De Facto Local Option

There is much made of allowing for local options in ordaining of GLBT folk into the ministry of the church.

The ELCA (via predecessor bodies) has been ordaining women for almost 40 years. I still hear people say things like, "I don't know, I still prefer a man at the altar." A friend, who is a woman and an ordained minister who is doing interim work, recently told me that someone at her interim call told her, "You know, I would never have thought I'd like a woman pastor, but you're okay."

Since the structure of the ELCA is such that only local congregations call and ordain pastors (from a list of approved candidates for such call, of course), doesn't it appear that local congregations still, nearly 2 decades after the struggle for women's ordination, practice a de facto local option in denying women's ordination?

If a local option, thusly called, is decried as an admission to the lack of consensus, what do we make of these people and places that have still never called a woman as pastor? I'm speaking of the places that have not called a woman because she is a woman, not the places that would consider a woman, but found a man to be the better candidate at the moment. Is this not a silent lack of concensus? Is this not a de facto exercise of local option in ordination of women?

I think it would be difficult to say that the ordination of women has been a mistake. There are any number of gifted, called women of God doing the work of God in parishes, campus ministries, and all kinds of specialized ministries. But concensus on everyone accepting the ordination of women? This seems to be a lie.

So, it seems to me, is the need for consensus on the ordination of GLBT folk. There is no doubt that there are GLBT pastors who are already doing ministry. They do so under a cloak of silence and---yes---local option of bishops and other clergy who go along with the silence. All we're asking for now is the lifting of that cloak.