LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – A historic vote within the United Methodist Church passed on Wednesday put an end to the ban on LGBTQ clergy.

This vote cancels the rule that forbids people who are gay from being ordained as ministers. It passed 692-51 at the United Methodist Church’s general convention.

The Quapaw Quarter United Methodist Church in Little Rock, Arkansas has been an advocate for this passage.

 “It’s supposed to be a place for everyone,” Harold Hughes, a member of Quapaw Quarter United Methodist Church, said.

Hughes said he’s a proud gay man and multiple times in his life he’s thought about disaffiliating with the United Methodist Church because of the LGBTQ ban.

“To feel that you love a church that does not love you back is how it feels,” he said.

But he said, “from the first time I walked in the doors” of the Quapaw Quarter United Methodist Church, ” I was welcomed.”

At the United Methodist Church’s general convention, the denomination’s first in five years, there were many votes in favor of LGBTQ unity, repealing the ban on LGBTQ clergy and same-sex marriages.

With emotion, Hughes said, “it’s like we’ve been given a blank canvas, and we can paint it all over again and make it a much more loving and inclusive body.”

From 2019 to 2023, over 7,000 congregations have disaffiliated from the denomination for not being strict on its LGBTQ bans. With this vote, many more are expected.

Also at the general convention, the official social principles of the United Methodist Church will be voted on for new wording.

If passed, this means the denomination will no longer say the “practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching” and will label marriage as between “two people of faith” instead of between a man and a woman.

Hughes shared a quote that sticks with him that he heard from a pastor who said, “We can’t be the church if we choose to overlook some members of the body of Christ.”