Last weekend, the United Church of Canada (the country’s largest Protestant denomination) was sworn in as moderator Rev Gary Paterson - thought to be the first openly gay person to head a major Christian denomination anywhere in the world.

In a historic vote, the United Church of Canada has elected its first openly gay moderator.

After six ballots and nearly eight hours of voting at the church’s 41st general council in Ottawa Thursday, Rev. Gary Paterson emerged from a record field of 15 candidates to win the top job at Canada’s largest Protestant church. He is thought to be the first openly gay person to head any mainstream Christian denomination.

The 350 voting commissioners at the general council greeted the announcement with cheers and a prolonged standing ovation, and quickly voted to make Paterson’s election unanimous.

Read more: Ottawa Citizen

As the Anglican communion continues to struggle with its divisions over gay bishops, and other denominations wrestles with the issue of even admitting any gay or lesbian clergy, it’s worth taking some time to digest the importance of this remarkable achievement.

There have always been people in the Church who have experienced same - sex relationships, including popes, bishops, abbots and abbesses, saints and martyrs. But by the middle of the last century, after eight centuries of active persecution initiated by the Inquisition with the burning of sodomites, continued by secular governments under the guise of religious belief, and culminating in the Nazi Pink Holocaust, such people dared not be open about their sexuality. In Europe and North America, homosexual activities no longer resulted in execution, but it did carry heavy criminal penalties: possible life imprisonment was still on the statute books in many American states, the social stigma that followed could destroy careers, and some people chose suicide rather than public exposure and shame. “Everybody knew” that sodomy was the sin that cried out to heaven for vengeance, and was clearly prohibited by God’s word in the Bible. For a priest or pastor to declare himself engaged in such acts, was to announce that he was not only a criminal by man’s law, but also doomed to hellfire by God’s.

Sixty years on, the situation is very different. Gary Paterson has reached the highest level of church seniority yet for an openly gay cleric, but many others have prepared the way before him. The Unitarian Universalist pastor Rev James Lewis Stoll was the first ordained person in a recognized denomination to come out voluntarily, a few months after Stonewall in 1969. His denomination responded a year later by passing the first ever declaration of gay rights, and ever since have been supportive of LGBT people, as clergy, and in marriage. Other denominations have been less supportive of their LGBT members, who were coming out in increasing numbers. In most denominations, openly gay or lesbian people were denied admission to seminary training or to ordination, and those already ordained faced the threat of expulsion. In two examples from the Presbyterian Church, in 1978, Chris Glaser, who had been active in LGBT lay ministry and advocacy, was denied ordination. In 1980, Rev Janie Spahr was encouraged to resign from her ministry, when it became known she was in a lesbian relationship. There were many others, but pressure for change was building.

Religious Tolerance describes one of the factors describing that change, listening to the voices and experience of LGBT people, in a passage referring to Gary Paterson’s own United Church of Canada:

Delegates to their Victoria BC conference in 1988 came with negative beliefs about gay and lesbian ordination, but with a willingness to listen. At the start of the conference, only 28% of the church membership were in favor of gay ordination. The delegates listened prayerfully as some long-time gay and lesbian members of the Church described growing up in a denomination that rejects them because of their sexual orientation. Many delegates changed their mind. The final vote was about 3 to 1 in favor of homosexual ordination.

From just 28% support, to a 3 to 1 vote in favour, in the course of a single conference? That’s an astonishing turnaround, but shows what is possible, and why, 14 years later, they were able to elect an openly gay moderator to lead them.

In the American Lutheran and Presbyterian churches, the process to inclusion illustrated an additional process contributing to change local organising to win sTraight allies in self - declared welcoming congregations - known in the PCUSA as “More Light” congregations, and other names, such as Lutherans Concerned, ”Welcoming and Affirming Baptists”, Reconciling Ministries (Methodists), United Church of Christ Coalition for LGBT Concerns, and Friends for Lesbian, Gay, Transgender and Queer Concerns (Quakers). When the ELCA approved ordination of partnered, openly LGBT clergy in 2009, and the PCUSA removed national barriers on their ordination in 2010 (ratified in 2011), it was the culmination of years of organizing at local level by these groups, and others such as “That All May Freely Serve”.

