Dorothee Benz, a former UM and LGBTQ activist has this public post on Facebook, critiquing James Finn's blog post and "thought experiment":
"I am trying to focus on other work, but I have seen a few UMC folx share this piece, which I have some problems with, and so I will comment.
"Analogizing, especially by white folx, between the oppressions of Black people and queer people, has to be done carefully, contextually, and always with solidarity. There is indeed some clarity in using the example of his father’s church to shed light on the heterosexism of the current proposal, but it needs to acknowledge the racist and colonialist sins of the UMC in the present moment.
"Speaking of, it is plainly wrong and extremely problematic to characterize the U.S. church as mainly OK with queer folx and the central conferences as mainly homophobic. It ignores the fact that the persecution of queer folx in the UMC has — and always has been — driven by white evangelicals in the U.S., and that those evangelicals act with both heterosexist patriarchal bias and with colonialist bias. These things are inextricably intertwined in the UMC. Moreover, these are the same folx / same lineage as the Methodists who defended slavery and segregation.
"The implicit pitting of queer folx against POC in this article — *especially* after having just equated them with the analogy of his father’s church — is indefensible. The current UMC divide is part of a larger struggle between white Christian nationalism, the dominant tradition, and the liberationist tradition. That context is vital. Not only, but very importantly, because without it we re-inscribe white supremacy into our analysis.
"All that said, the central observation about the offensiveness of ‘blessing’ the bigots is of course on point. But that is not enough."