Methodists drop same-sex marriage case against minister

NEW YORK – A United Methodist bishop on Monday dropped the case against a retired minister accused of breaking church law by officiating his son’s same-sex wedding – a dramatic decision that came just months after another minister was defrocked for the same reason.

The Rev. Thomas Ogletree, 80, a former dean of the Yale Divinity School, said he’s grateful his church had decided not to put him on trial for what he called “an act of pastoral faithfulness and fatherly love.”

Bishop Martin McLee, who made the announcement at a news conference in White Plains, a New York suburb, also called on church officials to stop prosecuting other pastors for marrying same-sex couples. The bishop said he would cease trials over the issue in the district he leads, which covers 462 churches in New York and Connecticut. Ogletree lives in Guilford, Conn.

The bishop later told the Associated Press that it was clear the minister, by conducting the same-sex rite, had “violated the Discipline” – as Methodists call their ecclesiastical laws.

But the bishop said the best way to deal with the case was to bring it to what he called “a just resolution. We didn’t dismiss the case – we resolved it.”

And then, he said, “the question was, do we go the punishment journey, or something more nuanced?”

McLee said the resolution was to ask Ogletree to participate in a public forum later this year – a broad discussion about divisions among Methodists over gay relationships and about how the church deals with human sexuality.

Ogletree’s was the second high-profile United Methodist case in recent months over same-sex relationships. In December, the Rev. Frank Schaefer, a minister from Pennsylvania, was defrocked after he officiated at his son’s same-sex wedding.

Schaefer welcomed Monday’s decision but noted it didn’t seem fair.

“Two United Methodist ministers are charged with the exact same ‘crime’ of officiating at their son’s same sex weddings – one is defrocked, the other one’s case is dropped without conditions,” he said in a statement.