I support same-sex marriage.
I have deep sympathy with the hundreds of my constituents who fear that legislation for same-sex marriage will profoundly encroach - although this may be unintended - on their right to live according to their faith.
My own early crusade for same-sex marriage, for example, is now mainstream gay politics. It wasn't when I started.
Issues over same-sex marriage and LGBT people in the PCUSA are not new: there is a 40-plus year history of arguments and tacit agreements over the issue of sexuality in the denomination, and the first openly gay minister in the PCUSA was ordained in 2011.
The decision to allow clergy to perform same-sex marriages at the discretion of the congregation poses challenges for seminaries training new pastors who come from denominations fundamentally opposed on biblical grounds to same-sex marriage.
To allow the policy question of same-sex marriage to be considered and resolved by a select, patrician, highly unrepresentative panel of nine is to violate a principle even more fundamental than no taxation without representation: no social transformation without representation.
Until the courts put a stop to it, public debate over same-sex marriage displayed American democracy at its best. Individuals on both sides of the issue passionately, but respectfully, attempted to persuade their fellow citizens to accept their views.
By formally declaring anyone opposed to same-sex marriage an enemy of human decency, the majority arms well every challenger to a state law restricting marriage to its traditional definition.
Because values change, legislatures abolish the death penalty, permit same-sex marriage if they want, abolish laws against homosexual conduct. That's how the change in a society occurs. Society doesn't change through a Constitution.
I think people should be authentic and who they are. If that calls people to same-sex attraction and same-sex marriage, then they should be true to who they are, and I think that the world could benefit by more love.
