» Continued from Part 1

=== False Memory Syndrome
10. Sects and Lies

=== Hate Groups / Hate Crimes
11. German Parliament Backs Ban on Far-Right Party
12. White Patient Refuses Black Help

=== Other News
13. Amish Man Goes to Jail Over Color
14. Natural Law deputy floats in for visit
15. Toronto church gets around ban on same-sex marriage
16. Pastor says couples do not need church to sanctify marriage

» Part 3

=== Religious Freedom / Religious Intolerance
17. Moscow Court Puts Salvation Army in Limbo
18. God in Ohio motto argued in court

=== Death Penalty
19. Clinton postpones federal execution for six months
20. South seeks death-penalty pause
21. Brakes on Death Row
22. No Death Penalty in Killing of Md. Priest

=== Noted
23. Did Jesus live in India?

=== The Tortoise Around The Corner
24. Shell-shocked church marvels at slow labour



=== False Memory Syndrome

10. Sects and Lies
Dallas Observer, Dec. 7, 2000
http://www.dallasobserver.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Did the isolated, unhappy life of an Arlington family of Jehovah's Witnesses breed false charges of sexual abuse? Absolutely, says a family member who never got a chance to tell her side of the story.

His looks could not have helped. That's the first thing you think as you watch Edward Lee Stevenson lower his large, lumpy frame onto a visiting-room stool.
(...)

Two years ago, as Stevenson complained in vain that he was the victim of a mentally unstable and vindictive ex-wife, a Tarrant County jury heard three family members--his ex-wife, a daughter, and a son--accuse the 56-year-old Vietnam vet of fondling his 16-year-old daughter and routinely masturbating in front of her in their Arlington home. Amending her story later, the daughter said he raped her too.

Stevenson, who could not afford a lawyer and foolishly chose to represent himself, let prosecutor Lisa Callaghan, a veteran of the Crimes Against Children Unit, pick the jury. He called no witnesses in the guilt-innocence portion of the trial. And as jurors now relate, he never could make a clear point as he attempted to cross-examine his family, those accusing him of the crime.

''The prosecution lined up witnesses who testified to the facts. He did nothing, absolutely nothing, to discredit those facts,'' recalls juror Douglas Free.

The results for Stevenson were disastrous.

Instead of casting doubt on a case built on delayed outcries, recovered memories, and a complete lack of physical evidence, he landed an 18-year sentence and a trial record almost entirely devoid of legal objections on which to base future appeals.

Too bad, one could say. He made his own dumb mistakes. ''The jury heard the witnesses, saw the witnesses,'' says Callaghan, who maintains she brought a solid case. ''They saw stuff [in the way the witnesses gave their accounts] you can't see now...There is a quality when people are telling the truth you can see and hear.''

Stevenson's story would have ended with that had three people not come forward in recent months insisting his case deserves another look. They are his oldest daughter, Sheila Lott, who is estranged from the entire family but has now given a detailed affidavit about their odd, unhappy life; the defendant's mother, Ima Jean Ely, who is paying for a new legal challenge; and Fort Worth defense attorney Ward Casey, who filed a legal action last summer seeking to gain Stevenson a new trial.

They say false charges could easily have emerged from the Stevenson household, which was disturbed in a variety of ways. As members of the Jehovah's Witnesses, the family was unusually insulated from the outside world, says Sheila Lott. The kids didn't go to school or play with neighbors or do anything to expose them to much beyond their mother's enormous influence. Lott says her siblings, particularly the youngest two, were dominated by Shirley Stevenson, a woman who claimed to have multiple-personality disorder and various undiagnosed diseases, and did strange, neurotic things such as insist she was pregnant when it was obvious she was not.

When police and prosecutors are asked to investigate sex-related charges made against a backdrop of divorce and disputes over child support, as was the case here, one would expect prosecutors to exhibit considerable skepticism about what is being alleged. In this instance, says Casey, they ignored some clear, contradictory evidence and chose instead to rely on the word of family witnesses who were unusually close, one of whom had a big ax to grind.
(...)

One thing they did agree on, though, was their decision in the late 1960s to join the Jehovah's Witnesses, the door-to-door proselytizers who had been predicting the world would end in 1975.
(...)

The Stevensons began distributing the Witnesses' newsletter, The Watchtower, most Saturdays, attending church at the Kingdom Hall, and adopting the habits and beliefs of the sect: eschewing material gain, education, and all manner of holidays in order to get to work preparing to be saved.
(...)

