By Diane Reynolds, Staff Writer
Sunday, October 02, 2005
Several Carroll County clergy favor an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit that says same-sex marriage should be legal in Maryland.
A statement by Maryland religious leaders who support the lawsuit, signed by 105 members of the clergy, argues that gay and lesbian couples have the same ability to enter into loving and committed relationships as heterosexuals and also are just as able to nurture and raise children.
Civil marriage for same-sex couples leaves religious communities to make their own decisions regarding same-sex marriage, those clergy contend.
For clergy in favor of same-sex marriage, a loving and inclusive God and an evolving tradition regarding marriage can allow gay couples to wed.
For clergy who oppose gay marriage, it violates fundamental moral law and longstanding religious tradition. They contend it is wishful thinking to believe a society can endorse same-sex marriage without harmful results.
Arguments for
The Rev. John Sharp, interim pastor at Springfield Presbyterian Church in Sykesville, signed the statement supporting single-sex marriage.
"There's no straight or gay in Christ," he said.
While he is not allowed to marry gay couples in his church, he would if he could, he said.
The biblical God is compassionate, loving and inclusive, he said. It's hypocritical for clergy to condemn those who live in sexual relationships outside of marriage and at the same time refuse those couples marriage.
Gay marriage is a natural extension of the equal rights offered to blacks and women, Sharp said.
Without the legal protections of marriage, gays lose the many rights married people possess, ranging from inheritance rights to access to a loved one who has been hospitalized.
Sharp said it's only natural that people's understanding of marriage would change over time.
For centuries, divorce and remarriage were virtually prohibited in the Western world. Today, both are widely accepted. More recently, interracial marriages were unheard of.
Rabbi Amy Scheinerman, of Beth Shalom Congregation in Taylorsville, said she would be glad to support the ACLU lawsuit if she was asked.
She said she believes it is important for clergy to speak out for civil gay marriage.
"I believe it is possible to support the ACLU initiative even if one doesn't believe that one's religious understanding of marriage encompasses same-sex marriage," she said.
While Jews disagree on same-sex marriage, she said she believes Judaism is broad enough and deep enough to celebrate same-sex marriages that fulfill the fundamental requirements of Jewish marriage: two Jews committed to one another and building a Jewish home and life together.
For Sharon Main, gay and lesbian couples are simply a reality.
"We're here," said Main, of Hanover, Pa., director of the physical therapist assistant program at Carroll Community College in Westminster.
Main, who lives with her partner and six children, is faculty adviser of the Alliance, the college's gay and lesbian organization. "We live next door to you, our kids go to your schools ... we are a tremendous resource," she said.
She said she thinks church acceptance of her union with her partner would affirm her and her family and strengthen the community as a whole.
While a Unitarian minister married her partner and her, the community supporting that union was only a small group of friends.
Marriage and acceptance by a larger church group would make her family more fully a part of the community, she said. She said she doesn't believe Christianity opposes lesbian marriage.
Further, she said, the basic tenets of the Bible support gay marriage.
"If you are living a good life, the fact that you are living with someone of the same sex isn't going to negate that."
Arguments against
The Rev. David Duley, of Clearfield Bible Church in Westminster, said he believes marriage should only be between one man and one woman.
God loves everyone, and all have sinned, he said. One of these sins, on a list that includes murder, adultery and gossip, is homosexuality.
"The traditional view of these sins is that they need the forgiveness of God," he said.
Duley said he holds no hatred toward gay people, and homosexuality should not be singled out as especially sinful. But, like adultery and premarital sex, God bans it.
"I can't be honest with my faith and say that homosexuality is right," he said.
However, Duley said, he is not necessarily in favor of laws that would impose morality.
"Morality is an inner thing," he said. "If we are going to change society, we have to change people's moral compass."
To the Rev. Jim Ball, of Holy Apostles Charismatic Episcopal Church in Westminster, same-sex marriage is unacceptable either recognized by the state or by the church.
"I'm absolutely against it," he said. "It's a disorder."
Heterosexual marriage has been a church tradition for 2,000 years and a Hebrew tradition for 6,000 years, he said.
It's not a matter of one set of rules for the state and another for the church, he said, but of one morality.
He said he fears that if the church encourages a civil marriage right for same-sex couples, it will be endorsing behavior that is strictly prohibited by the Bible.
"When the church declares something good that God declares evil, that's sacrilege," he said.
While Ball does not personally condemn people for sexual sin, he contends that God's moral laws are as binding as physical laws and carry the same natural consequences.
Just as people who ignore gravity and jump off high buildings come to a bad end, so, too, do individuals and societies that ignore moral laws.
To adopt civil marriage worsens the situation, he said, because it will increase pressure on the church to conform to the culture.
"We are in a serious state of confusion," he said.
Splits in the Carroll County clergy community reflect those in the country as a whole, said David True, a religious studies professor at Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pa.
Almost all mainline religious denominations are internally split on the issue of gay marriage, he said.
Not surprisingly, different faith groups interpret the Scriptures differently, he said.
"The tradition itself is complex and not all one voice," he said.
True, who favors same-sex marriage, said a fundamental question needs to be answered: "Is [same-sex marriage] a corruption of who we are sexually or a positive fulfillment of who we are sexually?" he asked.
One approach, he said, is to let states experiment with it.
Reach staff writer Diane Reynolds at 410-857-7873 or reynoldsd@lcniofmd.com.
The gay marriage suit: Deane & Polyak v. Conaway
In July 2004, the American Civil Liberties Union, with the support of Equality Maryland, a statewide lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender advocacy group, filed a suit in Baltimore Circuit Court challenging the constitutionality of Maryland's ban on same-sex marriage.
The ACLU wants the court to strike down a 1973 state law that defines marriage as between one man and one woman.
The law, the ACLU contends, violates Article 24 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights, which prohibits unjustified deprivation of fundamental rights, including the right to marry.
Nine same-sex couples and one gay man, whose partner recently died, are suing Maryland county clerks for refusing them marriage licenses.
The suit argues that same-sex couples should have access to marriage because:
It is an established social structure that assures a couple and their children uniform recognition as a family unit;
It confers hundreds of rights and protections to a couple and their children that are not automatically available to unmarried couples;
Precedents exist for broadening the scope of marriage rights. For example, women now have separate legal identities in marriage, whereas in the past they did not. Further, in 1967, the state struck the legal prohibition on interracial marriage.
In its response to the suit, the state argues that it has a compelling interest in defining marriage as between a man and a woman. Because federal law defines marriage as heterosexual, the state contends, legalizing gay marriage would create legal confusion for the state.
The group Defend Maryland Marriage, which supports marriage as between one man and one woman, said the issue should be decided in the legislature, not the courts.
The case was argued Aug. 30 before Baltimore Circuit Judge M. Brooke Murdoch and is awaiting a decision.