Anger Simmers Among Clergy Over Gay Rites

Not consulted, for the most part, by politicians or the press, many New York religious leaders expressed anger at a state Supreme Court judge’s decision redefining marriage and frustration at receiving the cold shoulder from Mayor Bloomberg on the issue of gay marriage.“The church teaches that the state is in a position of recognizing, but not designing, marriage – it comes from God. … It really can’t be messed around with,” the priest at the Immaculate Conception Church in Staten Island, Peter Byrne, said.“Parishioners and clergy are upset by lack of consultation, and by what’s being decided” by the courts, he said.The Catholic Archdiocese of New York declined to comment.On Friday, Justice Doris Ling-Cohan ruled in Manhattan that the definition of marriage as a union of a man and a woman violates the state Constitution. The mayor responded by saying that his personal belief is that gay couples should be allowed to marry, but that he was initiating a city appeal of the decision. If the appeal fails, the city clerk would have to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Yesterday, city lawyers asked the Court of Appeals, New York’s highest court, to hear the case directly, bypassing a lower-level appeals court.The president of the Catholic League, William Donohue, criticized the mayor for not communicating with the religious community on the gay marriage issue. Mr. Donohue, whose national Catholic civil-rights organization is based in the city, is strongly opposed to same-sex marriage.“Clearly, if the mayor had in place the kind of outreach programs to people of faith as he has to the gay community,” Mr. Donohue said, “he’d be much more inclined to reconsider his position, and take a stronger stand.”Decrying attempts by activist judges to impose gay marriage on a society that doesn’t want it, Mr. Donohue said: “To upset the most fundamental social institution in society … that has worked for thousands of years in both Eastern and Western civilizations is really the height of hubris.”Clergy from some other Christian denominations in New York expressed similar outrage at the judge. The pastor of Christ Temple Baptist Church in Harlem, Charles Smith, said her decision reflected “what’s happening to our country, what’s happening to the world.”“Everybody has just neglected the laws of nature, and people are just doing what they want to do,” he said. “No one respects God anymore.”Mr. Smith, whose congregation is predominantly African-American, also said his community was not consulted by influential figures in the gay-marriage debate.“I don’t think politicians or anyone else ever listens to real clergy anymore. … They handpick the clergy they want … some so-called gay clergy,” he said. “If they go and take a real survey of the whole world, they’ll see just how many people are against this.”The pastor of the Faith Assembly Pentecostal Church in Richmond Hill, Ramsarran Singh, joined Mr. Smith in denouncing the court’s decision, saying he was “saddened … because, number one, the scripture condemns that, and – I know I will get myself in trouble for saying this, but – I condemn it also.”“We are calling the judgment of God upon this city,” Mr. Singh said.Also expressing concern about the judge’s ruling was Agudath Israel of America and its executive vice president for government and public affairs, David Zwiebel.“We oppose the idea of redefining marriage to encompass same-sex relationships. We think it creates a fundamental revolution in civilized societies and also, at the same time, places a certain imprimatur of legitimacy on relationships that large segments of the population, including our own, regard as sinful,” Mr. Zwiebel, who is an Orthodox rabbi and a lawyer, said.He and members of his organization – whose Council of Torah Sages is the definitive arbiter of Orthodox Jewish law in America – are also alarmed by secular society’s intrusions on religious life.“Society,” Mr. Zwiebel said, “does not benefit by sending a message that secular law and deep-seated religious traditions must be kept apart by all means.” He added that legally sanctioning gay marriage would make it more difficult to raise children in the Orthodox tradition, because secular law would teach them that homosexuality is approved of, while at synagogue and religious school they would be taught the opposite.Mr. Zweibel also said he thought the gay-marriage decision might create a conflict with religious people’s right to practice their faith. Under a law requiring the legal recognition of same-sex marriages, he said, if his organization had an employee with a “spouse” of the same sex, and its insurance policy demanded that it cover employees’ spouses, then Agudath Israel would be required to give formal recognition to gay marriage, which it regards as anathema.The Rabbinical Assembly’s Joel Meyers also said the court decision reflected an excess of zeal for stripping the secular law of any sort of religious content. The assembly represents Conservative rabbis, and Mr. Meyers said: “For the Conservative movement, marriage at this point … continues to be viewed religiously.”The director of public policy at the Orthodox Union, Nathan Diament, said Orthodox Judaism, too, stands by the traditional definition of marriage.