''It was a good religion if you're poor, and we were poor,'' recalls Sheila Lott. ''You don't have birthdays or Christmas or the Fourth of July. You don't have phone calls from friends or Girl Scouts.'' The only contact she was allowed to have with nonbelievers, she recalls, is when she and her parents knocked on their doors selling Watchtowers, Bibles, and books.
(...)

In her sworn affidavit, Sheila states: ''When I was about 13 years old, my mother developed multiple sclerosis. She was so disabled, she had to use a wheelchair for approximately three or four years.'' A few years later, though, ''My mother did not have multiple sclerosis anymore, but she had developed multiple-personality disorder.''

The daughter adds, ''She'd say she was this little girl, and I'd think, whatever. If it was big on TV or in the news, that's what she had. It was all in her mind.''

Shirley Stevenson and her daughter Sally, who still live together, declined to be interviewed for this story.

Edward says he believes the multiple-personality disorder was real. ''Sam and I would try to count how many personalities she had,'' he says. But he says his wife was unstable just some of the time. Some days she would go off to her job as a grocery checker and be just fine.
(...)

In June 1992, the Stevensons separated, and Edward moved out. Less than two years later, in February 1994, they finalized a contested divorce in which the only outstanding issue was custody of Sam, who was 16 at the time.

At the divorce hearing, Stevenson remembers, his son testified that he would rather kill himself than be made to have visitation rights with his father. Stevenson says his son's words showed the depth of hatred for him that his wife had helped instill. Sam got his wish to stay in the custody of his mom.

More critical, though, is the fact that at the hearing in 1994, two years after Stevenson had moved away, nobody in the family said a word about the behavior for which he is now behind bars. Not his son, his daughter, or his wife. In a proceeding in which his character and actions would have been a central issue, nobody accused him of such things.

Two and a half years later, however, on November 11, 1996, Shirley, Sally, and Sam Stevenson showed up at the Arlington police station telling extremely disturbing tales. Back in 1992, they claimed, when Stevenson was still living with them, he was a sexual monster--groping his daughter and masturbating in front of her. As it came out in court, presented by a veteran prosecutor who says she can discern when someone is telling the truth, their stories required a few leaps of faith to be believed.

Stevenson says the catalyst for the charges was yet another fight, this time over the two months or so he was behind in his $200-a-month child support, an obligation that was soon to run out as his son became an adult. ''She told me I'd better get the money,'' he says, ''or she would make me pay.''
(...)

According to Warman, three weeks after Sally accused her father of exposing himself and groping her, she said she remembered something else that happened that spring of 1992. It was something she left out the first time she talked to police: Her father had raped her.

''I did not remember it when I made the first statement,'' she testified later. ''I had made drawings to help me remember, because I knew that what I had remembered him doing had not been all, and so my mother and my brother were talking about the pictures I had just drawn, and I was thinking about them, and suddenly I remembered what he had done.''

Her mother also testified about how these memories were suddenly ''recovered.''

''I had seen different programs on television where children had been in traumatic situations of one kind or another...but wouldn't be able to talk about it...So what they would do, they would have these children draw pictures of their feelings or what they would remember, so I asked [Sally] to draw a picture of Ed. It was just kind of a stick figure, but I kept gently persisting, and over the course of a few days, I asked her to draw a picture of what happened in the bedroom.''

Pretty soon Sally was drawing figures that represented the bed and the door and her father. Shirley testified how she suggested to her daughter that the drawing showed Sally in her father's bed. ''And she said, yes, they were both on the bed. She closed her eyes and nodded, and when she opened them, she just looked so--like guilty and disgusted and every emotion you can imagine. And I just told her, I said, 'It's OK.'''

Thus, Sally came to remember, as a 21-year-old woman, that her father had raped her four and a half years earlier.
(...)

Sally's sister Shelly testified--after Stevenson had already been convicted in the first phase of the trial--that these events simply did not happen. Her father never did anything sexual, never had any kind of sexual contact with any of the children, she said during the trial's sentencing phase.
(...)

Another very graphic bit of evidence that seemed not to support stories of forceful rapes was the testimony of Cheryl Gharis, an emergency-room nurse who did a rape exam on Sally. She testified that the young woman's hymen was still intact.
(...)

Stevenson, working in his own defense, did nothing to underscore these kinds of troubling inconsistencies. For the most part, he offered his claim that his ex-wife put the children up to smearing him but did not subpoena any witnesses or ask the precise questions needed to bolster his defense. He returned several times to the weakly supportive fact that police found no pornography at his Addison apartment, where he had moved after the divorce, and that he kept none at the family home.
(...)

