Can United Methodists be Neutral on Gay Issues ?

I think this Pastor in the Methodist Church is being very naive. See COMMENTARY: What if UMC agreed to both sides of gay issue?

The United Methodist Church has dealt with the "gay" controversy in many ways better than the Episcopalian Church and the Presbyterians . There seems to be some awareness that they are not in their view an American Church but a worldwide "Church" or as we Catholics would technically call them a Faith Community.

This can be seen in how they treat the views of non American ( read mostly African) members. That history goes way back as one can see by watching the movie Amistad and digging into that important Methodist history.

Besides that it will not work. As they say once Orthodoxy is optional it soon shall become proscribed. We are seeing this in the American Episcopal Church and other faith communities. Advocates of various gay causes have moved passed the tolerence stage to declaring traditional views are a REAL SOCIAL JUSTICE EVIL that crys out to the heavens to be corrected.

If you have this view then you do everything you can to correct it. Pastor John Elford really gives us no insight why he thinks Methodist are protected against the trends and actions we see against the more traditional "believers" in other faith communities.

If you believe the Holy Spirit is at work in those Faith communities well that is one view. But it seems the fruit of that has mostly been a huge amount of new case law on Church Property and who controls it that no doubt will end up in the Supreme Court.