How gay marriage ruling affects local churches

The Rev. Cynthia Campbell of Louisville's Highland Presbyterian Church says she looks forward to performing its first same-sex marriage now that Kentucky's ban on gay marriage has been lifted.

But Steve Jester, pastor of Second Presbyterian on Old Brownsboro Road, said he won't be marrying gays and lesbians there, even though that decision "will be hurtful" to "friends who are gay."

After three decades of debate, Presbyterian Church (USA) voted this year to allow pastors and churches to celebrate gay marriages in states where that is legal but left it up to the discretion of individual pastors and their church's governing body. "I'm still struggling with this," Jester said.

But for clergy in most faith groups, the Supreme Court's decision throwing out civil bans on gay marriages doesn't change anything: They either already were allowed to officiate at weddings of gays and lesbians — or are still prohibited from doing so.

While welcoming gays at the liberal-minded St. William Catholic Church at 1226 W Oak St., the Rev. John Burke said that church law forbids marrying them. "It is beyond my jurisdiction," he said.

The catechism of the Catholic Church says that marriage is "established by mutual consent between a man and a woman, and ordered towards the good of the spouses and the procreation of offspring." Priests cannot preside at a ceremony that does not reflect this understanding of marriage, said Cecelia Price, a spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Louisville.

Don't look for any gay weddings to be performed in Southern Baptist churches, either. The president of the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest Protestant denomination, vowed this month to never officiate at a same-sex union.

"We do not need to redefine what God himself has defined already," Pastor Ronnie Floyd said at the group's annual meeting.

The Rev. Charles Elliott, pastor of King Solomon Missionary Baptist Church, a large black congregation near 16th Street and West Broadway, said he has some "members of the church practicing that activity" but he believes it is an "abomination and a sin" and that marriage should be between a man and woman.

The Supreme Court's ruling has no direct impact on churches or synagogues, which are free to follow the rules of their own faith on marriage. The ruling only affects civil marriages.

Although the Rev. Kevin Cosby, senior pastor of St. Stephen Baptist Church, Louisville's biggest black church, has spoken out for gay rights, Associate Pastor Clay Calloway said last week that nobody has ever requested a gay wedding at the church "so we haven't discussed it. It is not a top priority."

Two Baptist churches that have left the Southern Baptist Convention, Highland Baptist and Crescent Hill Baptist, will continue to conduct same-sex marriages, which they began doing in 2013 and last year, respectively. Highland Baptist in 2012 ordained one of the petitioners in the Supreme Court case, the Rev. Maurice "Bojangles" Blanchard.

Methodist church law says same-sex marriages cannot be performed in its churches or presided over by its ministers, said the Rev. George Strunk, senior pastor of Christ Church United Methodist in St. Matthews.

"It is not a matter of my preference but church law," he said. Although some Methodist pastors have officiated at such weddings, he said, "I think it would be a violation of my vows to do so."

In other denominations, such as the Evangelical Lutheran Church, the decision is left to the pastor, and at Third Lutheran in Crescent Hill, the Rev. Steve Renner, is already performing them.

"For the first time I would be able to say by the power of the commonwealth of Kentucky I pronounce you husband and wife," he said.

Same-sex weddings are permitted in Reform and Conservative Jewish congregations, and The Temple, at U.S. 42 and Lime Kiln Lane, has been performing them since 1996.

"We support the right of same-sex couples to marry the one they love," Senior Rabbi David Ariel-Joel said. "The nice thing now is that instead of just signing the Jewish marriage covenant, we will be able to sign the marriage certificate of the commonwealth of Kentucky. It will mean justice will prevail in Kentucky."

Others are taking a wait-and-see attitude.

The Rev. Jonathan Erdman, rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in downtown Louisville, which doesn't currently perform same-sex weddings, said there are diverse views among his congregation on the issue and he hasn't decided yet whether he will officiate such ceremonies.

The Right Rev. Terry Allen White, the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Kentucky, has given priests permission to bless same-sex marriages, and some are doing so, according to the Very Rev. Amy R. Coultas, canon to the bishop.

For two churches, Douglass Boulevard Christian and First Unitarian, the court's ruling means their pastors can end a protest in which they refused to sign state marriage certificates for heterosexual couples as long as gay couples were refused the right to marry.

"Civil marriage … should be between any two consenting adults — period," the Rev. Dawn Cooley of First Unitarian wrote on her blog, explaining the protest. "Because most states currently do discriminate against gay and lesbian couples, this makes civil marriage an unjust institution."

Reporter Andrew Wolfson can be reached at (502) 582-7189