As if the United Methodist Church doesn't have enough doctrinal confusion abounding, from homosexuality, witchcraft, feminist theology, to the general heretical ramblings of errant bishops, now the denomination must deal with pastors who are ordained as a man and then suddenly "become a woman" seeking appointment as if nothing had changed!

Oh, that battle is over, you say?  Yeah, right, and the Council of Bishops will be making definitive statements supporting the inerrancy of Scripture soon.  Sorry, but this isn't reality in the UMC today.

If you need background on this story, read this from the United Methodist News Service, which addressed the controversy (printed months after it was being reported elsewhere).  And here's the story from a more straightforward point of view.

Then, less than one month after UMNS admitted that the story existed, the story was already over (much to the delight of the UMC leadership).  Yes, the transsexual pastor had bowed out of the battle, thus saving the denomination from an embarrassing ordeal.

My reaction after reading the above articles left me wondering; maybe I have an overactive imagination, but it appeared to me that there was much more to this story than was being reported.  Well, then came the investigative report by the Washington Post, and as you see (excerpts below), indeed, there was a lot of shenanigans going on behind closed doors.

In summary, I think that the liberal UMC leadership, although eager to push the envelope for the GBLT lobby, they looked at this particular transsexual and saw trouble coming their way.

An Identity Gained, a Ministry Lost -- Pastor's Revelation Put Church in Quandary

By Bill Broadway
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 14, 2002; Page C01

The fall 1999 meeting went as well as could be expected.  Bishop Felton Edwin May was "very compassionate, understanding," the pastor recalled.  The two agreed on a plan, which was to be kept secret.  [Rev. Richard A.] Zomastny would continue as pastor at the Rockville church for the remainder of the year, then take a medical leave of absence.  No date was set for a return to active ministry.

But the central question was not addressed:  Would Zomastny be able to return after being transgendered into Rebecca Ann Steen?  The Book of Discipline, the equivalent of the canon law of the United Methodist Church, is silent on the issue.  There was no precedent -- the church had never appointed an openly transgendered person to a pastoral position.

The tortuous debate evolved over three years, often behind closed doors.  Some wondered whether a sex change made their pastor a different person, thus invalidating their baptism or marriage (the answer is no).  An e-mail campaign was orchestrated to prevent the pastor's appointment.  And there was an even larger quandary for the 206,000-member Baltimore-Washington Conference:  "What do we do next time?"

The conference's ministry board, charged with assessing the fitness of the clergy, twice approved Steen's return from leave -- most recently in May.  But a last-minute complaint filed by a church Zomastny left four years ago convinced the pastor that fighting the forces opposed to having a transgendered pastor in the pulpit would be too costly.

"It would have only caused more division, more hatred, more harm," Steen said in her first interview since she resigned last month.  "I love my church, and I don't want to hurt it.  I also have a family that I need to care about and protect.  They've been through a lot."

After her sex-change operation, in May 2000 in Thailand, she hoped to be ready for reappointment July 1, the beginning of the church year.

But for Bishop May, that expectation was unrealistic, given the virtually unexplored subject of transgendered pastors and the opposition he knew would be mounted by some ministers and lay leaders.

May, 67, the conference's first African American bishop and a human rights advocate, would not comment on conversations he had with Steen or any other clergy members, citing confidentiality.  But he did say it was naive for Steen "to expect the church to respond almost instantaneously" to a decision that took her years to make.

Steen said her relationship with May began to sour after two incidents.  First, one of her children told someone about her father's decision to transgender.  Word got back to the Rockville church and caused an uproar.  May told Steen she would have to leave immediately.

Then, last year, after the board of ordained ministry first approved her reappointment, May asked her to remain on leave of absence "for the benefit of the conference."

Steen, whose most recent pastor salary had been $53,000, including a housing allowance, told the bishop that her extended leave had been a financial burden.  Since 1999, she hadn't received any income from the conference and had worked various jobs, including as assistant manager at a KFC.

She was unemployed, and May said he "would help me find a job," Steen said.  He told her to call the church's missionary office in New York, where Steen was told there might be a temporary job in Angola.  "I said to myself, 'No . . . Angola is not a good place for a transgendered woman to be.' "

Steen said she was willing to take any job with the conference, even secretarial, but none came.  Then, she said, she got angry and made out a bill for the hours she figured she was owed.

"The bishop was furious and said I was trying to extort money," that the conference "is not an employment agency," Steen recalled.

The conference cabinet -- May and nine superintendents he appoints -- voted to give Steen a one-time grant of $2,500. "I was grateful.  It paid the bills," said Steen, who then got another job with KFC.

May said members of the conference "knocked themselves out to be fair and just," spending countless hours on transgenderism when there are other issues to be addressed, such as racism, drugs, violence and AIDS.

[whatever happened to the Great Commission?]

"I get a little peeved, as a person who stands against injustice, to be accused of being the first to kick her in the head," May said.  "I do seek to be pastoral, supportive.  But at some point I must be administrative."

May had others to deal with.  One was Morris Hawkins, conference president of United Methodist Men.  He is an ardent opponent of transgendered pastors and believes they "should not be allowed in the pulpit."

"That type of person . . . is a distraction in our culture," Hawkins said.  "It cannot bring glory to God."

Last spring, Hawkins wrote an e-mail "detailing the Rebecca Steen story and asking for help in how to stem the tide."  The e-mail was forwarded to more than 1,000 clergy and lay people registered for the conference's convention in June.  Many were unaware of the board's decision approving Steen's return from leave, he said, and he was afraid May would quietly appoint her to an unsuspecting congregation.

