(AgapePress) - A Protestant watchdog group is praising the decision of a transsexual to give up his plans to be reinstated as a pastor of a United Methodist church.

After taking voluntary leave in 1999, Richard Zomastny -- who underwent a sex-change operation and now calls himself "Rebecca Steen" -- had petitioned the Washington-Baltimore General Conference of the United Methodist Church in June to be assigned to a local church. But the Conference denied his request and placed Zomastny on involuntary leave. Now he has announced he is leaving the UMC and has no plans to return.

Zomastny tells the United Methodist News Service -- which refers to the former pastor's surgery as "gender reassignment" -- the decision to leave the denomination was not an easy one, having been a United Methodist all his life. But he says he came to that decision "because I don't think the church is ready for me -- and I'm sad to say that." Zomastny also states he knew the issue would divisive for the church and his family.

According to UMNS, Zomastny -- presumably speaking about the issue of a transsexual in the pulpit -- was amazed that "in general society, for most people, it's not an issue, but it is very much an issue for the church." While most conservative Christians might question that observation about society, Mark Tooley of the Institute on Religion and Democracy agrees it is an issue within the church -- and that it should have been resolved by UMC leaders last year.

Mark Tooley

"I wish the bishop and others in leadership had spoken out more forthrightly from the start about what is intrinsically wrong about somebody who professes to be a Christian undergoing a sex-change operation, which basically entails mutilating your body in a very vane quest to change your gender identity -- which I believe Christians feel is unchangeable and that we are all made either male or female by God," Tooley says.

Tooley, who directs the IRD's United Methodist committee, believes Zomastny decided to resign because he knew there was no way the denomination would ever reinstate him to the pulpit. He predicts the issue will be discussed at the UMC's next General Conference in 2004.

"Sex-change operations will have to be discussed," he says, "and then we'll have to add language to church law saying exactly what our response needs to be to a clergyperson who has a sex-change operation. It came up a couple of years ago, when the bishop should have handled it directly -- it should have been something very obvious and not too complicated. It's unfortunate that it was dragged out, but in the end it ended reasonably well."

Tooley says the end result is "a victory for traditionalists" -- and that the denomination must codify a law that says the gender of an individual is determined by God, and no sex-change operation can alter it.

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