Throughout Stevenson's trial, Casey says, contradictory evidence was shoved aside with explanations of what ''usually happens'' in sex-abuse cases, such as memories being repressed or outcries delayed. And the hard evidence, the letter, was no evidence at all.

As his own attorney, though, Stevenson made none of those points, poked none of those holes.
(...)

Worse, he didn't know enough to object when the state was going out of bounds.
(...)

Several Fort Worth defense lawyers who weren't involved in the case say self-representation, which never is a wise idea, is particularly foolhardy when the charges involve incest or domestic sexual abuse. ''They try these cases with no physical evidence all the time, and they're dad-gum difficult to defend,'' says Bill Magnuson. ''The attitude is, if a child makes an outcry, they tend to believe it. Even a good lawyer has a difficult time.''

It is on this issue--how Stevenson came to represent himself--that Casey is hanging his attempt to gain Stevenson a new trial. He says the implausible facts of the case, and new evidence such as Sheila's affidavit, show that the issue of representation was critical to Stevenson's getting a fair trial.

Legally, though, it isn't enough to say Stevenson did a terrible job playing his own lawyer. Casey argues that Tarrant County's system of appointing lawyers to people who can't afford one worked to coerce Stevenson into representing himself.

From the first time detective Warman came to question him in November 1996, Stevenson maintained his innocence, insisting that the charges were organized by his spiteful ex-wife.

After his arrest in December 1996, he was released on $5,000 bail and paid Fort Worth defense attorney Brian Willett $2,500 to represent him. According to a sworn statement from Stevenson, Willett later told him that the $2,500 only covered fees for an uncontested case--in other words, it paid only for entering a guilty or no-contest plea. It would take another $7,500 to defend him in a trial.

Stevenson says he told his lawyer that he couldn't afford the fee--by the time of the trial he was working as a pizza-delivery man--and that under no circumstances would he accept a plea-bargain.

This is the juncture, Casey claims, where Stevenson was forced to make an unfair and unconstitutional choice.

On his bail bond, Stevenson was informed in bold type that he was required to appear in court with a lawyer, and that if he did not, he could be found ''to have violated a condition of bond and may be arrested and placed in jail and his bond forfeited.''

Stevenson didn't want to accept a guilty plea, and he didn't want to go to jail. ''I already waived my right to a speedy trial, so I thought I'd sit in jail for a year or two. Then maybe they'd offer me a plea,'' he says. ''I wasn't ever going to plead guilty to doing these filthy, disgusting things.''

So Stevenson wrote the court a note saying, ''I will under no circumstances accept a plea...I move this court to remove [his lawyer] and proceed to trial pro se...representing myself.''
(...)

Fort Worth defense attorney Tim Moore says Casey's argument is interesting, but he doesn't give it much of a chance. ''With our appeals courts, he's probably out of luck,'' says Moore, pointing to the pro-prosecution bent of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals in recent years. ''If they won't let guys out when their DNA shows they weren't at the scene, you have to wonder in a case like this.''
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]

» More about Satanic and/or ritual abuse and related issues
» More about false memory syndrome

''It is very easy to be falsely accused of child abuse or child molest, but it is exceptionally difficult to be exonerated in court. Even though 60% of molest or abuses charges are false, more of these trials end in the wrongful conviction of the innocent than any other type of criminal case. Widespread media attention has caused a state of hysteria in which people who are accused are presumed guilty. This highly emotional charge tends to destroy the ability of the system to handle such cases objectively.

One charge of molest or abuse can send a parent, professional or any adult who deals with children to prison for up to eight years. In most cases it is a mandatory sentence and, therefore, many innocent people are now serving long prison sentences.

Falsely Accused

=== Hate Groups / Hate Crimes

11. German Parliament Backs Ban on Far-Right Party
Reuters, Dec. 8, 2000
http://news.excite.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany's lower house of parliament agreed to apply for a ban on the tiny far-right NPD party Friday, adding political weight to an emotional issue that the country's constitutional court will ultimately decide.

The push to outlaw the National Democratic Party now has the backing of both houses of parliament and the government of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, but it could take two years before the top court issues a ruling.

The government is under pressure to act after a spate of attacks on foreigners and far-right crime earlier this year, and the ban attempt has found broad cross-party support despite concerns that evidence linking the NPD to crime is thin.
(...)

