By PETER SMITH (Associated Press)

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — United Methodist delegates repealed their church’s longstanding ban on LGBTQ clergy with no debate on Wednesday, removing a rule forbidding “self-avowed practicing homosexuals” from being ordained or appointed as ministers.

Delegates voted 692-51 at their General Conference — the first such legislative gathering in five years. That overwhelming margin contrasts sharply with the decades of controversy around the issue. Past General Conferences of the United Methodist Church had steadily reinforced the ban and related penalties amid debate and protests, but many of the conservatives who had previously upheld the ban have left the denomination in recent years, and this General Conference has moved in a solidly progressive direction.

Applause broke out in parts of the convention hall Wednesday after the vote. A group of observers from LGBTQ advocacy groups embraced, some in tears. “Thanks be to God,” said one.

The change doesn’t mandate or even explicitly affirm LGBTQ clergy, but it means the church no longer forbids them. It’s possible that the change will mainly apply to U.S. churches, since United Methodist bodies in other countries, such as in Africa, have the right to impose the rules for their own regions. The measure takes effect immediately upon the conclusion of General Conference, scheduled for Friday.

The consensus was so overwhelmingly that it was rolled into a “consent calendar,” a package of normally non-controversial measures that are bundled into a single vote to save time.

Also approved was a measure that forbids district superintendents — a regional administrator — from penalizing clergy for either performing a same-sex wedding or for refraining from performing one. It also forbids superintendents from forbidding or requiring a church from hosting a same-sex wedding.

That measure further removes scaffolding around the various LGBTQ bans that have been embedded various parts of official church law and policy. On Tuesday, delegates had begun taking steps to dismantle such policies.

Delegates are also expected to vote as soon as today on whether to replace their existing official Social Principles with a new document that no longer calls the “practice of homosexuality … incompatible with Christian teaching” and that now defines marriage as between “two people of faith” rather than between a man and a woman.

The changes are historic in a denomination that has debated LGBTQ issues for more than half a century at its General Conferences, which typically meet every four years. On Tuesday, delegates voted to remove mandatory penalties for conducting same-sex marriages and to remove their denomination’s bans on considering LGBTQ candidates for ministry and on funding for gay-friendly ministries.

At the same time, it comes following the departure of one-quarter of the U.S. churches within the UMC. And it could also prompt departures of some international churches, particularly in Africa, where more conservative sexual values prevail and where same-sex activity is criminalized in some countries.

Last week, the conference endorsed a regionalization plan that essentially would allow the churches of the United States the same autonomy as other regions of the global church. That change — which still requires local ratification — could create a scenario where LGBTQ clergy and same-sex marriage are allowed in the United States but not in other regions.

More than 7,600 mostly conservative congregations in the United States disaffiliated between 2019 and 2023 reflecting dismay over the denomination not enforcing its bans on same-sex marriage and LGBTQ ordination.

The conference last week also approved the departure of a small group of conservative churches in the former Soviet Union.

The denomination had until recently been the third largest in the United States, present in almost every county. But its 5.4 million U.S. membership in 2022 is expected to drop once the 2023 departures are factored in.

The denomination also counts 4.6 million members in other countries, mainly in Africa, though earlier estimates have been higher.

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

By LISA MASCARO and KEVIN FREKING (Associated Press)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said Wednesday she would call a vote next week on ousting House Speaker Mike Johnson, forcing her colleagues to choose sides in a difficult showdown after Democratic leaders announced they would provide the votes to save the Republican speaker’s job.

Speaking outside the Capitol, Greene ranted against Republican Party leaders at the highest levels and pushed back against their public entreaties, including from Donald Trump, to avoid another messy political fight so close to the November election. With her was Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., one of the few lawmakers to join her effort.

“We need leaders in the House of Representatives that are going to get this done,” said Greene, R-Ga., holding up a red “MAGA” hat from Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign movement.

“Mike Johnson is not capable of that job,” she said.

In pressing ahead next week, she said that “every member of Congress needs to take that vote.”

The standoff with Greene, one of Trump’s most enthusiastic supporters, risks throwing Republican control of the House into a fresh round of chaos as rank-and-file lawmakers will have to choose between ousting Johnson, R-La., as speaker or joining with Democrats to keep him on the job.

Johnson, in his own statement, said Greene’s move was “wrong for the Republican Conference, wrong for the institution, and wrong for the country.”

Democrats see in Johnson a potential partner, a hard-line conservative who nevertheless is willing to lead his Republican Party away from the far-right voices obstructing the routine business of governing, including funding the government and, more recently, supporting Ukraine and other U.S. allies overseas.

The Democratic leader, New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, and his team issued a joint statement this week saying it was time to “turn the page” on the GOP chaos, announcing that the Democrats would vote to table Greene’s motion to vacate the speaker’s office, essentially ensuring Johnson is not evicted from office.