In others, notably the Catholic Church, a DADT principle applies: officially discouraging gay priests and insisting on total celibacy for all clergy, in practice it is believed that a substantial proportion are gay - and by no means all are celibate. The Anglican Church is only a little more tolerant: officially, gay and lesbian priests are welcome, but only if they are celibate (a fig leaf that few people believe). In the American Presbyterian and Lutheran churches, by the time that official approval was given for LGBT clergy, this was no more than recognition in law for what was already established fact: in both denominations, large numbers of LGBT pastors were already serving welcoming local congregations, but without national recognition. The resolutions did not so much admit them to ministry, but allowed them to be accepted and accredited on national registers.

Several of these men (and a few women) had achieved high office in their denominations. Gene Robinson is frequently named as the first openly gay bishop, but this is not correct. There were a number of others before his election - but most were not out at the time of their appointment.

Bishop Charles Otis of Utah was the first to come out voluntarily, but only after retirement. Similarly, the Scottish Episcopalian Bishop Derek Rawcliffe announced his sexuality in 1995, after his retirement as bishop of Glasgow and Galloway. Others have been involuntarily outed, for example the retired Bishop of Southwark, who was outed by Outrage! in 1994, shortly before his death - one of 10 bishops outed at the same time. To forestall being outed by others, David Hope, Archbishop of York (the second most senior post in the Anglican Church), admitted that his sexuality was a “grey area”. In 1999, Bishop Peter Wheatley was appointed suffragan bishop of Edmonton, London, although he was believed to be gay, and had been living with a male partner since about 1995 - but claimed to be celibate.

Two other bishops of the Anglican communion who were known to be gay before Gene Robinson’s election, but escaped widespread media attention because they came from places not usually prominent in the public eye for church affairs. When Mervyn Castle was appointed suffragan bishop of False Bay (in the Archdiocese of Cape Town), his sexuality was known inside South Africa, but not outside the country. In 2008, Bishop Terry Brown of the Solomon Islands attended the Lambeth Conference as an openly gay man.

In the Catholic Church, where bishops are subject t0 tight Vatican oversight and have much less independence of action, gay bishops have been outed as a result of scandal over sexual abuse, of seminarians or other young men. Examples include Cardinal Hans Hermann Groër, Archbishop Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee (2002) , Juan Carlos Maccarone, the Bishop of Santiago del Estero in Argentenia (2005), Reg Cawcutt, `auxiliary Bishop of Cape Town (2002) and Francisco Domingo Barbosa Da Silveira, the Bishop of Minas in Uruguay (2009).

Since Bishop Gene Robinson’s appointment, there have been two lesbian bishops in the Episcopal and Swedish Lutheran churches: Mary Glasspool in Los Angeles , and Eva Brunne in Stockholm. In Germany, Horst Gorski was nominated as a bishop in the North Elbian Evangelical Lutheran Church, but did not in the end secure election. Openly gay and lesbian clergy however, are widely accepted in the Protestant churches across Northern Europe. When Denmark initiated “gay marriage” in 1989, one of those married on the first day was a Lutheran pastor. When he was interviewed for the tenth anniversary in 1999, he admitted that at the time, it was unusual for a minister to be openly gay and partnered, but since then, it had become so common that most (male) ministers “were living with their husbands”.

Rev Gary Paterson is the first openly gay minister to head a national church - but he assuredly will not be the last.

United Church Elects Gay Vancouver Minister as Leader - Vancouver Courier http://www.vancourier.com/news/United+Church+elects+Vancouver+minister+leader/7118614/story.html

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• First Gay Man Elected to Head a Mainline Christian Denomination (mlp.org)
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• United Church of Canada elects first openly gay moderator (calgaryherald.com)