To the Editor:

In reply to several letters, I do not plan to recuse myself from anything. ANY Presbyterian who has been thoughtful about these issues over the last 25 years will have an opinion one way or the other. If our Permanent Judicial Commissions are supposed to be made of people with "no opinion" then we won't have ANYONE to serve on them!

Second, I am correct when I state "homosexuality in itself is not against our Book of Order." BEING GAY is not; the reason Amendment B is wrong is that it addresses ACTING BY SEXUAL BEHAVIOR, not "being."

Third, the person who says "where was I" in this argument. I have been here from the beginning, I was an advocate for the Amendment A which did not pass, and had a major hand in writing the Hair case.

I am amazed that people seem so upset at my "tone", but NO ONE says anything about the "tone" set ACROSS OUR DENOMINATION by Mr. Jensen, who is destroying people's lives and spirits, and also by the "tone" set by those who now call for another "General Assembly" because they were not happy with the first. I wish I had thought about calling another GA as an "emergency" when they passed Amendment B to begin with! That's the way to deal with this! If you are not happy, re-do the whole thing! But no one who was disappointed in Amendment B did that, because we BELIEVE in our process and trust the spirit to work, eventually.

I make no apologies for being honest in my letter, I stand by it ALL. For years and years our church has called us to be honest and be in dialogue. That's exactly what I am doing.

Barbara Hager, minister
Bridgeport, CT