The moment that everyone was waiting for, but nobody wanted to touch, finally arrived. Homosexuality in the church reached the floor, and it stayed there, and stayed there, and stayed there. From 10 in the morning until 10:30 at night, the issue was there. Will it be on the floor again? Probably. Wednesday will probably have its fair share of the issue as well. The main issue came first: the language in the Discipline concerning compatibility with Christian teaching and the UMC not condoning the practice. The wording “We recognize that Christians disagree on the compatibility of homosexual practice with Christian teaching,” was suggested to follow the statement “The United Methodist Church does not condone the practice of homosexuality and considers this practice incompatible with Christian teaching.” This was moved for concurrence by the Church and Society committee, but was defeated by a minority report. The minority report actually strengthened our stand against homosexuality by removing “Although we” from “Although we do not condone…” and replaced it with “The United Methodist Church does not condone…”

Other than the homosexuality issue, not much else happened. Judicial Council members were elected. I don’t remember their names though. But that’s about it for today. Hopefully, this will be the last time we have to talk about homosexuality but I strongly doubt it. Every idea around the issue was discussed, and there’s plenty more opinions out there that someone will want to discuss. It’s been a tiring and long day. I actually took the night session off and relaxed for a bit while one of our reserve delegate sat in for me . There’s some youth that are leaving on Wednesday and I figured I’d hang out with them for a little while before they left. It was nice to get to chit chat with them before they took off.

That’s all for today.