Issues involving ordination are inherently divisive. Either we ordain women, gays, etc, or we don’t. There’s no compromise.
But still, you’re right that this seems different from other questions. On other issues, we’d allow congregations, or districts, to decide on people for themselves. Why is this the one issue where people don’t feel they can be part of a church where any part of it accepts gays? You’d have to ask a psychologist.
I’m an elder in the PCUSA. We’ve already been though this. I don’t think most people in the PCUSA feel strongly in either direction. But that led them to think they should allow the congregations that want gay elders to elect them. For most people this was basically a compromise.
But since we have many people who think it’s so important to the Gospel that they can’t live with a Church that allows it anywhere in the Church, it looks like we’ve made a radical commitment.
One thing that is a little unique in your polity is the local election of Elders and the local hiring of Pastors; though others are ordained, no church has to 'hire' a Gay pastor. In the UMC, Pastors are appointed. Some are concerned opening up ordination to gays would open them up to getting a gay Pastor appointed.
One proposed solution, for example, is to allow each annual conference to decide. As ordination is a matter for the annual conferences, individual annual conferences could choose not to ordain gays. Generally, Pastors are appointed within a specific annual conference so you wouldn't have the concern of a Gay pastor appointed to a non-affirming church. Though a Pastor ordained elsewhere could, I suppose, transfer to a non-affirming Annual Conference, I'm not sure; maybe they'd have specific rules and standards for appointment? But that would be unprecedented.
At the end of the day though, just like a very evangelical Pastor won't be appointed to a suburban reconciling church, the Bishop and the Cabinet are smart enough to navigate these muddy waters.
In the past, a fear of a Black Bishop caused the formation of our jurisdictional conferences. While unprecedented before, Jurisdictional conferences allows a small subset of annual conference to elect and appoint their own Bishops. It has some redeeming qualities (a Bishop from Texas isn't going to be appointed to serve in Alaska, for example). Some challenges (Texas is bigger than the rest of the conferences in the South-Central Jurisdiction, so almost every Bishop comes from Texas, almost without exception. Nearly every Bishop serving in this jurisdiction is from Texas.), but ultimately, it was borne out of a fear that a black Bishop might be appointed to supervise white Pastors. We've been through these challenges before, and we've found a way to compromise and make things work until the issue moved on.
To Circuitwriters question;
I have the same question. Even when I was as Evangelical as the next guy and felt the Bible clearly condemned homosexuality, I wondered why there was so much fascination with sex. I recall growing up in an Evangelical Southern Baptist household and watching war movies with lots of violence with my dad (his favorite genre) and the blood, guts, gore and language was fine, as was the shooting and the violence; but if there was a scene where a solider finds a lonely french maiden and they begin to kiss, I'd have to leave the room. And we're not talking inappropriate content here, we're talking about the usual censored "sex" shown in movies. Growing up, it was apparent sex was really, really bad; and nothing else was as bad.
As I've studied the issue (some), including with my undergraduate in Psychology and my fascination with that, I've discovered that has popped up more recently. It seems in the last few decades, sex and sexuality has become more and more of an issue. On all fronts. Even breasts! There was a time when woman would breastfeed in church; and not even "cover themselves up". (There are photographs online if you really want to venture out; old black and whites of women in the congregation breast feeding their children in the pews). And while homosexuality isn't new, it was much more 'hidden' in the past. I had a conversation with my Mom a couple of months ago, who is 23 years older than me (no surprises there, right?). In her generation, she didn't know any gay people. Except, she did, only she didn't find out until she was in her 30's. These people didn't "become gay" when they were older, they just wouldn't dare 'come out of the closet' in high school. In my generation, I knew several gay students. They were 'out' or at least 'partly out' (some knew, some didn't), so my generation was more exposed to this; which is why the millennial generation largely affirms homosexuality. We have been around people who have gone through the pain of 'coming out', some have been kicked out of their homes, even murdered (a young man in my town was killed by his stepdad when he came out), and we find they have the same feelings and struggles as us; just with a different gender. And we realize just how "Bull" "It's a choice" is because there's no way anybody would CHOOSE that, and every gay person I know went through at least a period of their life where they wanted nothing more than to be straight. So when faced with it, it's harder. We're also exposed to sex and sexuality a lot more so it's a little less 'scary' to us.
I'm not sure why there's so much obsession with sex and sexuality; but my theory is that homosexuality is coupled with that, and is a way to project our own self-loathing. We grow up believing sex is evil and bad and struggle with our own feelings of lust and sexuality; the staggering number of folks addicted to inappropriate contentography (notwithstanding the Ashley Madison numbers) sure tells us that there are a lot of straight people ashamed of at least parts of their own sexuality. I once heard a report from a hotel manager that said that when a local well-known evangelical gathering came to town, inappropriate contentography purchased on paperview skyrockets. So much that they would anticipate that, and give the group further discounts knowing they'd make it back on 'their cut' of the inappropriate content. And there are dozens of studies indicating that households and lifestyles that suppress sexuality have detrimental effects later in life. Some theorize that among the reason for the disproportionate number of Roman Catholic Priests involved in molestation cases may be in fact their total repression of sex and sexuality in a way that isn't healthy or the way God designed them.
Anyway; so you take ALL of this, lump it together, and then you find a nice scapegoat. A man or a woman who is already ashamed of their sexuality but they can't really hide it, like one can hide (for a while at least) an affair or a inappropriate content addiction or an inability to look away from an attractive woman (or man) walking by. A gay person can't really hide their sexuality (without either lying or being celibate) and by and large, they don't want to anymore. They'll simply reject and leave institutions that tell them they need to; like the church. So we put them on a pedestal, make that issue the greatest and most significant, and then that's our scapegoat for sexual impurity. I have my own demons, but HE is gay, and since I'll never be gay, that's not a sexual demon I'll ever have to deal with (in most cases, plenty of cases of gay-bashing male evangelical Pastors being caught in affairs with men. That's a whole other issue they need to deal with!). It's simply, a scapegoat.
That's why in the case of Kim Davis, she was fine issuing divorce paperwork, signing marriage licenses for folks in wedlock, who were married before, or other circumstances where I certainly wouldn't have married them (short term relationships, for example. I have had people who've known each other two weeks want to get married ASAP. Kim Davis would give them a license!). She herself has been divorced and has violated what is also just as clear (if not clearer) in the Bible. Jesus says in Matthew that to get married after being divorced is to commit adultery. But folks can gloss right over that on their way to Romans 1 to say that unequivocally, homosexuality is sin, the Bible says it, that's it? That's because the pitchfork wielding evangelicals have gotten divorced, and have otherwise been human, have experienced God's grace and understanding and don't believe they are committing adultery every moment of every day even though that's what a cursory glance at the English translations of the Bible will reveal to them (with every bit of clarity as the prohibitions against homosexuality, moreso infact.)
