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Gay marriage ruling has churches buzzing
By Michael Boren, McKinney Courier-Gazette
At the world’s largest predominantly gay church in Dallas, the Rev. Jo Hudson and her staff gazed at their computers and TV screens, awaiting a decision from at least 1,700 miles away.
A federal judge was about to give his ruling on California’s Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriage.
“I knew that the judge could rule either way,” said Hudson, senior pastor at Cathedral of Hope. “But I had a strong feeling that the judge would overturn Proposition 8.”
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“Most of us feel that this is going to be a long process,” Hudson said. “That this is just one step in the process.”
But for other churches in the McKinney area, it’s one step in the wrong direction of the gay marriage issue.
Supporters of the voter-approved ban have filed an appeal with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. If it upholds the ruling, the Supreme Court could be forced to determine whether or not same-sex marriages should be allowed.
In McKinney, many pastors expect the case to go that far. Some argue that gay marriage proponents are in the minority and break from the American founding fathers’ intentions. But others assert the legalization of gay marriage is bound to happen eventually.
The Bible is pretty clear on God making marriage between a man and a woman, said the Rev. Mike Banas from Community Life Church.
“He made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve,” Banas said.
Opponents of Proposition 8 seemed like a small minority, he said, admitting at the same time that they’d probably succeed in getting the case to the Supreme Court.
“It will impact us locally,” he said. “We’re not in a bubble here.”
California voters approved the gay-marriage ban in Nov. 2008. But in court documents this week, the judge who overturned Proposition 8 cited that it violated the constitutional right to equal protection.
When the judge’s ruling was announced, nearly 100 people celebrated outside in the Oak Lawn neighborhood of Dallas, a local paper for the gay community reported.
Nobody that Jerry Clayton knows, however, would vote in favor of a law trying to legalize gay marriage in Texas, he said.
“I don’t think it should be allowed anywhere,” said Clayton, a lay minister at College Street Church of Christ.
“That’s a choice that they make to be that way, and they need to live with their choice and not expect everybody else to think it’s the right thing to do.”
Permitting same-sex marriage would allow more spouses to take social security benefits from an already strained system, he argued.
Clayton favored seceding from the U.S., because liberals and gay-marriage proponents were taking the laws and twisting them around from what America’s founding fathers intended, he said.
“They can try to make it politically correct all they want to,” he said. “They’ll face their maker one day.”
Churches feel like they’re called to protect the institution of marriage between a man and a woman, said Michael Seibold, parish director of St. Gabriel the Archangel Catholic Community.
“Both parties in that issue feel very, very strongly about it,” he said.
It’d be a wild guess to predict how the Supreme Court would vote on gay marriage, but a ruling would require a lot of study, he said, adding that he didn’t know which way the Supreme Court would rule.
Though marriage exists between a man and a woman in Texas now, the world changes, said the Rev. Herbert McCoy of White Rose Missionary Baptist Church.
“There’ll be enough gays and lesbians speaking out that they will get their wish,” he said.
McCoy teaches the doctrine that every human has fallen short of what God intended him or her to be, he said.
His church welcomed all people, and he wasn’t going to run anybody off for being gay, he said. He expected the Proposition 8 case would make it to the Supreme Court.
“My prayer is that people will just settle down and look at what they’re doing,” he said.
“If they look far enough in their life, they’ll find out that there’s something other people don’t want them doing too.”
At the predominantly gay church in Dallas, the Rev. Jo Hudson said the most vocal conservatives would come out with a full attack on the gay marriage issue.
“We expect it,” she said. “And we know it probably isn’t going to be pretty.”
But being surrounded by conservatives in the Bible Belt gave Cathedral of Hope such a large congregation, Hudson said.
“If this church were in Massachusetts, we’re not unusual,” she said. “But here in Dallas, there’s lots of people looking for a church that takes the Bible seriously but not literally.”
Just how literally the appeals court takes its interpretation will also be seen, though no court date has been scheduled yet for the Proposition 8 hearing.
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It is wrong to keep hurting gays and lesbians with these arguments. "