Johnson’s public opponents are few, at this point, and less than the eight that it took to oust now-former Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., last fall in the first ever removal of sitting speaker from the powerful office that is second in the line of succession to the president. Just one other Republican, Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona, has joined Greene’s effort.

Greene and Massie said they were giving their colleagues the weekend to weigh their options before calling for the vote on her motion to vacate next week. Or, they said, Johnson could simply resign, pointing to the example of a previous speaker, Republican John Boehner of Ohio, who stepped aside in 2015 when hard-liners threatened to oust him.

“Are you going to embrace Hakeem Jeffries like Mike Johnson has?” said Massie, before a poster-photo of Jeffries handing Johnson the gavel when the Republican first became speaker last fall.

“They’ve got a weekend to think about it, but more importantly, Mike Johnson has a weekend to think about it.”

The turmoil has gripped a House already essentially at a standstill. Johnson has been unable to command his razor-thin majority to work together on party priorities and has been forced him into the arms of Democrats for the votes needed to approve most big bills — and now, to keep his job.

Johnson had been elected by Republicans as a last-ditch consensus candidate after McCarthy’s ouster, but he courted the far-right’s ire when he led passage of the $95 billion foreign aid package for Ukraine and U.S. allies that they oppose.

Trump has given a nod of support to Johnson, who dashed to the former president’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida last month to shore up backing.

Other Republican leaders, including Trump’s hand-picked head of the Republican National Committee, Michael Whatley, have urged House Republicans to hold off the removal effort before the fall election that will determine which party controls the White House and Congress.

In a private meeting Tuesday, Whatley urged House Republicans to unite around their shared priorities. He delivered the same message later in the day to Greene, telling her that trying to remove Johnson was not helpful, according to a person familiar with the conversations who was not authorized to discuss them publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

While the Democratic leaders have said they would provide the votes to table Greene’s motion when it comes forward, essentially shelving it, it is not clear that all Democratic lawmakers would join that effort.

At their own private meeting this week, some Democrats objected to helping Johnson, particularly after he helped lead Trump’s legal challenges to the 2020 presidential election won by Democrat Joe Biden. Party leaders have said their support for sidelining Greene’s resolution is not the same as a vote for Johnson.

The Gophers football team’ revolving door at wide receiver continued spinning on Tuesday.

Dallas Sims, a true freshman from Clearwater, Fla., said he was entering the NCAA transfer portal after only one semester at the U. Sims was an early enrollee at Minnesota for spring semester and went though spring practices.

Sims is the second receiver to enter the portal this week. Emporia State transfer Jaylen Varner exited on Monday, with Georgia transfer Tyler Williams entering on April 23.

During this portal window, the Gophers have had six players exit and five players enter.

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In an otherwise strong State of the Union address this March, President Joe Biden breathed new life into a term the immigrant rights movement has spent years pushing out of the Democratic vocabulary. He was stumbling over a sentence; right-wing Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene was heckling him from the audience about a young woman in Georgia who’d allegedly been killed the month prior by a non-U.S. citizen. Apparently parroting Greene, Biden confirmed that the woman, Laken Riley, had been killed “by an illegal.” 

Backlash was swift from pro-immigrant Congress members and advocates who’ve long fought for the idea that “No human being is illegal.” (For what it’s worth, the alleged killer had reportedly been released into the country through a stopgap parole mechanism.) “The rhetoric President Biden used tonight was dangerously close to language from Donald Trump that puts a target on the backs of Latinos everywhere,” warned San Antonio Congressman Joaquin Castro.

The president went on television two days later to acknowledge he should have used a more respectful word like “undocumented,” describing such rhetorical choices as a “difference between Trump and [him].” Asked point-blank if he regretted his wording, he said yes. But—after Biden’s apparent apology was mocked by Trump and the GOP U.S. House speaker—a White House spokesperson insisted at a press briefing, “The president absolutely did not apologize.”

At best, Biden’s use of a retrograde xenophobic insult could have occasioned a sincere apology and a forceful insistence on the basic fact that undocumented immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than the native-born. But the president’s PR shop felt it more important to (unsuccessfully) avoid looking soft on unauthorized immigration. This decision was but a minor example of Biden’s overall reelection strategy of shifting right on immigration to try to neutralize his opponent’s top issue. 

The real crisis is that we are perilously close to abandoning the dream of bringing our neighbors “out of the shadows.”

It’s all a far cry from 2020, when Democrats had polarized leftward on immigration and then-candidate Biden spoke boldly of restoring “our historic role as a safe haven for refugees and asylum-seekers” and called migrants “an irrefutable source of our strength.” On taking office, Biden paused deportations and submitted to Congress a desperately needed reform proposal including increased visas and a path to legalization for the nation’s 11 million undocumented residents. But, despite campaign pledges, he never threw his weight behind the bill. Eventually, as the pandemic waned worldwide, arrivals at the U.S.-Mexico border increased, GOP fear-mongering accelerated, and polling showed the public somewhat reverting to nativist alarmism. With reelection looming, Democrats began throwing 2020 positions overboard, retreating to more hawkish views common in the party pre-Trump.

