Lutheran Church Abolishes Antigay Policies

@ Cassie. Actually lots of gay and lesbian couples do have children, they either use in vitro fertility treatments or the adopt or foster children. Imagine that! Straight people do the same thing! Does it make you any less of a 'parent' if you need help getting pregnant and/or adopt? I think not, and besides the 2 lovely lesbian partners I know are some of the best parents I've ever seen, soo... what's your point?

SteveMD2, I wouldn't expect any remaining brain cell of yours to be stimulated from your last rant with this response, but anyone who is Catholic would know that Hitler excommunicated himself from the Church, it doesn't require a Papal or Bishop's decree. Also is the fact he committed suicide which well ... read your catechism. The issue with Williamson was never about his personal views about history but of his position within a once schismatic organization. The sex abuse cases being uncovered now stretch back up to 40-50 years. New cases of sex abuse are vastly smaller in numbers. In the US, there have been MILLIONS of sex abuse cases that have occurred in the past 40-50 years.

I encourage everyone who has felt ostracized by the church to come back home. Your family msses you.

This is progress. good progress. Next will be the Presbyterian USA. Last summer they came close to allowing gay ministers in relationships. Whereas a few years ago they were like 5:1 against it. BTW, add the Quakers, Jewish reform and some Jewish cosnevatives, the MCC, the new light presbyterians to the list. And the catholic monstrosity is being exposed worldwide as nothing but the church known as "Molesters R US". The most evil institution in the western world. Vile crimes against children all over the world. Hidden because the rot reaches all the way to the top. The CAtholic church aslo gave the world the hatred of the Jews, Jesus own people. And Hitler, a born and baptised catholic, leveraged that hatred to get elected, and 50 million died. And the church has yet to EXcommunicate hitler. But last year RATZInger Pope UNexcommunicated a Holocaust denier, a bishop Williamson. To bring his 600000 mad followers and their money into the church.

As for Cassie, can you actually read what comes out of your mouth, or do fundamentalist heroes in your head have all the control? "Male prostitution" somehow is equated to "consensual same sex attraction OR sexual intercourse". As for God making man for woman and woman for man (here's one no fundie can ever answer) what did God make intersex people for then? Also, if gender distinction is the "divine plan" then how come "in Christ there is neither male nor female"? I'll tell you why, because you're a stubborn racist who gets it off by harassing 3% of the population. You should be ashamed, you and the rest of the fanatic monsters like you. Go excuse yourself to your fellow man, you toad.

Where is the real change and claim to legitimacy in a Christian nation? Christianity. Fascinating that a religion of institutional liberation should, oh my goodness, offer strength and hope to the sexual minorities in the world. How utterly STRANGE. Keep it up ELCA. Stern, peace-loving, and traditional, forget the atheist and fundamentalist nazis and forge your own true path.

I was raised in a congregation of the United Lutheran Church in America, which through mergers and acquisitions is now an ELCA congregation. Unfortunately for the Lutherans they took so log to see "the light of day" that I embraced Unitarian Universalism. Still better late than never. With the direction the Protestant Episcopal Church in the USA is moving, and the direction the United Church of Christ moved some years ago, "Liberal Christianity", more interested in the Spirit of Christ's teachings than what The Bible, with its politically motivated canon and faulty translations says, is a force to be felt in the world.

this made my - how shall i say this,... i am with tears of joy,.. after years of leaving church and fellowship ,...teaching sunday school classes,..volunteer stuff,..all the stuff that made me overjoyed with my life - was taken away - because i am gay,.. this gives me a glad heart and the desire to attend church once again,... but it wont be with CBA - its time to find a new family.

Cassie from Modesto. Either you have a lot of guts, you are very stupid or you are putting us all on. You certainly would never talk such tripe if you wanted to be taken seriously.

Corvo, you don't know how right you are! The ELCA is proclaiming to the world that the only God worthy of praise is a God who bows to Human Sentiment! Unfortunately, it is in this way that the ELCA convicts itself. . . . It follows a God of its own making!