The LGBTQ+ Funding Ban is Finally Repealed in The UMC

The end of an all-too-long era.

On Tuesday, April 30th, 2024 at the General Conference in Charlotte, NC, USA, the worldwide body removed the funding ban on LGBTQ+ affirmative ministries and missions. The vote was 667-54.

The United Methodist Church has a long history of silence on LGBTQ programs and forbidding funding of anything that remotely offers affirmation and comfort to LGBTQ children. And learning that history brings much more weight to this action today.

History of The UMC Denying Ministry to LGBTQ persons

Barely a year after The United Methodist Church was created in 1968, the relationship between money and affirmation of LGBTQ persons came to the forefront with opposition to a student magazine that affirmed LGBTQ persons. From Jane Ellen Nickell’s book “We Shall Not Be Moved: Methodists debate Race, Gender, and Sexuality” chapter 4.

“In 1969, motive, the UMC’s student magazine, created controversy when it published an issue on women’s rights that included a discussion of lesbianism. United Methodist congregations and individuals threatened to withhold their apportionment dollars, and the denomination’s Board of Education, which published the magazine, withdrew its support. Without institutional funding, motive ceased publication, devoting its final two issues to gay rights.”

While the original language against LGBTQ persons came in 1972, a ban on denominational financing anything remotely affirming of LGBTQ persons came in 1976. It had three components:

1. Ordered the Council on Finance and Administration to “ensure that no board, agency, committee, commission, or council shall give United Methodist funds to any ‘gay’ caucus or group, or otherwise use such funds to promote the acceptance of homosexuality.”
2. Mandated “the use of resources and funds by boards and agencies only in support of programs consistent with the Social Principles of the Church.”
3. Prohibited “funds for projects favoring homosexual practices.”

The next General Conference in 1980 entertained discussion on prohibitions of gays and lesbians from being employed in church offices, and from using church spaces. These prohibitions were eventually voted down, but they speak to the desire of some to apply the funding ban to local church decisions.

The 2004 General Conference expanded the funding restrictions related to groups that promote the acceptance of homosexuality. Prior to 2004, these restrictions applied only to the national General Conference on Finance and Administration. However, following a complaint filed with the Judicial Council relating to annual conference funding for a ministry* with gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender persons in the New England Annual Conference (JC 491), the 2004 General Conference extended the prohibition to include annual conference councils on finance and administration. (*Full disclosure: I was a member of Cambridge Welcoming Ministries at this time.) The funding restriction would ultimately read:

“To ensure that no annual conference board, agency, committee, commission, or council shall give United Methodist funds to any gay caucus or group, or otherwise use such funds to promote the acceptance of homosexuality. The council shall have the right to stop such expenditures. This restriction shall not limit the Church’s ministry in response to the HIV epidemic, nor shall it preclude funding for dialogs or educational events where the Church’s official position is fairly and equally represented.”

Thus in Decisions 1081 and 1084, the Judicial Council ruled that the annual conference Councils on Finance and Administration (CF&A) are responsible for ensuring that no groups that promote the acceptance of homosexuality receive conference funding.

Finally in 2008, General Conference delegates voted to add an additional restriction for funds used for programs that would “violate the expressed commitment of The United Methodist Church ‘not to reject or condemn lesbian and gay members and friends.’” So they wouldn’t fund programs that directly affirm or directly deny the existence of LGBTQ persons.

(Editor’s note: sections of the above have been adapted from T.L. Steinwert’s 2009 Dissertation “Homosexuality and the United Methodist Church: An Ecclesiological Dilemma” at Boston University School of Theology).

Some Results of the Funding Ban

The effects of the funding ban were felt most strongly in education. The Ecumenical Campus Ministry at Ohio Northern University had its United Methodist funding cut because of involvement with the LGBTQ community. In 2005, the University Of Puget Sound’s UMeth campus ministry was brought up for judicial review because of their welcoming statement. It seems campus ministries were the most scrutinized and vulnerable to anyone with an anti-gay axe to grind. And curriculum development always had to tiptoe around anything gay-related.

There’s a checkered history with the impact of the funding ban and AIDS ministry. A previous version of this article included stronger language about the impact on AIDS ministries, but the comments offered needed correction about the many ministries with and for the AIDS community. Click here to read the most substantive comments from Nancy Carter.

In summary, Rev. Dr. T.L. Steinwert reflects in her 2009 dissertation (page 52):

The 1976 prohibition on funding initiated a movement toward silencing advocates for the full inclusion of homosexual persons. With the threat of denial of funds, this legislation censured those in local churches, annual conferences, seminaries and national church agencies who sought to talk about homosexuality from an affirming perspective. Citing incidents at St. Paul School of Theology, the United Methodist Board of Discipleship, the United Methodist Board of Church and Society, the Women’s Division of the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries, The United Methodist Reporter and the General Commission on the Status and Role of Women…this prohibition on funding “effectively stopped any real dialogue on homosexuality by silencing one side of the debate.” In each case, any discussion of homosexuality that strayed from a strict condemnation of the practice was censured through local church protests and actions taken by General Boards and Agencies.

United Methodist actions and inaction have contributed to a culture of fear and self-loathing by LGBTQ persons. We have been complicit and, in some cases, outright culpable of the harm and death caused by our inability to contribute.

There are places where the funding ban is an iron gate, and there are places where we can see the cracks. For example, a local church’s ministry had a grant denied by Discipleship Ministries because they had a statement of inclusion in their description. They removed it and it was affirmed the next year. But in 2019, the Missouri Annual Conference approved funding a “new ministry in new places” effort specifically for and with LGBTQ persons. A church in Arkansas rented one of its buildings to an LGBTQ youth shelter. The Oregon-Idaho Annual Conference had a staff person for LGBTQ ministries, which had to have a unique funding structure, and several annual conferences employ LGBTQ persons in annual conference positions. So, there was still a patchwork effect locally and at the regional level, even though the global structures continue to be banned from active ministry for and with LGBTQ persons.

While opponents of LGBTQ persons hide behind rhetoric and rationales, the reality is that United Methodist polity and funding bans have made us part of the reason organizations like the Trevor Project need to exist in the first place.

Good Riddance, Funding Ban

It was almost without fanfare that the vote to remove the ban was made. It was lumped in with other changes, so it passed with nary a glance by many people, except those who had tracked such things.

May we begin to dream again. May the decades of reticence and removal from efforts to save lives and increase self-worth be repented of and left in the wastebasket of history. May we become people that are able to say in LGBTQ+ affirming circles “I’m a proud United Methodist” again, maybe for the first time.

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