“We are opposed to the legal recognition of same-sex marriage. Thus we are both disappointed and troubled by the court’s ruling,” Mr. Diament said. “It’s an example of why we’ve actually endorsed the federal marriage amendment to the U.S. Constitution.”Their Reform counterparts, however, feel quite differently.“The Reform movement has been fully supportive of civil legal rights to gays and lesbians, and that includes gay marriage,” the director of the Religious Action Center of the Union for Reform Judaism, David Saperstein, said.Mr. Saperstein said the movement’s stance on gay marriage stemmed from its opposition to discrimination of any kind, and its “clear policy that sexual orientation ought to be treated like gender and race.”The pastor of Trinity Presbyterian Church in Hell’s Kitchen, Robert Helm, also suggested that his religion called more for equal treatment of gay people than for prohibitions against homosexual marriage.“There are many more passages in the Bible about inclusivity and loving your neighbor and being understanding about other people than about trying to persecute people,” Mr. Helm said.“I don’t understand why some people think that gay marriage would be a threat to the institution of marriage,” the pastor said.“Divorce is a threat to the institution of marriage. A lot of things are a threat to the institution of marriage. I don’t see two people who want to be committed together to being married being any threat to the institution of marriage or family values,” Mr. Helm said.According to the pastor at Union Congregational Church in Richmond Hill, Karel Boersma, the United Church of Christ has adopted a similar attitude when it comes to gay unions and individuals.“In the UCC,” Mr. Boersma said, “we go so far as to consider candidates for ministry who are gay or lesbian.” Many Congregationalist churches bear an “Open and Affirming” label, he said, indicating a willingness to perform gay marriage ceremonies.“I don’t believe the church has a right to talk about these things without a face,” Mr. Boersma said. “If they can look two committed people in the eye whom they know, whom they worship with, and tell them no – I don’t believe anyone can do that. That’s why we need to sit around the table … and come up with a plan so there might be in this country liberty and justice for all.”Mr. Boersma said he thinks churches should change with the times, and understand that sexual mores have evolved since the 1950s. “The churches always need to change, to grow – to look at new trends, and then to adjust themselves accordingly. They did that to some degree with war, they’ve done that with race, they’ve done that with economy, but they have never done that with sexuality,” he said.To Mr. Donohue, however, that line of reasoning is a dangerous one for churches to follow. “If there were an upsurge in anti-Semitism, or racism against African-Americans – if there were a rejuvenation of the Ku Klux Klan – would these ministers say churches have to get with the times, and empathize?” he said. “Or would they say, ‘No, we have to stand up against them’?”Perhaps no denomination is more familiar with the danger gay marriage poses to congregational unity than the Episcopal Church. In the summer of 2003, at its General Convention in Minneapolis, the church allowed for the elevation of an openly gay priest – New Hampshire’s Gene Robinson – to the position of bishop, and permitted clergy to bless same-sex unions. Conservative dioceses within the church threatened schism over the decision, and other churches in the worldwide Anglican Communion – of which Episcopalians are a part – questioned whether the American church’s decision put it out of communion with Canterbury.The rector of St. Thomas Church at Fifth Avenue, Andrew Mead, said that it seemed unlikely that the Manhattan Supreme Court decision would widen the rift. Despite Friday’s ruling, he said, he was not prepared to sanction same-sex marriages.“I do not see biblical or traditional authority for this,” he said. “Obviously, if a General Convention makes a vote on this from an ecclesiastical point of view, that’s going to have much more sway than something a secular judge or legislature does.”Civil unions, however, are “very different” from “sacramental matrimony,” Mr. Mead said. “It seems to me that common human honesty and fairness makes a very strong case for equal treatment under the law,” he said.

Anger Simmers Among Clergy Over Gay Rites

Anger Simmers Among Clergy Over Gay Rites

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