PC(USA) to ordain gay clergy

I don't see this move as something good.

Isn't it a foregone conclusion that eventually every mainline Protestant denomination will ordain openly gay and lesbian ministers? I don't see how such a move could be resisted in the end without a radical deperature from the theology that has been mainstream and normative in liberal Protestantism for the last few decades (or centuries!). I'm surprised it's taking them so long. I say all this as a Catholic who firmly maintains Catholic teaching on the immorality of homosexual acts.

I don't know what the change will mean for LBGTQ Presbyterian ministers, but the change from "don't ask, don't tell" in the ELCA was a big deal for some people I know.  One of my seminary buddies dropped out of the program when he found the love of his life because it meant he would not be able to serve a congregation and he is just now (a decade or so later) going back to finish up his M.Div. to pursue his call.  My second cousin got married and had children just to pursue his call with the ELCA and when he came out he had to leave a decades-long successful ministry because the ELCA had not yet changed its policies.  He's been doing hospice and chaplaincy ever since because this doesn't require denominational support (in some cases you can "freelance"), though I suppose now he could go back to the ELCA if he really wanted to do so.  The NY Times recently ran an article which confirmed a piece of wisdom we all knew as seminarians - that since the 1960s, if you apply for a church position as a single man or woman, you are very unlikely to get the job because the hiring committee will assume it is likely that you are gay.  The article is written about evangelicals, but this was a piece of common wisdom among seminarians when I was in school.  If you're in your 30s and have never been married, kiss off getting a congregation because it isn't going to happen unless you're in a denomination that specifically approves gay ministers and the congregation is comfortable with having a gay pastor.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/us/22pastor.html

“ - yet it's the protestants that are just now ordaining gay ministers.”
 
O ye of so little knowledge, or, as this man put it:  “Never has there been so much knowledge and so little truth.”  Fulton J. Sheen
 
http://www.lgbtran.org/ProfilesGallery.aspx
 
The operative term in this article is that the Presbyterians are now validating what they have been doing for who knows how long.  The Catholics still haven't developed this sense of integrity about what everyone knows has, is and will continue to happen.

Jim -

As I mentioned in one of my previous comments (that the editors chose to delete), I'm aware that those who identify as homosexuals have been ordained in all churches. That's part of what struck me as funny: an article giving the impression that this is something new and different.

Thanks to PJ J's post, I understand how this change might affect Presby churches and their ministers.  But as priests are (cough-cough) chaste and celibate, what difference would a similar proclamation make in the Catholic Church?  I think the public's reaction would be somewhere between a yawn and surprise that it wasn't already part of the mandatory admission criteria.

The issue over unfair treatment of gay, lesbian and straight gender has been a hot debate in the country. Thus, to end this so called discrimination, Brenda S. ''Sue'' Fulton was assigned Tuesday by President Obama to the West Point Military Academy's Board of Visitors. The news appeared in a White House press release. Fulton is the very first publicly gay individual to get that honor. I found this here: Openly gay woman appointed to West Point Board of Visitors.