Early this year, Biden spied a political opening. He caved to a GOP congressional ploy to pair unrelated foreign aid with a border crackdown, embracing a bipartisan Senate bill over strenuous objections from Latino Democratic senators. The bill would have profoundly undermined asylum law by granting the president a convoluted new power to shut down the border, while generally raising the bar for securing asylum. Unlike previous attempts at “comprehensive immigration reform,” the measure did not even offer citizenship to the so-called Dreamers—immigrants brought as children who’ve often known no other home. “Democrats have really ceded a lot of ground to the Republican position,” one advocate told Al Jazeera in February.

To the seeming delight of Biden world, Republicans ultimately killed the bill, giving the president a talking point he’s since treated like a rented mule: It is the GOP, in fact, who won’t secure the border. As Politico reported in March, “The president’s team believes [it’s been able] to neutralize the political backlash Biden was facing and even reap some benefits in the polls.”

This cynical gambit may or may not work. It will be difficult to steal Trump’s border-crackdown thunder, but Biden probably sees a no-lose situation because pro-immigrant voters have nowhere else to go. If reelected, Trump would likely hand the immigration keys to his top nativist advisor Stephen Miller, who’s been planning what he calls “the most spectacular migration crackdown.” Meanwhile, Dems are letting robust pro-immigrant arguments go to rust and possibly undermining long-term chances for enduring reform.

Take, for example, Dallas Democratic Congressman Colin Allred, now running to unseat GOP Senator Ted Cruz. Allred has vaulted atop the border-hawk bandwagon, signing on to a misleading Republican-led House resolution in January denouncing Biden’s “open-borders policies.” Last fall, he went so far as to praise Biden’s decision to build 20 miles of noncontiguous border wall in South Texas’ Starr County, a move that the president himself described as pointless but out of his hands to stop. 

It’s sad enough for a Texas politician to promote the forced taking of Texans’ private property to build pointless bits of wall, but Allred’s move was also politically hackish. In 2018, he’d called the border wall “racist” and said his generation would “tear it down”—comments the Cruz campaign has predictably used to call out Allred’s “cowardly flip-flopping strategy.” 

Meanwhile, Democratic mayors in the North have made matters worse. Starting in 2022, Texas Governor Greg Abbott began busing migrants to out-of-state blue cities, a gambit to troll so-called sanctuary cities. Fearing local backlash, these panicked mayors have played into Abbott’s hands, with Eric Adams even claiming the arrivals would “destroy New York City.” 

There are, of course, some bright spots within the Democratic Party, including Latino Congress members from Texas’ big cities: San Antonio’s Castro, El Paso’s Veronica Escobar, Greg Casar of Austin, and Sylvia Garcia in Houston. 

But the overall debate has devolved to the point that some Dems could stand to crib a few lines from Texas Republicans of yore. Contradictory policies notwithstanding, George W. Bush described the undocumented in 2006 as “decent people who work hard, support their families, practice their faith, and lead responsible lives,” and Rick Perry said of Dreamers in 2001: “We don’t care where you come from, but where you are going, and we are going to do everything we can to help you get there.” 

Yes, Trump killed that strain of Republican politics. But Trump is also one of history’s small men. The question of human freedom of movement is enormous and will outlast this man who presently warps our nation’s moral compass. 

In 2017, thousands in Dallas joined the “Immigration Reform Mega March,” an homage to a 2006 march that drew out half a million participants. (Gus Bova)

We live in an era of mass migration fueled by war, climate change, and post-pandemic economic crisis, along with ease of international travel and communication. Long past 2024, America’s leaders will face a fundamental dilemma: Deterring migrants from seeking U.S. safety and prosperity requires measures that are cruel, expensive, and possibly illegal under international law. Outsourcing our border enforcement to Mexico, as Biden has begun attempting, may seem to work for a time but is amoral and unsustainable. Moving beyond the model of deterrence is the true challenge, and liberal leaders should be wedded to that cause. 

The federal asylum process—just one small corner of the immigration system—is indeed outdated, but the odds of Congress justly reforming it while today’s Republicans control the House are nil. And to risk gutting it without even legalizing the undocumented is ethical negligence. Our leaders need not always tail our worst instincts but may call us to our best. Any Texan, in particular, can cast propaganda aside and simply look around to see that our state is built, maintained, and improved every day by unauthorized workers. These same laborers send money back home, transforming their families’ lives, in quantities that make a laughingstock of any foreign aid program the United States even contemplates. 

The real crisis is that we are perilously close to abandoning the dream of bringing our neighbors “out of the shadows.” It is that what good steps Biden has taken on immigration—through executive action—can be immediately undone by a reelected Trump. It is that we could be demagogued into losing one of the things that makes this country, born of indelible sin, worth a damn: our fragile yet tenacious understanding that we are a nation of immigrants.