Usually when you read a headline like this you find an article about a church, synod, diocese or parish supporting a ban on marriage equality (aka same sex marriage or gay marriage) because it goes against God and nature and they support their position on out of context tracts from the Bible (well if they bother to support it at all).
But in North Carolina, the United Church of Christ is using the First Amendment to the Constitution to oppose North Carolina’s prohibition on marriage equality. The law makes it illegal for ministers to perform religious marriage ceremonies if there is no marriage license…and of course there won’t be a marriage license in the case of same sex couples. Yet the United Church of Christ feels they should provide all of their parishioners with the opportunity for a marriage sanctified by their church.
Sometimes you never notice that a law is unconstitutional for a wholly different reason that equal rights or civil rights…those who wrote and passed this law overreached in more ways than they could have imagined!
Here’s a telling excerpt from CBS News:
A coalition of clergy members filed a novel federal lawsuit Monday against North Carolina’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, saying it violates their religious freedom.
The clergy members said that they’d like to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies in their congregations, but that they can’t because of the “unjust law.” Their attorney, Jake Sussman, says it’s the only case to bring the First Amendment religious freedom claims among the more than 60 marriage equality cases pending in the nation’s state and federal courts.
“North Carolina’s marriage laws are a direct affront to freedom of religion,” said the Rev. J. Bennett Guess, executive minister with the Cleveland-based United Church of Christ, which is a plaintiff in the lawsuit. “We feel that it is important that any person that comes into community life of a United Church of Christ congregation be afforded equal pastoral care and equal opportunity to religious services that clergy provide.”
But in North Carolina, clergy are often faced with a troubling decision: “whether to provide those services or break the law,” he said. “That’s something no clergy member should be faced with.”
And from the Charlotte Observer:
“North Carolina judges some of its citizens as unfit for the blessings of God. We reject that notion,” said the Rev. Nancy Allison, pastor of Holy Covenant United Church of Christ and one of the plaintiffs in the case.
State law says it is a misdemeanor crime for ministers to perform a marriage ceremony without having a marriage license for a couple.
“By denying same-sex couples the right to marry and prohibiting religious denominations even from performing marriage ceremonies for same-sex couples, the State of North Carolina stigmatizes same-sex couples, as well as the religious institutions and clergy that believe in equal rights,” the suit says.
In God We Trust!