The General Assembly has a new moderator. On the third ballot with four candidates running, after 10 PM Thursday evening the Assembly elected Joan Gray as moderator. The good news is that the two very conservative candidates lost support on the second and third ballots. The bad news is that most of us favoring action to open up ordination at this assembly supported Deborah Block who openly supports our position. Joan will be a fine moderator, but believes we need to continue to wait before changing the constitution.

It has been a long day, as all of them promise to be.

We did get started this morning at 7:45 AM revising the 16 page joint presentation. At 10 AM we went to a briefing for overture advocates, followed by a meeting between the OAs and the Church Order Committee leadership. Besides our overture there is one overture friendly to our cause and there are 8 overtures with the opposite intention and three dealing with marriage, all before the Church Orders Committee, each with their own advocates.

With breaks for orientation for advocates and a luncheon sponsored by the Covenant network we continued to work together until we had a draft we were pretty satisfied with about 4 PM. After a half an hour break we came back together to read it through. It is a wonderful and moving presentation, by the time we read it over with each person speaking the part they will speak before the committee many of us were in tears. It deals with both head and heart, the Bible and Theology and personal stories of the pain of exclusion and threatened exclusion.

We do not want to publish any of our presentation until we give it, probably at 8 PM tomorrow evening, but when it has been presented I will share what my part in the presentation has been.

I missed the reception by the More Light Presbyterians because the OAs were still reading out presentation through, but many of us got there for the dinner they sponsored and the great program they put on affirming Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Presbyterians. We ran from their program to get to the Assembly plenary at which the moderation was elected.

I did take some pictures, but 11:45 PM is a late hour to think about downloading them from camera to computer and then uploading them to this blog. Sunday is a Sabbath rest when little business is scheduled, I may then have the leisure to post some pictures.