 IT is decision time for the Church of Scotland. The increasingly impractical imposed silence on the issue of the ordination of openly gay and lesbian Christians will be broken at last today when the General assembly debates the issue openly.  The Kirk hierarchy may wish to stagger on with the uneasy truce that has existed for two years but among both conservatives and liberals, there is a feeling that the matter must now be confronted. There is no painless resolution. Either way the church stands to lose members. If gay ordination gets the go-ahead, whole congregations are likely to leave, either by joining the Free Church or by staying put in their buildings but declaring the ecclesiastical equivalent of UDI. If the vote goes the other way, many individual church members are likely to walk away. They will include not only gay and lesbian Christians, who would feel snubbed by such a decision, but also heterosexuals appalled that in a world facing so many pressing problems, that the Kirk 