I love the congregation's action in support of the choral director ~ ~ if this can happen in Indiana, it can [and hopefully will] happen elsewhere too ~ Sooz

Eighty percent of congregation quits after Indiana church forces out gay choir director
By David Edwards
Monday, January 13, 2014 11:48 EST

A church in Indiana has seen about 80 percent of its members leave after a gay choral director was forced out over his sexual orientation.

Adam Fraley told The Herald Bulletin that he worked for the United Methodist Church in Alexandria for six years and attended with his partner. When a new minister took over the church last year, Fraley said that he resigned because of pressure about his sexual orientation.

United Methodist Church law allows LGBT people to attend church services but says “self-avowed, practicing homosexuals are not to be certified as candidates, ordained as ministers, or appointed to serve.”

Many members of the church, who supported Fraley, were at odds over what it meant to “serve.”

Indiana Conference of the United Methodist Church Communication Director told The Herald Bulletin that LGBT people were only prohibited from being ordained as ministers and that all other posts could be decided by church leadership.

“Any other leadership positions should be filled at the discretion of the congregation and the minister,” Gangler explained.

The disagreement over whether Fraley should have been allowed to keep his job has caused a divide between the church and members like David Steele.

Steele said that he pushed the new interim minister, David Mantor, to re-hire Fraley. But Mantor was unconformable with Fraley’s sexual orientation. And instead, Steele was asked to resign his position in church leadership. When Steele refused, the district superintendent personally held a meeting to relieve him of duty.

According to Steele and his wife, Nancy, about 80 percent of the church’s congregation had stopped attending because of the way Fraley was treated.

“They all embraced him,” Nancy Steele pointed out. “They’re upset about the way he was treated.”

“It’s almost like he’s hijacked the church,” David Steele added. “He is completely going against what the church body wants.”

(h/t: Friendly Atheist)

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/13/eighty-percent-of-congregation-quits-after-indiana-church-forces-out-gay-choir-director/

Sooz edit: changed thread title to more generic to add the next post.

Another biggie for Indiana ~ maybe someone there found a magic pill to reality ~ if so, I hope she/he shares it widely ~ ~ Sooz

Indiana House chamber bursts into laughter after speaker calls LGBT people ‘intolerant’
By David Edwards
Monday, January 13, 2014 13:52 EST

Those attending the Indiana House Judiciary Committee’s hearing on a same sex marriage ban erupted into laughter on Monday when one of the speakers claimed that opponents of the ban were “intolerant.”

Jim Bopp, an anti-LGBT attorney who was forced out as Indiana’s representative to the Republican National Committee in 2012, told the committee that he was perplexed as to why opponents would be against a constitutional ban if same sex marriage was already illegal in Indiana.

“It can only be because [the existing ban is] vulnerable,” he insisted. “They want the option of getting what they actually want, which is to change the definition of marriage. And the very vulnerability of a statute as opposed to a constitutional amendment affords them a greater opportunity to get that job done.”

“Even more troubling though was an argument made by one who said that the simple debate on the marriage amendment will do the damage,” Bopp added. “Well, what does that tell you? That there are some people that are so intolerant of other people’s views that a simple debate…”

With that, the chairman was forced to call the committee to order as the gallery burst into laughter.

“A simple debate about the question offends them to the extent that they want to leave the state,” Bopp said. “And even more troubling than that, it’s a direct attack upon democracy.”

Kellie Fiedorek, a lawyer for Alliance Defending Freedom, argued that the “government is in the marriage business to preserve the family and to ensure, wherever possible, that children do not grow up in motherless and fatherless homes.”

“If the government were to license every committed, loving relationship, licenses would be issued to an infinite number of loving, committed relationships between any number of persons,” she declared.

But when state Rep. Vernon Smith (D) asked Fiedorek for her personal definition of marriage, she refused to answer.

“What should we do with those couples that decide they don’t want to give birth to children?” Smith wondered.

“The only relationship that can naturally produce children is that between a man and a woman,” Fiedorek noted. “There are situations where they may not want to have children, maybe they cannot have children. But the union of one man and one woman still furthers the ideal that children, when that happens, will be born into homes with a mom and a dad.”

“You know, I had a mom and a dad and I wish my dad wasn’t there, the way he acted in my household,” Smith pointed out.

Watch this video from the Indiana General Assembly, broadcast Jan. 13, 2014. [Sooz says video accessible via end link]

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/13/indiana-house-chamber-bursts-into-laughter-after-speaker-calls-lgbt-people-intolerant/

Wow! Moments of humanity, finally. Maybe they had an "apostrophe". (reference to "Hook")