practicing homosexuals&#8221; from ministry, and prohibits all clergy from celebrating same-sex marriages, even in states where it is legal.<\/p>\n<p>While hundreds of clergy in recent months have petitioned the UMC to lift the bans, polls and church conferences indicate that a majority of ministers favor retaining them. Moreover, the church is growing most rapidly in Africa, where Christians tend to hold conservative views on sexuality.<\/p>\n<p>The church&#8217;s highest court upheld the bans last April, overturning a move by Methodists in New York to allow clergy to marry same-sex partners. &#8220;The church&#8217;s definition of marriage &#8230; is clear and unequivocal and is limited to the union of one man and one woman,&#8221; the court ruled.<\/p>\n<p>In 2005, a Philadelphia minister was defrocked after she told her congregation that she was in a lesbian relationship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By DANIEL BURKE c. 2011 Religion News Service (RNS) United Methodists will begin a trial Tuesday (June 21) against a Wisconsin minister who&#8217;s accused of breaking church rules by celebrating a same-sex marriage and being in a lesbian relationship. The Rev. Amy DeLong, 44, of Osceola, Wis., could be defrocked if the 13-member jury composed&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":345,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32,817,8,9],"tags":[921,51,797,21,920,2202,701,919],"class_list":["post-3495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian","category-in-court","category-news","category-rns","tag-amy-delong","tag-homosexual","tag-lesbian","tag-methodist","tag-minister","tag-rns","tag-same-sex-marriage","tag-wisconsin"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Lesbian minister to face Methodist church trial<\/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\/2011\/06\/lesbian-minister-to-face-methodist-church-trial\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Lesbian minister to face Methodist church trial\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By DANIEL BURKE c. 2011 Religion News Service (RNS) United Methodists will begin a trial Tuesday (June 21) against a Wisconsin minister who&#8217;s accused of breaking church rules by celebrating a same-sex marriage and being in a lesbian relationship. 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The Rev. Amy DeLong, 44, of Osceola, Wis., could be defrocked if the 13-member jury composed&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/06\/lesbian-minister-to-face-methodist-church-trial","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2011-06-20T20:45:13+00:00","article_modified_time":"2011-06-20T20:37:11+00:00","author":"Beliefnet News Editor","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/06\/lesbian-minister-to-face-methodist-church-trial","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/06\/lesbian-minister-to-face-methodist-church-trial","name":"Lesbian minister to face Methodist church trial","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-06-20T20:45:13+00:00","dateModified":"2011-06-20T20:37:11+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/ff42454e16eda902b675fd206e222124"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/06\/lesbian-minister-to-face-methodist-church-trial#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/06\/lesbian-minister-to-face-methodist-church-trial"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/06\/lesbian-minister-to-face-methodist-church-trial#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Lesbian minister to face Methodist church trial"}]},{"@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\/ff42454e16eda902b675fd206e222124","name":"Beliefnet News Editor","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\/e30\/e30900503ec90484dcd1469f5ccbd68fx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e30\/e30900503ec90484dcd1469f5ccbd68fx96.jpg","caption":"Beliefnet News Editor"},"description":"Top religious news from around the world","sameAs":["http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/news"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/345"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3495"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3497,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3495\/revisions\/3497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}