Aiming to prevent a repeat of Hitler's rise to power through the ballot box, the framers of Germany's postwar constitution allowed the state to ban parties deemed undemocratic. Only two -- a communist party and a neo-Nazi party -- have been banned.

While opposition conservatives made it clear they want the NPD outlawed, they voted against the lower house applying separately for a ban, saying it was sufficient to endorse the government's existing application.

Only the liberal Free Democrats spoke against the ban, saying the NPD -- which says its membership has risen by 1,000 to 7,000 in recent months because of the media profile it is getting -- was not a mortal threat to democracy.
(...)

Critics fear outlawing the NPD could boost the party by providing publicity, especially if the judges reject arguments it is seeking aggressively to overthrow democracy.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


12. White Patient Refuses Black Help
AP, Dec. 7, 2000
http://news.excite.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - Surgeon Michael R. Petracek faced an ethical dilemma: grant a white patient's request to keep black men out of the operating room during open-heart surgery, or risk her refusing the potentially lifesaving procedure.

Petracek wanted to make sure his patient got the care she needed, so he asked a black male technician to leave the operating room during the Oct. 9 surgery - a move he now calls ''a bad mistake.''

Word slowly spread throughout the Catholic hospital and complaints by employees finally made their way to the hospital's executive committee, which took no disciplinary action.

Petracek is a highly regarded surgeon best known for having developed a way to conserve blood during heart operations so that Jehovah's Witnesses, who oppose transfusions on religious grounds, could still have surgery.
(...)

Petracek told the hospital, however, that the woman's husband did not want black men looking at his wife's nude body, hospital spokesman John Mays said Thursday. He noted that a black woman was on the surgical team without any objection.

''The husband was very overbearing and told the doctor he was pretty much their last hope,'' Mays said. ''Basically, he was saying if Dr. Petracek did not do it they were just not going to seek any other care.''

The woman and her husband, who have not been identified, first went to Dr. John Austin at Baptist Hospital and made the same request of him in August. He said no and asked them to reconsider.

''She really did need an operation for something that was ultimately life-threatening, so I didn't want to send her away after one conversation,'' Austin said. ''I saw her about a week later and they were still just as adamant, so I told them I could not alter our personnel according to their racial bias.''

Petracek took the opposing view.
(...)

The decision was reviewed by the physician performance and medical executive committees of St. Thomas. No disciplinary action was taken, although hospital executives made it clear they did not agree with Petracek's decision and they encouraged him to apologize publicly.
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]

* There are no good reasons for accomodating racism.

Crosspoint Anti Racism

=== Other News

13. Amish Man Goes to Jail Over Color
AP, Dec. 6, 2000
http://www.lasvegassun.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
EBENSBURG, Pa. (AP) -- An Amish man chose to spend three days in jail rather than pay a fine for refusing to put an orange ''slow-moving vehicle'' triangle on his buggy because he said the sign violates his religious beliefs.

Jonas Swartzentruber, 22, belongs to the 11-family Swartzentruber order, which says the Bible prohibits brightly colored belongings.
(...)

In deference to his beliefs, Swartzentruber will be allowed to wear a blue shirt and pants instead of the usual bright-orange coveralls, deputy warden John Prebish told the Johnstown Tribune-Democrat.

The sect members claim to be the country's oldest Amish order and strictly adhere to the Amish ideal of being separate from society.

Many Amish in Pennsylvania display the triangles without protest.
(...)

Jonas Swartzentruber didn't comment after the hearing. His father, who declined to give his name, said, ''I read my Bible. I can't see where it says to put (the triangle) on. I wouldn't display a triangle on my buggy even if it was only 2 inches high.''
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


14. Natural Law deputy floats in for visit
St. Catharines Standard (Canada), Nov. 23, 2000
http://www.scstandard.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
Armed with secrets, allegedly born in antiquity and possessing earth-shaking power rivalling the impact of Galileo's telescope, Ashley Deans believes he has the cure for all that ails Canada.

If only the country would listen to him.

Like the famous Renaissance man, persecuted by the Catholic Inquisition for claiming the Earth orbited the sun, Deans says his Natural Law Party labours under the criticism of fools.

''The history of science shows that when there are those with new ideas, there are those who dismiss you,'' Deans, the NLP deputy leader, said at a news conference in St. Catharines Wednesday. ''But we have the scientifically proven technologies that work.''
(...)

