National Notes
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Senate passes partial-birth abortion bill. For a third time in four years, the U.S. Senate voted Oct. 21 to outlaw a procedure known as partial-brith abortion, but failed to accumulate the votes needed to override an expected presidential veto of the bill. This year's Senate vote on the bill was 63-34. The House is expected to take up the bill early next year. President Bill Clinton has vetoed similar bills in 1996 and 1997. Both times, the House gained the two-thirds majority necessary to override the veto but the Senate did not.
___ Lyons' co-defendant sentenced. A former publicist for the National Baptist Convention USA was sentenced Oct. 25 to 21 months in prison for failing to pay taxes on more than $500,000 she received while working for the denomination. Bernice Edwards, 42, also must pay $109,000 to the Internal Revenue Service and serve three years of supervised release. Edwards was the co-defendant in the trial of Henry Lyons, the former president of the influential, predominantly black denomination who is now serving a five-year sentence for swindling $4 million from companies doing business with the organization.
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___ Falwell and gays meet at church. Jerry Falwell hosted gay minister Mel White and some of his followers at Thomas Road Baptist Church Oct. 23-24 for an unprecedented meeting. Both sides said they found some common ground and declared the meeting productive. Both Falwell and White apologized for statements they'd made in the past and pledged to work to avoid hateful speech in the future. The two disagreed, however, on whether homosexuality is a sin and whether gays are in need of spiritual conversion. About 200 fundamentalist Christians shared tables with an equal number of gay representatives, although participants drank bottled water after Falwell's supporters chose not to eat with the gays because of what a spokesman said were concerns about the Bible prohibiting eating with sinners.
___ Presbyterian court nixes gay ordinations. A mid-level Presbyterian Church USA panel has blocked efforts by two congregations to win affirmation for the ordination of homosexuals despite a constitutional amendment barring such ordinations. In closely watched test cases of the denomination's so-called "chastity and fidelity" amendment, the Permanent Judicial Commission of the Synod of the Northeast has rebuffed challenges to the provision by congregations in Vermont and Connecticut. The "chastity and fidelity" amendment, while not using the word homosexual, sets out the requisites for ordained church officers including pastors, elders and deacons by requiring chastity in singleness and fidelity in marriage. The polity of the denomination doesn't permit same-sex marriages.
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