DIOCESE ADOPTS RESOLUTION ON GAYS

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, February 3, 1992                   TAG: 9202030085
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: CODY LOWE RELIGION WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
DIOCESE ADOPTS RESOLUTION ON GAYS
Southwest Virginia Episcopalians decided to "proclaim our inability to call same-sex sexual orientation a sin" and found money to help substantially restore funding to the Grace House coalfields ministry in the closing session of their Annual Council in Blacksburg Sunday.
By a vote of 85-68, council members adopted an amended resolution, brought by James A. Hancock Jr. of Trinity Church in Buchanan, on sexual orientation. Just as the national church, in its general council last summer, could not find consensus on issues of homosexuality, the Southwest Virginia council couldn't decide whether to label homosexual orientation as sin.
The resolution cited studies pertaining to homosexuals and on the biological and psychological origins of sexual orientation. Opponents pleaded that definitions of sin should be left to the Bible and not to studies and surveys. However, the resolution - once gutted of references to medical and psychological study of homosexuality - was finally passed.
A resolution submitted by the vestry of Emmanuel Church in Covington sought to prohibit ordination of people "who practice, believe or teach that sexual relationships outside of the bonds of Holy Matrimony are acceptable." A substitute motion calling for continued national study of that issue failed on grounds that such a study is ongoing in the national church.
A second resolution from the Emmanuel vestry, saying that attempts at inclusive language in church had gone too far, was defeated as well.
Grace House - a social-justice and educational ministry in Wise County - got its first good news Friday night when diocesan Bishop A. Heath Light announced that the agency has received a $10,000 grant from the Coalition for Human Need, a national church agency.
The ministry was one of the programs substantially cut in the proposed $745,000 budget. The other was the Virginia Tech and Radford University campus ministry of the Rev. Rod Sinclair.
Sinclair is now continuing his ministry at Virginia Tech as a part-time employee of Christ Church, Blacksburg.
Grace House was the beneficiary of a couple of actions by the council over the weekend. More than $8,000 was designated from late pledges to the diocese and from earnings from the diocese's Southwestern Virginia Endowment Fund.
The Grace House program includes direct action - such as repairing the homes of the poor - community and economic development, education and advocacy for the poor.
In other action, the council:

Rejected a proposal to remove $9,000 from the diocese's $193,000 pledge to the national church and divert the funds to a Radford campus ministry.
Though some delegates saw the campus ministry as a fulfillment of national church emphasis on evangelism, others, including Light, opposed any such diversion of funds.

Voted to establish a fund to provide scholarships to youths who are financially unable to attend diocese functions.
The fund will be named for the late Philip G. Brown, who had been chaplain at the Episcopal Boy's Home in Covington. He died last month.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB