B y Michael O’Connor, Omaha World-Herald (Nebraska).
The doors of Discovery Presbyterian Church will swing open to same-sex couples wanting to walk down the aisle if the U.S. Supreme Court makes same-sex marriage legal across the country.
But that won’t be the case at all Omaha Presbyterian churches.
That’s just one example of the patchwork of church views locally as the court stands poised to decide whether to legalize gay marriage nationwide. The issue before the court is whether states such as Nebraska have the right to ban gay marriage, and whether such states must recognize a same-sex marriage performed in a state where it is legal.
There’s no doubt that differences on same-sex marriage exist among faiths, but also within them. Denominations such as the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America allow local congregations to decide whether to allow the marriages, leaving churches on both sides of the matter.
The United Methodist Church continues to wrestle with questions such as whether to allow local discretion on the divisive matter.
Some denominations are making strong statements about their beliefs in advance of the court’s announcement.
The president of the nation’s largest Protestant denomination vowed last week to never officiate at a same-sex union, and his Southern Baptist Convention called on the Supreme Court not to declare a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.
The Southern Baptist Convention’s public policy arm also released a legal guide for churches that seeks to protect them from discrimination lawsuits by providing templates for things such as membership policies, facility-use policies and employment criteria.
Religious leaders and their flocks in some cases have struggled with the same-sex marriage question for decades. Some church leaders and religious experts believe that the court’s decision, no matter which way it falls, could influence the internal debates.
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9 Comments. Leave new
We must remember that marriage is between a woman and a man and nothing else.
“The doors of Discovery Presbyterian Church will swing open to same-sex couples”
Yep “swing” is the right word for this one.
Mr. Wright, marriage in the church was just decided by a vote of the Presbyteries, which studied all the theological and Biblical questions and came to this conclusion; It is when two people, adults, who love each other, want to marry and build a life together.
It will usually be a man and a woman, but, it will sometimes be a man and a man, or a woman and a woman. It is those things, and nothing else.
James H, the snide, bitter and immature comments like that one, which denigrate and belittle gay people and gay couples and their love and loyalty to each other and the families they are raising were no small part of helping a lot of people see the issues more clearly and open their hearts and minds to their Gay friends, family and fellow Presbyterians and accept them as pastors, and as married happy families in the Church.
Thank you for that.
Gene-Having decided marriage no longer means the union of a man and a woman, on what principle will the church resist marriage of more than two individuals?
The agenda of the LGBQT movement has long been the deconstruction or marriage. PCUSA has become an active participant in that agenda.
Tragically and by necessity, PCUSA now must officially be indifferent to whether children are brought into the world and raised by married, biological, complimentary parents. What an affront to the Creator.
Gene,
Your side has wrote the book on denigrate and belittle, just disagree with you and your side on this, and they go after the pastors and the churches that want to leave the pcusa, so don’t give this crap about denigrate gay people when your side absolutely destroys Godly men and women who don’t agreee with you!!
Todd, marriage has in no way been deconstructed. your straw man argument about more than two people is not even an issue being discussed by anyone in the church. You, if you are married, as you were a year ago, you are just as married now. And I hope it is a happy marriage to someone whom you love and who loves you very much, and that you have had and raised a wonderful family of children who love you, each other, and God. Gay couples also raise such families. They love their dads, or their moms, each other, and yes, the God they learn about in Sunday school and Church. and, as every major medical medical, psychological, pediatric, sociological and psychiatric professional organization has pointed out, kids with gay parents do just as well as kids of opposite sex parents, with any study saying otherwise being utterly discredited (and, usually shown to be have been paid for by some right wing roman catholic or mormon group, and its methodology shown as flawed…ie regnerus).
Love, and happy families, are no affront to our Creator.
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James H. Seriously? all the years and years and years of lawsuit after lawsuit aimed at anyone who is GLBT and was was called by a session to be their pastor..all the denigrating and insulting insinuation against us and our quality as parents, the insulting terms used to describe us like “lifestyle” (which happily even most conservatives have has the sense to see the ridiculousness of)and others to crude to write. Even the implication above that the lesbian and gay couples who will be married in front of their families and congregations and most importantly, God, in the church, who will promise to love and hold in sickness and health, forsaking all others, till death do they part, are “swingers”…..and you have the gall to whine that conservatives are being belittled? Please. The facts don’t back you up.
As per church property, there is a property clause. It’s clear. dont like it? work to change the book of order and church law affecting such things. Again, the facts dont back you up.
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that is the difference between progressives and conservatives I have noticed. When progressives lose, when we are insulted or belittled, we endure the insults, and work to change things, and when they are changed for the better, to maintain the change. We don’t give up, and we don’t leave. When conservatives lose, the sense of lost entitlement is palpable, and instead of staying and working for the change they want, they leave.
Gene, the AI vote on gay marriage at the GA was illegal, and the trust clause is back door stealing, the progressive are in slash and burn mode, I don’t care what people do in their private lives, I’m for civil union across the board, leave marriage to the churches.
The tatic being used against churches that simply want to leave and let the rest you of marry whoever is what I object to, but then again revisionist are usually not tithers and so they need dead peoples money to forward their agenda because God knows the one paying the bills are not going to do it.
I’ve always thought it was very odd that people link LGBT issues to property issues in the PCUSA, other than as two things they don’t like. But I have never seen any evidence of any kind anywhere that folks at MLP or CovNet or any of the other progressive affinity groups care $0.02 for the trust clause/property issues. I have never seen a single article or comment on any of their sites or in any of their literature that mentions property issues/trust clause pro or con, and I am really pretty observant, so I feel like I’d have seen such evidence if it existed.
So can you tell me, James and other commenters… I can get why you link these two issues as two things you diasagree with, but on what basis do you go farther and link the two issues as if the same people support them? Where is your evidence that the major leaders of LGBT issues in the church (MLP, CovNet, TAMFS, etc.) have ever spoken about property issues?
And talk like that is “Godly”, James?
Can you detail the history of disciplinary cases against LGBT elders, pastors and their allies, James? Your comment leads me to believe you are utterly aware of the last 40 years of history in the PCUSA. Are you aware of those cases at all, or did that slip by you completely unnoticed?
Again, can you point to one case against a pastor or church in the PCUSA started by someone in MLP, CovNet, TAMFS, or other LGBT affinity organizations? Or do your spittle-flecked rants against “your side” this and “your side” that just get directed at anyone with whom you disagree, regardless of reality, or reason, or evidence?