›› UPFRONT
Gay-marriage debate turns ‘civil’ Spahr case raises question of ministers performing civil marriages by Ronnie Co he n
A mid-level Presbyterian appellate court has upheld the Rev. Jane Spahr’s conviction on charges she violated her ordination vows and the church constitution when she officiated at 16 legal same-sex weddings. The 68year-old minister plans to appeal the ruling to her church’s highest court. “I see it as an educational opportunity,” Spahr told a group of supporters, including some of the couples whose marriages the church attacked, as they gathered to discuss the ruling in San Rafael last week. “We’re part of the curriculum.” At the conclusion of Spahr’s August trial in a Napa church, a panel of ministers and church elders grudgingly rebuked the lesbian evangelist for performing the 2008 statesanctioned gay and lesbian weddings and simultaneously pronounced their love for her. Last week, an ecclesiastical appeals court decision also highlighted the church’s conflict over homosexual marriage. Now that five states and the District of Columbia recognize same-gender marriages, clergy have been forced to choose between the Bible’s directive for inclusiveness and possible sanctions for violating hazy and evolving church rules. Sitting as the Permanent Judicial Commission of the Synod of the Pacific, nine ministers and church elders from throughout the western United States heard Spahr’s appeal in a makeshift courtroom in an Oakland motel last month. In a written ruling issued last week, the commission called on the church’s highest court and its legislative body to clarify its position on the role ministers may play in gay and lesbian weddings. Ironically, based on an earlier decision in another same-sex marriage case against Spahr, the commission ruled she lacked authority to perform same-
Taylor, right, with wife, Sherrie Holmes, has both testified for Spahr and defended her as an attorney. 12 PACIFIC SUN APRIL 8 - APRIL 14, 2011
gender church weddings. But the commission wondered if Presbyterian ministers may perform same-gender civil marriages. “Our concern is for those [Presbyterian Church] USA clergy who wish to officiate at a same-gender civil wedding,” the ruling says. “What would such a minister need to do to faithfully perform a civil wedding while conforming to PCUSA polity regarding ecclesiastical weddings? Would a Minister of Word and Sacrament be faithful to PCUSA polity, for example, if they officiated in a civil wedding outside a church plant...? Or, is it a violation of church polity for PCUSA clergy to officiate at a civil same-gender wedding in all circumstances?” In an unusually bold move, the commission took the church’s highest court to task for overstepping its bounds in disciplining ministers who perform gay marriages. The synod commission found that the church’s high court “appears to have usurped the legislative province of the General Assembly when it created a new basis for discipline” in the earlier same-sex marriage case against Spahr. The church’s high court acquitted Spahr in April 2008. But it did so in a tangled decision—one that continues to haunt her and the gay and lesbian Presbyterian community. The first decision exonerated Spahr of charges related to her officiating at the weddings of two lesbian couples, one in New York in 2004 and another in Mendocino in 2005. But the ruling neither slammed the church door shut for gays and lesbians who want to marry, nor did it open it. The high court said Spahr did not violate church law prohibiting same-sex marriages because the 2004 and 2005 lesbian weddings were not and could not be marriages. At the time, same-gender marriage was not legal in New York or California. Just two weeks after Spahr’s confusing acquittal, while Presbyterians were still struggling to figure out its implications, the California Supreme Court handed down a completely different ruling. It unequivocally gave gay and lesbian couples the legal right to marry. Spahr’s lawyers immediately asked the church court to clarify its position in light of the California court’s landmark ruling. But the church court refused to elaborate, and Spahr began performing weddings for her gay and lesbian friends. Sara Taylor and Sherrie Holmes of Novato were first in line. Taylor, a lawyer who attended seminary but could not be ordained as a minister after disclosing her sexual preference, worked as Spahr’s attorney for four years during the minister’s first round of ecclesiastical marriage trials. Instead of serving as Spahr’s
Rev. Spahr, ministering at the 2008 Civic Center wedding of Holmes and Taylor.
attorney in the Napa trial, Taylor testified as one of the brides. But in March, wearing her thick gold wedding band, she was one of the attorneys defending Spahr during the Oakland hearing before the synod commission. “Please make no mistake,” Taylor told the commission, “the Rev. Spahr believes these marriages to be holy in the eyes of God.” Scott Clark, a lawyer and Presbyterian minister who lives in San Rafael with the partner he married in 2008, recounted how the trial judges who convicted Spahr apologized to the gay and lesbian couples who testified about their marriages. Clark told the synod commission that the trial judges implored the appeals courts to read a transcript of the couples’ testimony. Each of 10 couples recounted the humiliating discrimination they experienced, their joy about being able to legally marry and have their marriages recorded in church and state record books and their dismay that the church charged their beloved minister with performing their ceremonies. Clark argued that nothing in the church’s constitution prohibits a minister from blessing a same-sex marriage. He also said that the trial court erred in believing that the prior Spahr decision set the law. The prosecutor, Mendocino County retired attorney and church elder Joan Blackstone, argued that the 2008 Spahr decision does prohibit Presbyterian ministers from performing same-sex marriages. She likened the prohibition to a prior prohibition against divorced people remarrying in the church. When she married the first time, in 1950, Blackstone told the commission she could not be wed in her own church because her husband had been divorced. “The church can still welcome the family, can still baptize the children after their civil marriage,” Blackstone said. “Under the laws of our church we cannot recognize as marriage a marriage between two same-gender people.” Blackstone called Spahr a “dear, longstanding friend.” The prosecutor and her late second husband, San Francisco police sergeant
Elliott Blackstone, both sat on the board of directors of a nonprofit Spahr started in San Rafael in the early 1980s to help gays and lesbians. The San Francisco gay community lionized Elliott Blackstone as a hero for his role as a liaison between them and the police. Joan Blackstone argued that a Presbyterian minister would violate church rules simply by signing a same-sex marriage license. Anne Towler and Virginia Thibeaux listened carefully to the arguments in the Oakland makeshift courtroom about ministers being allowed to marry gays and lesbians in civil ceremonies. Their Presbyterian pastor obtained a civil license to perform weddings for a day and married the lesbian couple civilly in a ceremony in their San Anselmo church in August 2008—when same-sex marriage was legal, before voters narrowly approved Proposition 8, the gay-marriage ban. Nevertheless, Towler said, “The fact is she’s a Presbyterian minister, and you can’t not be a Presbyterian minister for a day.” “You want me to be in the closet first about my sexuality, and then you want me to be in the closet about my faith,” Spahr said after the Napa trial. “You will not bifurcate me anymore. “Don’t take away our joy. You can’t take away our joy.” Spahr’s attorneys expect their appeal to be heard late this year or early next year in the church’s headquarters in Louisville, Kentucky. Until then, the preacher who a few years ago moved from her home in San Rafael to San Francisco to devote herself to the care of her granddaughter, is praying for change. Spahr ended last week’s gathering at her friend’s San Rafael home to discuss the appellate decision with a prayer: “We pray for all those who don’t understand that their hearts may be open.” ✹ Contact Ronnie at ronniecohen@comcast.net.
Preach to us at ›› pacificsun.com