MGB:_The door imagery is quaint, but I had rather they had focused on the Pauline letters which reveal (darn those translators) that in the early Church, the apostalic witness was delivered by married couples who had seen the risen Lord. Only when these many had died did Overseers (you say bishop, I say pastor) take over that role of witness. It was later that a separate priesthood evolved to assist these Pastors and women were left out. Whether they presided, like men, over Agape meals is a matter for research and speculation. Because a Church in hiding did not record these events individually, we may never know and it does not matter. This fight is about the nature of change in the Church. There are those who are preservationist or reactionary who don't see the Church as ever changing. Others recognize that it is ever changing and always has been. It is an old fight that will never be settled, although ordaining women would likely be a tipping point.
Once women are ordained, the claim that anything but our witness to the Resurrection is unchangeable is mute. Of course, we can’t just ordain celibate women with the same bent toward asexuality that many celibate men have (or the acceptance of it by gays running away from their sexuality, other gays simply honor the promise by not marrying their lovers). If we ordain women, we must ordain single and married, gay and straight (and, yes, asexual) women and men. We cannot join the sexual revolution in only one aspect. This focus on otherworldly chastity must end for all but those created to pursue it, because sadly Paul, while he dealt with women as equals, brought his personal sexual quirks with him into his teaching. We can honor and respect that, but we need not perpetuate it.
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