Deans said eventually, once the transcendental meditators and yogic flyers of the NLP banish sickness, crime and conflict, the party will be looked upon as a candle of truth in an era of ignorance, just like Galileo.

However, critics say the NLP has misappropriated Galileo's legacy.

''Look, they laughed at Galileo, they laughed at Edison, but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown, and the NLP is Bozo the Clown,'' said James Randi, a Florida-based skeptic. ''Galileo had the saving grace of being right.''

Randi, whose James Randi Foundation works to debunk claims of the supernatural and pseudo-science, called the NLP a ''viciously ambitious organization,'' with nothing to offer voters.
(...)

Most voters don't take the NLP seriously. The party, living on the fringe, has never collected more than a few hundred votes in a given riding and has never held a federal seat.
(...)

Deans' confidence stems from what he calls the ''scientifically proven technologies'' of transcendental meditation and yogic flying -- the latter activity consisting of bouncing around on your rear with your legs crossed.

''We are bringing these most ancient of technologies forward to create heaven on earth here in Canada,'' he said.

What does all this hopping about do? Deans said it connects everyone to the collective consciousness of the natural law governing the universe.

That may sound like new-age gobbledegook distilled from Obi-Wan Kenobi's description of the force in Star Wars, but Deans is completely serious.
(...)

Deans said there are more than 600 scientific studies backing up NLP claims that yogic flying reduces crime, disease and stress while improving the economy in areas where it is practised.

Critics, however, say Deans is stretching the truth.

''Those are pretty bold claims. There are maybe half a dozen studies in reputable journals. The rest are published within the (NLP) community,'' said Barry Markovsky, a University of Iowa sociologist who has examined NLP scientific claims. ''There are serious problems with the way their evidence is presented.''

Markovsky said the research methods used by those studying yogic flying and meditation are elaborate and, on the surface, quite rigorous.

''There may be some benefit for the individual who is meditating. They probably have reduced levels of stress and so on,'' he said.

But the evidence suggesting yogic flying affects society as a whole is riddled with problems and is inconclusive, Markovsky said.

The most fundamental problem is the statistical methods used -- essentially survey methods rather than controlled laboratory experiments -- are open to manipulation.

Moreover, the researchers don't apply Occam's Razor, one of the most basic scientific maxims. Everything being equal, Occam's Razor says, the most commonplace explanation tends to be the correct one.

''If you observe, say, a reduction in crime in an area where you practise meditation, you have to look at other possible explanations,'' Markovsky said. ''They don't do that. These social indicators like crime rates are very sensitive to many factors.''

In effect, you cannot isolate yogic flying as causing any changes in a given environment, he said.

Deans said sociologists like Markovsky can't criticize the studies because ''he probably doesn't have the mathematical skills to understand them.

''Sociologists become sociologists because it is a soft discipline,'' he said.

Pajama-clad flyers aren't the only aspect of the party's platform that appears to have stepped through the looking glass.

For example, the NLP maintains parts of the human brain have a one-on-one relationship with the other planets in the solar system. Understanding these astrological connections is the key to lasting health, they say.

Critics like Randi say the group is more religious movement than political party.

Deans insists NLP is not a religion or a spiritual movement. In fact, he said, practitioners of many faiths have joined the party.

''We are not part of the transcendental meditation group,'' he said.

Nevertheless, there are discernible links between the spiritual transcendental meditation movement and the NLP.

The NLP is, in effect, the political wing of the movement founded by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the guru the Beatles once followed to India.

The Maharishi founded the Maharishi University of Management in Iowa to teach the meditation and its related philosophies. It was at this school that the NLP was born, said Markovsky.

Deans, who has a PhD in experimental space science from York University, teaches at the Maharishi school, home to about 1,000 students.

Deans says the NLP platform is based on the Maharishi's teachings.
(...)

Deans said because Randi is not a scientist, he is no position to criticize the NLP.

''He is ignoring 600 studies. He is a nice guy, entitled to his opinion, but he doesn't understand the science behind it,'' he said.

As for why, if the NLP methods are so well-supported scientifically, the scientific community hasn't picked up on them, Deans said: ''Look what they did to Galileo.''
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]


15. Toronto church gets around ban on same-sex marriage
CBC News (Canada), Dec. 4, 2000
http://cbc.ca/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
TORONTO - A church in Toronto is going to try a traditional method of issuing marriage licences, in order to legitimize non-traditional weddings.

