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Rev. Rose Mary Denman
(1957 - living) U.S.A.

Rose Mary Denman

United Methodist minister

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The Rev. Dr. Rose Mary Denman was born and raised in a Roman Catholic family living in the small town of Rumford, Rhode Island. She attended St. Margaret’s parish grade school and Sacred Heart High School. Upon graduation from East Providence High School, Denman enlisted in the United States Air Force. While in the military, she met and married Robert Denman.

Spirituality was always a key component in Denman’s life. As a teen, she attended daily mass, and continued to do so during her years in the military. The Roman Catholic Church was all she knew until she and her husband met and befriended another young couple. They were invited to attend a Sunday service, and that first visit was the catalyst that took Denman into the Protestant tradition.

When her marriage disintegrated, Denman found solace in her faith and her new church community. She planned to use the G.I. bill to get a degree in English so that she could teach and have a schedule that would work well for her as a single mother. But her pastor asked a question that would change her life: “What would you do if time, money and circumstance were not an issue.” Denman told her pastor she would become a minister. That very next month, she enrolled as a freshman at Barrington College and graduated four years later with a degree in Biblical Studies.

Graduate school at Assumption College and then Bangor Theological Seminary rounded out her education. During her ten years in school, Denman worked as a Youth Director, then as a Christian Education Director, and finally as a Student Associate Minister. In 1981, Denman was ordained in the United Methodist Church. She was appointed as pastor of two small churches in Maine. Denman served as a pastor in the United Methodist Church for four years before meeting and, eventually falling in love with, another woman. This was a personally tumultuous time in Denman’s life. Before she came to understand her own sexual identity, she had stood with her denomination in its stance against the LGBT community.

Denman knew that she would never be able to live a closeted life. For her, being open and forthcoming about who she was and not seeking to be secretive about her relationship with another woman was a matter of personal integrity. Rather than put her congregation in the middle of what she suspected would eventually become an explosive issue with the denomination, Denman took a leave of absence. While on leave, Denman and her partner moved to Portland, Maine and visited other Protestant churches. Eventually, they became members of one of the Unitarian Universalist Churches in the area.

Rev. Denman disclosed to her bishop in 1987 that she was a lesbian. Charges were filed against her, and she was given her choice of three alternatives: withdrawing from the ministry under complaint, being involuntarily terminated, or going to trial.

She chose the third alternative, because it would raise public consciousness on gays and lesbians in the ministry in advance of the 1988 General Conference. She was found guilty of violating the church's Book of Discipline, a paragraph passed by the 1984 General Conference as a type of "don't ask, don't tell" procedure. Only sexually active gays and lesbians who openly reveal their sexual orientation are prevented from serving as ministers, so she suspended from performing ministerial duties.

A jury of 13 pastors, an ecclesiastical court in New Hampshire, ruled in favor of the Rev. Karen Dammann. Church law prohibits the ordination of self-avowed, practicing homosexuals and the church's Book of Discipline declares homosexuality to be "incompatible to Christian teachings." But the church's social principles support gay rights and liberties.

The trial is the first against a homosexual pastor in the denomination since 1987, when the credentials of the Rev. Rose Mary Denman of New Hampshire were revoked. The ruling means Dammann is considered to be in good standing with the church and available for new assignments.

Rose Mary Denman is the author of Let My People In: A Lesbian Minister Tells of Her Struggles to Live Openly and Maintain Her Ministry, (1990).

Dammann is currently on leave as pastor of First United Methodist Church in Ellensburg, 95 miles east of Seattle. Last week she married her partner of nine years, Meredith Savage, in Portland, Ore., where officials began allowing gay marriages. They have a 5-year-old son.

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Source: https://www.lgbtran.org/

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