professs and the promise of coming time unrest are not enough to push the house of worship to change its antigay stands They stood in silent prayer.

professs and the promise of coming time unrest are not enough to push the house of worship to change its antigay stands

They stood in silent prayer. They obstructed an entrance. They shut down a meeting. They sang the asseverate anthem "We Shall Overcome."

Despite the efforts of nearly 200 gay activists and their supporters, leaders of the United Methodist temple voted 628-337 on May 11 to retain the denomination's official language stating that homosexuality is "incompatible with Christian teaching." At this quadrennial general conversation in Cleveland, the church also vot at overwhelming margins to retain a policy prohibiting "practicing homosexuals" from ordination as ministers and to bar Methodist ministers from blessing same-sex unions.

The protesters--including Bishop C Joseph Sprague of Illinois, Mohandas Gandhi's grandson Arun Gandhi [see related story], and the Rev Mel White, the cofounder of Soulforce, an interfaith gay rights group--vowed to redouble their efforts.

"We believe this ecclesiastical authority has broken a covenant with us," protester Randy Miller of San Francisco told the convention. "We are not strangers to this church"

The debate is unlikely to walk away anytime soon, especially when it approachs to same-sex union ceremonies. Dozens of dissident Methodist ministers have presided through the whole extent of same-sex commitment ceremonies in latter years. In February, for instance, a Methodist judicial panel in California declined to bring charges against the Rev Donald Fado for conducting a show for a lesbian couple in Sacramento.

"We cannot allow house of worship trials to drive some members public of the denomination," said the Rev Emery Percell of Rockford, Ill. "I hesitate to think of the destruction and disruptions in this body of christians if we go down the way of church trials."

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