The Metropolitan Community Church plans to wed gay and lesbian couples, and issue marriage certificates after publishing the marriage banns starting in the new year.

Publishing banns, or publicly announcing for a set period of time - in church bulletins, for example - a couple's intention to marry, is the old common law method of licensing a wedding.

It's still recognized under Ontario law, and the church's lawyer says the marriage will be legal because it follows the Marriage Act.

That will make it the first legally solemnized same-sex marriage anywhere in the world, Douglas Elliott said.

''The Netherlands is going to have actual marriage, but it hasn't passed the Dutch senate yet,'' he said. ''In Vermont, it's not marriage - it's civil union. That's different.''
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]

As for Mr. Elliott's comments about the Netherlands:

Dutch OK Full Marriage Rights
PlanetOut News Staff, Sep. 12, 2000
http://www.planetout.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
For the first time in the world same-gender couples have been granted full
equal marriage rights, with the Netherlands' parliament's 107 - 33 vote
September 12. The move to include gay and lesbian couples under existing
civil marriage law will go into effect in early 2001.

A parliamentary committee had formally recommended the change back in October
1997, and the law could have been changed as much as two years ago. But the
Cabinet proceeded cautiously before issuing its own statement supporting
marriage in December 1998, and the legislation was further delayed when the
coalition government dissolved in mid-1999. There has been little legal
distinction between marriage and registered partnerships in the Netherlands
since the national government agreed to extend most adoption rights to
same-gender couples, but a happily partnered gay man who watched the vote
from the packed public gallery told the Associated Press that, ''What happened
today represents changes in our society.''
(...)

The long-awaited law had the support of not only all three parties of the
ruling coalition, but also of a few members of the opposition traditionalist
Christian Democratic Alliance and even some of the Netherlands' smaller
Christian denominations. Although opponents were few in number, they heated
up three days of what one member of parliament called ''the most moving
debate'' of his career last week. But enactment proceeded speedily on
September 11, accompanied by enthusiastic applause and hugs in the gallery.

As the parliamentary committee wrote in 1997, ''The majority of the committee
believes that same-sex couples can only be afforded equal treatment if they
are allowed to enter into civil marriage. These members do not view the new
type of marriage as a break with tradition: After all, marriage has always
been a flexible institution which kept pace with social change.''
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]

16. Pastor says couples do not need church to sanctify marriage
St. Louis Post-Dispatch/AP, Dec. 6, 2000
http://www.postnet.com/
[Story no longer online? Read this]
CHICAGO (AP) -- A United Methodist minister suspended last year for presiding over same-sex marriages said church law allows for such unions, if they take place outside of the church.

In a twist on traditional wedding ceremonies, members of Broadway United Methodist Church exchange vows at a ceremony with friends and family outside of church and then return to the church to celebrate their unions, the Rev. Gregory Dell said Tuesday.

``As long as the couple exchange vows outside of the building, they can come back with the pastor and with other church members and confirm before God their union,'' Dell said.

All weddings at the church on Chicago's North Side now are conducted in the same manner in ceremonies for both heterosexual and homosexual couples under a policy adopted Sept. 12. According to the policy, which is posted on the church's Web site, ``covenanting done by couples will occur with the pastor present at a site separate from the church building.''

Church law assumes that couples make a covenant and that they -- not the pastor -- may ``conduct'' legal weddings or holy unions, the policy states.

Dell's church has constructed an arch that is transported to ceremonies as a symbol of the congregation's support.

``They exchange vows and they have made covenant,'' Dell said. ``At the next service, they exchange their vows before the congregation. There is the prayer and response of the congregation, then music and often we have Holy Communion, which a pastor will preside over.''

There have been several ceremonies since September and several more have been scheduled, Dell said. He said about 45 percent of his congregation is gay or lesbian.

Bishop C. Joseph Sprague said the ceremony and service appear to satisfy church law.
(...)

Dell returned to the pulpit last July after a year's suspension by the United Methodist Church for conducting a same-sex marriage. In May, he and Sprague were among the 29 people arrested at a conference earlier this year during which United Methodists solidified their ban on same-sex weddings. Both men have argued that the church should accept same-sex marriages.

At least one stringent opponent of same-sex unions within the Methodist Church has given tacit support to the practice.

John Juergensmeyer, who has filed suit against Sprague several times, said there is no apparent violation of church rules.
(...)

On the Net:

Broadway United Methodist Church Web site: http://www.brdwyumc.org/
[...more...]   [Need the full story? Read this]

» Part 3