"The bishop called me into his office . . . and dressed me down royally for an hour and a half, calling me disloyal and to stop sticking my nose into personnel matters," recalled Hawkins, a lay member.  "It was quite demeaning."

Just before this year's convention, Hawkins and others contacted church members and the media about the likelihood of Steen's appointment -- unless an obstacle arose.

That obstacle, a complaint against Steen by a former secretary, appeared in May's office the first day of the conference and put Steen's appointment on hold pending an investigation.

Meanwhile, the cabinet brought its own charges.  In a June 17 letter, Steen was accused of "breaking of the covenant with the Bishop and the Cabinet" and "pressure to secure funds from the Conference."

Steen called the letter "so vague it was unbelievable."  She assumes the second charge has to do with her efforts to get financial support from the conference but is unsure what the first charge means.

She had a chance to respond at a hearing with May and other officials June 28.  Instead, she read her letter of resignation.

May said there was "unexpected surprise" in the room, then regret but also a sense of relief.

Copyright 2002 The Washington Post Company

From the reports made public, I would venture an opinion that in the beginning Felton May was ambivalent when the troubled pastor presented to May that he was considering a sex change operation.  Most significant is what's glaringly missing from the story told by the pastor to the Post:  There's no indication that May saw a need for the pastor to delay, or reconsider the self-mutilating surgery; May apparently didn't even recommend any kind of consultation for the pastor.  You would think that a clergyperson would be adamant about counseling for anyone considering such a radical, irreversible procedure that would completely change the person's life.

No, according to the pastor's comments to the Post's investigative reporter, Felton May's noteworthy response to the bombshell from the pastor, that he would have his body mutilated, was that "Bishop Felton Edwin May was 'very compassionate, understanding' . . . [and that he] agreed on a plan, which was to be kept secret."  There's no record that Felton May had any concern about the pastor's procedure, but rather only that he was concerned that no one else know about the plan.

Why would May react this way to the pastor's life-changing decision?  If May felt no aversion to the surgery of his pastor, why would he want the surgery to be kept secret?

I think it's obvious that May wanted to keep his cards close to his chest so that he could play them as he would choose, one at a time, at some later date.

Certainly, this secrecy was of no advantage to the pastor.  Once the surgery was completed, everyone would know of the pastor's sad story.  No, the secrecy was not in the interest of the pastor, but rather in the interest of Felton May and his fellow sexual revolutionaries in the UMC.

No doubt, May was eager to press the transsexual issue into the UMC arena since the gay-bisexual-lesbian portion of the GBLT was already entrenched in an endless dialogue within the UMC, but the "T" was the missing element.  This eagerness was enough for May to encourage the pastor to proceed with the mutilating surgery.  The secrecy was to May's advantage in that he didn't have to commit himself to any specific strategy in the soon-to-be transsexual appointment battle.

Notice the chronology of the story:  The May secrecy plan was concocted late in 1999, and the horrific surgery was completed by May of 2000, and the pastor was looking for Felton May to provide an appointment for him/her for July 2000.  This was simply too fast for May and his sexual revolutionaries to get their ducks in a row; they told the pastor (who by now must have been in a confused mental state, given the mutilation) to slow down in his/her expectations.

Soon after the inception of Felton May's scheme in 1999, the house of cards began to fall, as noted in the Post article, the secrecy was lost even before the planned commencement of the medical leave, and no doubt May was already loosing confidence in the pastor's ability to "play the game" well.  Anyone familiar with the radical liberal movement in the mainline churches knows that a certain conniving skill is required to be a key player in the plan to rid the church of all traditional doctrine.

Again, isn't it pitiful that May didn't immediately abandon his monstrous plan to use this confused pastor as a pawn in the liberal movement PRIOR to the mutilating surgery.  But no, May let the pastor (with no evidence of counseling) continue with the surgery, even though May was probably planning to jettison the pastor from the conference, if the pastor ever made it back from Thailand with his/her senses intact.

Felton May's dilemma took a turn against him in mid-2000, as the pastor was able to maintain a reasonable appearance of functionality, which put May in the position of having to deal with him/her.  May had made a de facto commitment to the pastor to appoint him/her to a church, and now May knew that this would not fly in the UMC anytime soon, but May's biggest challenge wasn't so much the task of bringing transsexual appointments to the forefront in the liberal take-over of the denomination, rather, the challenge was the caliber of the transsexual candidate with which May had to work.  May could see that this pastor just wasn't the guy/gal that he wanted as ammunition in the war.

As with all devious schemes, an elaborate cover-up was necessary.  The pastor kept calling May to live up to his "word" and give him/her an appointment.  May's first reaction was to ship him/her off to the other side of the earth!  The pastor wouldn't buy that one.  So, May attempted to quell the pastor by paying him/her off with various employment assistance.  As the Post article describes, when the pastor took May to the obvious next step, by presenting a formal invoice for services rendered, the conference anted up, and used God's money to pay off the pawn.

Finally, after a lost two years for the pastor (and confused sexuality for life), Felton May's house of cards was nothing but a pile of rubble in only a matter of days.  The truth of the scheming came to light, so that all could see the shenanigans.  Then May and his cohorts saw the impending national scandal descending, and so they weaved a final piece into the web of deceit:  They charged the pastor with disobedience in order to avoid having to make an appointment.

To everyone else's great relief, the pastor fell on his/her own sword and thus spared his/her executioners of the dirty deed.