Thursday, July 10, 1997 The day Rev Dr Dorothy McRae McMahon acknowledged the reality of her sexuality was the day she felt whole and integrated for the first time in her life.

"I had an unutterable experience of the grace of God," the Assembly's Director of Mission said. "I experienced affirmation of my creation."

Dorothy says from that moment on she became a radical evangelical and her ministry (which was "OK" until then) was richly blessed and it flourished in abundance. "I knew and continue to know an overflowing thanksgiving and grace."

For the previous 51 years Dorothy had lived with a sense of confusion about who she was.

"I am a person who was never physically attracted to boys or men but I am of a generation where there was no name for that. I spent 32 years in marriage with a man and had four children. I do not regret that," she said.

"I deeply respect the man I married and I am very glad I had four children because I probably wouldn't have done that if I had known who I was.

"At the point of my ordination at 48 years old, if I had been asked about my sexual orientation, which I was not, I would have said I was a heterosexual, in spite of the problems I had experienced throughout my life."

Dorothy, now 63, said: "I was 51 when I finally recognised who I was at last. I had had some idea before but when I was suddenly physically and spiritually attracted to a particular woman it became clear at that point. I was able to look back and see that this had been my orientation all along, except I had never been at the right place in my life to acknowledge it."

It was not in any sense a shock to realise her homosexuality. "It was a very natural feeling, the most natural feeling I have ever had - it was like finding my own tribe, finding my own people."

"I had to think deeply what I owed to myself, my husband, my children and especially to my faith and to God," she said.

"I decided to end my marriage, and I celebrate that my husband married two years later to a woman I like and respect. My children tease me that she is a lot better for him than I was. Of course I had to tell my children what my reasons were for ending the marriage and although it took them some time to work through that, they respect me and celebrate the life in me."

Telling her husband about her discovery was for Dorothy "the hardest thing I have ever done in my life". It was like stepping off the edge of a cliff. He initially wanted to stay married to Dorothy - he still loved her. However he eventually realised separating was the right thing.

Dorothy believes God also brought about changes in her ministry. "My capacity to bring the Word to people at that point onwards expanded," she said. "An ability to clearly invite people into relationship with God came out of my relationship with God as it never had before."

Dorothy never considered her sexuality sinful. Her father was a Methodist minister and her faith background was one of scholarly testing of all Scripture against her understanding of Jesus. "I was taught to take the Bible seriously, to look across the great witness of the Bible, but not to take it literally."

At the time of acknowledging her sexual orientation Dorothy was working pastorally with gay and lesbian people and their parents. Their testimonies affirmed her own experience - the struggle throughout life to fit into a mould in which she knew she did not belong.

Dorothy could not understand people who claimed homosexuals deliberately chose their orientation.

"When I hear that I always ask why anyone would be so stubborn. Why would anyone give up all that is important in their lives, just to insist on being lesbian or gay? It is certainly not something I have chosen, or would chose."

She conceded her open acknowledgement of her sexuality at the current Assembly could harm her future in the church if decisions went against homosexual leadership, but she felt compelled to speak up, even though doing so had been as difficult as telling her husband.

"You see, I have two families. I have the family of my own blood and I have my church family," Dorothy said. "I have told the Assembly for my own integrity's sake. I have not been deeply hidden - people within the church have known - but I have not been as public as I have been here.

"But I also knew a lot of church people were talking as if homosexual people were waiting in the wings to come into ministry so for the sake of the church I needed to reveal myself so people could look at the sort of ministry I have exercised.

"Most important however is how I perceive myself and how I stand before God and in that I feel very peaceful.

"If I have not been fully open before it's because I don't want to be defined by my sexuality. I don't want to be known as the lesbian liturgist. My life is liturgy, worship, commitment to stand for the marginalised, my passion for this country to find its way into compassion and kindness. I also read detective stories. Being lesbian is who I am, and makes me whole. But it is not all that I am."

Dorothy felt her current journey was one of movement towards the cross - but whatever decision the Assembly made, she knew there would be resurrection. And she did not want to see the Assembly make a decision which violated the body of the church by pushing it to vote in favour of homosexual leaders when it could not sustain such a position honourably.

"I think the approach to this will in fact be very slow. We should allow a gentle evolution. No parish should be forced to have a gay or lesbian minister, especially Congress or migrant-ethnic congregations."

One thing Dorothy was quite certain about was that no decision at Assembly would force her to end her relationship with her partner.

"I am in this relationship until death do us part. And I would not lay that down even for the church.

"I am in my first grown-up relationship in my whole life. And I could not have done the heavy and demanding job that I have held in the church for the past few years if I had not had her love and support and understanding.

Current policy on serving ministers, as stated by Assembly General Secretary Rev Gregor Henderson, says, "There is an expectation in the church that its ministers will adhere to the standard of celibacy in singleness and faithfulness in marriage. Presbyteries are free to take this into account in their oversight of current ministers. But the church has not declared celibacy in singleness and faithfulness in marriage to be a specific requirement of its ministers."

Mr Henderson said there had already been calls for the resignation of the Assembly’s Director of Mission, Rev Dorothy McRae McMahon, who revealed on Sunday that she lives in a relationship with another woman.

Mr Henderson said: "She [Ms McRae McMahon] is a most fitting person to be a Minister of the Word, and the Director of the Commission for Mission. I see no reason for any disciplinary action."