Again, that’s a gross oversimplification of what the amendment did. If you’d actually read the full amendment and the discussion that I linked to, you can plainly see that the intent was to maintain the idea of repairing harm and damaged relationships, and enhance its specificity by talking about exploitation – which you’ll note is in the current draft. By taking a more relational approach to democracy here, as opposed to a legalistic and written-word-is-king approach, the UUA, the study commission, and the amendment proposers were all able to engage a more theologically and relationally meaningful process that yielded an even more nuanced version at the end. When I see what language resulted from the process as I understand it, the conclusion I come to is that the inclusion of “exploitation” was more important to the amenders than the removal of “harm,” while the study commission probably thought it was important to maintain “harm,” and that the spirit of the amendment was upheld by including exploitation (along with some other changes, of course). Again, this was done in relationship with the proposers of Amendment 52, this wasn’t done arbitrarily or out of relationship.
“There is no process that the Study Commission or Board has that allows them to overturn the vote of the delegates.” – again, it’s not overturning the vote. The final proposal that came out last October was the result of a clearly communicated amendment process that always articulated that amendments wouldn’t simply be added verbatim (partly because there might have been conflicting or redundant amendments passed), and instead of the final work fo the A2SC would be to edit and incorporate the spirit of each amendment in consultation with the proposers – as far as I know, in most cases the adoption was pretty one-to-one verbatim, but 52 is an example of where a more relational approach led to a slightly different result (which, again, was entirely available to be amended further). All to say, there has been a pretty clear, straightforward, and relational process outlined from the start, that has been followed.
“If his intent was not to omit that phrase he can’t just go back and say “oops I didn’t mean for it to be omitted.”” – actually he can, and it isn’t even a case of “going back” – it’s clear from the discuss.uua.org thread what the rationale and concerns were behind the amendment, so you can clearly see why the final draft made choices like include “Exploitation” but retain “harm.”
“Leaving that very phrase intact in the final revised version despite other changes is in direct contradiction to the delegate’s vote no matter how you slice it.” – Nope. I was a delegate in 2023, and I voted with the full understanding that the A2SC would work with proposers to massage amendments as needed. I can understand the confusion if you didn’t realize that was what the process was when you voted, but that’s now been clarified. And again, if you were following the process closely you’d have seen the difference in the final draft, and would have had ample time to rally 15 congregations to update the language and remove “harm” if it felt that important to you. Similar to Tim’s questions on other topics… if this was a major concern for you Steve, why didn’t you do that?
“Are you suggesting that they could similarly approve an amendment that the delegate’s voted down? Or slightly change it and call it approved? What’s the difference between that and what they did on Amendment 52?” – 1) no, because the process (as I recall it) was that they would work to incorporate the spirit of any amendments that passed. 2) again no, it would have to have passed to be considered. 3) The difference is A) the amendment did pass, it wouldn’t make any sense to consider the spirit of an amendment that failed to garner the required votes at GA 2023 and B) Relationship – these changes were done in relationship and in conversation with the people who proposed them.
I really want to invite you, Steve, to consider that the democratic processes that we use in the context of a congregation or a religious association do not need to be the same kinds used in our country’s government in order to be “democratic.” In fact, it’s really good that they aren’t.
It sounds like you have a strongly different viewpoint on what our democratic processes should be, though, and that in of itself is fine. But I’d encourage you to put your energy not toward decrying the duly voted upon processes of the association, but rather towards engaging that process – if you feel strongly that there must be two candidates for each position, see if there are enough others who agree with you in your congregation and 15 or so others to get a bylaw amendment process going. If you can’t do that, I sympathize with your situation but would ask you to consider the possibility that the issue isn’t a conspiracy against democracy, but just a democracy functioning wherein you have an extremely minority opinion. I get that that’s tough – but it doesn’t mean the UUA isn’t following the will of majority of the delegates of its congregations.