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A San Francisco woman who has been trying for nearly 25 years to become an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) as an out lesbian will have her case heard in a church court on Friday.
A San Francisco woman who has been trying for nearly 25 years to become an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) as an out lesbian will have her case heard in a church court on Friday.
Lisa Larges will be represented by lawyers at an Oakland hotel in a hearing that some consider pivotal to the future of gay and lesbian leadership in the Presbyterian Church (USA), which has more than 2 million members.
The church constitution requires that ordained ministers be married to someone of the opposite sex or be celibate, a policy that has effectively served to preclude openly gay and lesbian candidates from becoming ordained. Nevertheless, a handful of ministers already ordained by the church have subsequently come out to their congregations and served openly.
Since 2006, despite the constitutional ban, the national church has left the question of whether or not to ordain openly gay and lesbian ministers up to regional bodies. If ordained, Larges would be the first representative of the Presbyterian Church (USA)'s halting steps toward inclusion.
An evaluation of the policy is currently under way by all 173 presbyteries in the United States.
Larges, who is blind, has been able to advance her candidacy in the past by claiming a conscientious objection, with the approval of her regional church authority, the San Francisco Presbytery. However, in each of her previous attempts, she has been blocked from proceeding further because of her sexual orientation. "I just want to use this as an opportunity to say, hey, we are here, we want to help the church. And to give the church another opportunity to invite us in," Larges told KGO-TV .
