Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyDecember 7th, 2009
Anti-gays often declare that marriage equality is a religious freedom issue. And they are right.
When one church, or a handful of churches, persuade, coerce, or cajole legislators or voters to enact the rules of their sacraments into law and insist that other religious denominations cannot have their sacraments recognized, then religious freedom has been denied.
And it is to protest such encoding of religion into state law that a group of Quakers has taken bold action. (MN Public Radio)
A group of Twin Cities Quakers has decided to stop signing marriage certificates for opposite-sex couples until the state legalizes gay marriage.
“We’re simply trying to be consistent with the will of God as we perceive it,” said Paul Landskroener, clerk of the Twin Cities Friends Meeting, in an interview with MPR’s All Things Considered on Monday.
Please understand that this was not a decision taken lightly. Nor was it a choice to act in spite of religious faith. This decision is the direct response of how they believe that they have been divinely directed.
“The simplest way to say it is we feel very strongly and very clearly led that in the present time we simply cannot continue to participate in what we believe to be an unjust and inconsistent with our religious testimonies legal marriage procedure”
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tavdy79
December 8th, 2009
This has been done by Quakers elsewhere. One of the Quaker Testimonies (the principles Quakers live by) is equality; for those Quakers who see no distinction between straight and gay marriage, being restricted to straight marriages means having to treat gay and straight Quakers unequally, which is unQuakerly. To treat others equally, we’re left with only one choice: to perform no marriages at all.
Pennarin
December 8th, 2009
@tavdy79: “To treat others equally, we’re left with only one choice: to perform no marriages at all.”
Sounds good and proper, except the news item mentions they will stop signing marriage certificates for opposite-sex couples…only.
I’d like to see happening what tavdy79 mentions, though.
Elise
December 8th, 2009
Probably because there are no marriage certificates for same sex couples, what with the ban on them and all.
Nat
December 12th, 2009
What Elise says is the case. We will continue to marry Friends of any gender under the care of our meeting (including the traditional-but-not-LEGALLY-binding Quaker marriage certificate, signed by all present at the ceremony), and if they choose to legalize their marriage through a civil ceremony, we have no objection to their protecting their family in this way. But the couple has to do that part themselves separately.
You can see the actual minute we approved at http://www.tcfm.org/article/minute-for-marriage-equality.
Nat Case
Twin Cities Friends Meeting
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