In Minnesota at the Lyndale United Church of Christ the Rev. Don Portwood does not sign marriage certificates anymore, since the state does not recognize homosexual marriages. The church has decided it doesn’t want to be a part of the process bestowing different treatments upon homosexual couples, because they don’t receive the same rights as heterosexual couples. City Pages in Minneapolis stated that congregations at Mayflower Church and First Congregational Church in Minnesota have also passed this resolution.
At the Columbia United Church of Christ, the Rev. Tom Nordberg has not had to preside over a gay marriage but would do so if his congregation allowed it and if he thought the marriage would be strong. He disagrees with his counterpart in Lyndale for not wedding heterosexual couples as a way of protesting the state’s non-recognition of gay couples. He would instead pursue more non-church affiliated ways of protesting the ban.
On July 4, 2005, the General Synod of the United Church of Christ passed a resolution expressing “support of marriages for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender persons.”
I can understand boycotting a government service –like buses–as a means to end a discriminatory practice on those bus lines. But I don’t understand how boycotting the verification of a religious and spiritual practice–like marriage–serves as a means to to end governmental discrimination. Couples have a thousand other churches and courthouses and internet clergy who will sign a document validating their marriage if we as UCC clergy refuse. And what will they get elsewhere? Not something better than what the UCC offers either at weddings (for them and their families) or in their every day worship life.
And what about the gay marriage? Would even the entire denomination’s clergy’s refusal to validate marriages they perform have an affect other than chasing couples and their family and friends elsewhere? I doubt it. Simply put we cannot change the government by denying heterosexual couples the verification of their marriages in our churches.
If a consenting adult couple (gay or straight) wants to be married I personally believe that we should marry them. I also believe that if the couple asks us to sign a document validating that marriage before the eyes of anyone I think we should sign it.
And if the government will not issue a license to be validated for gay couples I believe that we should marry them anyway and validate their union in the eyes of God and community and any one else who wants to know.
Should we seek to change the laws that discriminate? Heck yes! But I would no more deny a person baptismal certificate because his neighbor is discriminated against, than I would deny a person a certificate of marriage for the same reason.
We are not the government and we are not acting for the government when we sign a marriage certificate. We are the church acting as ordained clergy stating the fact that a couple was married in a church. I can not think of a single reason to fail to state that fact for any couple, gay or straight.
Perhaps a more effective challenge to the law would be to boycott things like: tourism in states that are anti-gay; businesses that support anti-gay politics and/or products that help support anti-gay laws/legislators. If we added to this a push to visit states that are gay friendly and support businesses that fight discrimination we might even make inroads.