Photo: Mike DuBose, UM News via Religion News Service

Last week, the United Methodist denomination put a hitch in its slow process of tearing itself apart over the long-ago-ridiculous notion of trying to moderate, regulate and legislate how people fall in love.

In a vote that went 3-1, the remaining United Methodist churches (7,600 churches have already left the denomination over this issue) “removed the last barriers to full equality of LGBTQ+ members in the life of the church”.  I wonder if the vote would have passed if those 7,600 churches hadn’t already bailed out.

A win for the good guys, right?  Hang on.

The United Methodist Church is a worldwide church and although its rules are global, churches in individual countries are not happy.  Said one woman from the hilariously paradoxically named country of the Democratic Republic of the Congo:

“In American society, (homosexuality) is OK. In my country it is not. Our church will have a problem if they put this in the Book of Discipline.”

Who someone is drawn into romantic love is not governed by the imaginary lines we draw in the sand; it is what we here in America call an “inalienable right” NOT because it’s outside of the right of government to regulate it, but rather because it is inseparable from the condition of being human.

When will people learn that there is nothing you can do to stop people from feeling romantic love?  Nothing.  It’s going to happen regardless of the feeble rules we lay down. The evidence of this truth is overwhelming and incontrovertible.  Any such rules are laughably both intended to comply with the will of the gods and in direct contradiction to those laws.  Humans have built into them the ability to fall in love.  If the gods didn’t want two people to fall in love for whatever reason, it would not have happened.  Ever.  And yet, it does.  Over and over again.  Despite all this evidence, organizations continue to maintain the arrogant position that they can and should insert themselves into the role of god-will-guessers and god-will-enforcers.  It’s pathetically weak, even when their guess happens to coincide with my worldview.

I cannot for the life of me imagine why anyone would want to be part of a religion that wantonly claims this role to the point of having the audacity to limit even one single person’s pursuit of romantic love. Any such organization is not a religion.  Even the vote, which people are lauding, is offensive on the surface.  It came with no apology, no remorse, no mea culpa.  As a matter of fact, the denomination in the same weekend voted to restructure itself for the specific purpose of allowing certain of its regions to continue the assault on human nature and happiness.

Have we really gotten to the point in our culture where an institution’s decision to stop persecuting a group of people is something that warrants applause?

One small step for mankind.  I think not.  More of the same, just slightly more agreeable.