Methodism

One of the earliest leaders among the movement for LGBT+ inclusion within the Methodist Church was Gene Leggett, a gay pastor. Pastor Leggett, who had been raised in the church, had married a woman during his first year of seminary, and who had parented three children, still came under suspicion of homosexuality. In 1965, one of his suspicious parishioners hired a private detective to follow Pastor Leggett, and, based on the report provided by the detective, Leggett was outed to his church's office. He was told that his secret would be kept if he left the church voluntarily and took up a non-pastoral vocation - an arrangement Pastor Leggett agreed to.

The Methodist Church began to reckon with LGBT+ issues more directly in 1971, when Pastor Leggett came out to his family and his friends in a heartfelt letter. He wrote:

I am a homosexual. This is not some new and frightening facet in my personality. I am still the same Gene Leggett you have always known. 

You may read the rest of his letter within the Archives Network here.

Pastor Leggett was subsequently barred from ministerial service. However, he would not be silenced. In line with the Shower of Stoles, his own liturgical garments figured into his protests: at the Southwest Annual Conference, he would, during the ordination service, stand near the front of the hall with his stole binding his mouth and head as a metaphorical gag. He coordinated similar symbolic action to protest fellow activist and minister Rick Huskey's defrocking. Together, Leggett and Huskey coordinated The United Methodist Gay Caucus, which would eventually transform into Affirmation: United Methodists for Lesbian and Gay Concerns, an organization dedicated to LGBT+ inclusion within Methodism. 

LGBTQ Religious Archives Network project coordinator Mark Bowman was instrumental in Methodist LGBT+ movements, serving on Affirmation's coordinating committee and as a volunteer coordinator and co-founder (alongside Beth Richardson) for the Reconciling Congregation Project, formed in 1983. He also worked on the Methodist publication Open Hands (originally called Manna for the Journey, but subsequently renamed). The LGBTQ Religious Archives Network features an online exhibit of the entire run of Open Hands, where each issue of this beautiful and radical publication may be downloaded and read. The magazine is educational and thought-provoking, excellent reading to this very day. 

The Rev. Paul Abels was a leader within LGBT+ activism as well. He performed covenant ceremonies for same-sex couples, and, after being ordained and called to service at Washington Square UMC in 1973, came out as gay. However, the Judicial Council of the UMC stated that Abels was still "in good standing," and he was not removed from his position. 

Within this digital exhibit of the Shower of Stoles, two stoles - those belonging to Rusty Moore and Sterling Rainey - mention Jimmy Creech's trials, pivotal incidents in the LGBT+ rights movement within Methodism. In July, 1996, Jimmy Creech was appointed as the senior pastor of a United Methodist church in Omaha, Nebraska. Two years later, he was acquitted in a church trial after being accused of flouting United Methodist disciplinary standards by performing a covenant ceremony for two women. However, Nebraska's bishop would not allow Creech to stay in his position at Omaha, so Creech took an enforced leave of absence from the ministry. In April of 1999, Creech celebrated a covenant ceremony between two men. Yet again, he was targeted by charges of violating United Methodist standards, and this time, he was found guilty. He was stripped of his ordination and removed from ministry.

However, Creech was not silenced. He became a chairperson of the Board of Directors of Soulforce, described in his biographic profile as "an inter-religious movement using the principles of nonviolent resistence, taught and practiced by Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., to confront the spiritual violence perpretrated against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons by religious institutions." He co-founded Faith in America, Inc., an organization which has subsequently been absorbed into the Tyler Clementi Foundation. In May, 2009, he became one of twenty-four authors of the Dallas Principles, a set of guiding ideas designed to structure a push for LGBT+ civil rights.