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” >.

In 2002, with the support of the Board of Directors of White Bear Unitarian Universalist Church, our Minister, Victoria Safford, made public her decision to sign no marriage licenses for heterosexual couples until the rights and privileges such licenses afford are made available to gay and lesbian couples as well. We are mindful that while this stand may discourage some couples from holding their ceremony here, other couples – gay and straight – will find our setting all the more appealing as a result. We are happy to recommend court officials who can, for a reasonable fee, provide a legal marriage license if you wish.

For Release – January 2003

Unitarian Minister Commits to no Further Wedding Documents Until Laws Change

The Rev. Victoria Safford, with the approval of the Board of Directors where she ministers, will no longer sign final wedding papers for straight couples until laws change to recognize same-sex couples who make similar commitments.

“Of course I will continue to perform wedding ceremonies, as I continue to perform commitment ceremonies, but I cannot in good conscience continue to act as an agent of the state to bring legal sanction to some loving and committed couples while the state discriminates against others,” Safford explains.

Safford will perform services and celebrations but will no longer sign wedding documents. Straight couples for whom she officiates can obtain those documents by paying the fee to a judge or court official. In this way, Safford fulfills her primary duty as a religious leader bringing a community’s blessing to a couple beginning a committed life together, while declining to participate in state-sanctioned discrimination against gays and lesbians. Wedding documents carry legal benefits to wedded partners, such as a right to inherit from one’s partner, the right to Social Security benefits based on the couple’s life together, and the right to obtain health insurance as a couple. These and other rights enjoyed by wedded couples are denied to or not treated as rights for same-sex couples under current laws.

Safford is the minister of the White Bear Unitarian Universalist Church, which is recognized by the Unitarian Universalist Association as a Welcoming Congregation.

White Bear Unitarian Universalist Church
328 Maple Street, Mahtomedi, (651) 426-2369.
Charlotte Preston Media contact for WBUUC
651-426-2369 (Mon – Thurs, 9:00 – 5:00 Central time, USA)

Mr.Chairman, members of the committee, thank you for hearing me this afternoon.

Since my ordination to the ministry in 1989, I have presided over many marriages for heterosexual couples and many marriages for gay and lesbian couples. These are sacred rituals, a sacrament held holy within the worshipping community, blessed by the congregation and by God.

Marriage is the joining in lifelong partnership of two adults who love one another and who would make their life in trust together. It is the privilege of the faith community to bless and support such a union, for any couple who chooses it, regardless of sexual orientation – if the faith community is called to do so, as mine is, and has been, publicly, for over three decades.

No household, no family, can survive alone, without the blessing of a wider community. I am a heterosexual woman. My husband and I have been married for 22 years, and we have a ten year old daughter. We have neither the wisdom nor the resources, spiritual or ethical, to raise her by ourselves, in isolation, and so, like all households, we rely, gratefully, on wider circles of support: our friends and family, our congregation, our neighborhood, and the wider secular community, which affirms our intention to be a family, and recognizes us as one. When we go out, the world smiles on us, without even knowing who we are. The law smiles on us.

Our daughter’s godparents, the people we would trust to raise her well if we died, to raise her lovingly and ethically to be a person and a citizen, are a couple we admire deeply, to whom we look for clues, even after 22 years of marriage, – clues on how to be a loving, committed, intentional family. That couple happens to be a lesbian couple, and though their household is loving and clear-minded and faithful and as committed as ours, and has been for the same amount of time, I know that our dear friends and their child live as second-class citizens. It is the job of the faith community to bless our marriages. It is the job of the state and the state’s responsibility to protect our common rights, our civil and human rights without discrimination.

I know that my own straight and narrow life is enlarged and enriched every day by my contact with so many others whose households are constructed differently from mine. I think of families in which children are raised by grandparents because the parents are unable. I think of multigenerational families. I think of single parent families who show me what courage really looks like, I think of families in which the shared custody of children is a daily challenge and a serious disciple for parents who have chosen to divorce (most of whom, I think, are heterosexual), and I think of gay and lesbian households – all of which remind me that my one way of constructing a partnership, a marriage or a family is not the only way to live a loving, worthy, normal, American life. This country is made strong by its diversity, not homogeneity.

My definition of marriage derives from the beautiful families I know, both gay and straight. As a minister, I know that the Bible (both the Hebrew scriptures and the Christian New Testament) contains much that is beautiful and true, as do other sacred traditions, regarding human experience and human relationship and the well-ordering of society. But the Bible also prescribes and assumes many time-bound, culture bound ideas about sexuality, about women, about the ownership of women by men or the ownership of children by adults, much about slavery, about criminal justice and the uses of torture, about corporal punishment, property rights and about polygamy and marriage – much which could only be considered inappropriate today.

The question of whether the Bible is to be read as a literal guide for contemporary human affairs, and ethics, and law, is a good question – but it is not a question for a secular state to answer. It is not a question to be decided in a state’s constitution. This is not a Christian nation, and Minnesota is not governed by the Christian bible or any other. No matter what religion the majority may currently practice, we do not live in a theocracy.

As a minister, I have gone in the middle of the night to the hospital with terrified parents whose child has been rushed to the emergency room. And I have sat all night with a mother prohibited from the bedside of her child, who is crying out for her – because she is not recognized as that child’s mother, though she has been since his birth. The hospital was not obliged to recognize that. I have sat with life partners similarly separated, one couple in particular who were married 40 years, but when one was sick and dying, the other could not even visit, could not even say goodbye, as his spouse, the love of his life was dying. And in the end, in fact, that man, then an old man, was forced to leave his home, the home he had built with his partner, as so many of us have made homes with those we choose to love.

Earlier this year I stopped signing marriage licenses for heterosexual couples when they marry until I can sign licenses for all couples when they marry. I do this with the full support of my church, and the support of many heterosexual couples I will marry this summer. They understand the imbalance of rights and benefits bestowed by that license on some and not all, and would not be accomplices to that imbalance. As they approach their own wedding days, they are asking, as so many are asking, What possible purpose to our commonwealth could be served by a constitutional amendment that would outlaw the stable, loving marriages of any of our citizens? I can see none.

Thank you.

The Reverend Victoria Safford
White Bear Unitarian Universalist Church
Mahtomedi, Minnesota

Service of Blessing

Policy on Celebrations of the Covenant Union of Two People

Adopted by Session, September 2005

I. Statement from the Pastor on Services of Celebration of Marriage or Holy

Union

When we gather at Clarendon Presbyterian Church to celebrate the faith, hope, love and

commitment of two individuals to build a common life together, we gather to worship and honor

God and to celebrate the wondrous diversity of God’s good creation.

We gather in the presence of God to witness the joining together of two individuals, to surround

them with our love and with our prayers, and to ask God’s blessing upon them that they may be

strengthened for their lives together. The union that we celebrate is a gift from the heart of God

so that two people may help and comfort one another, living faithfully together in plenty and in

want, in joy and in sorrow, in sickness and in health, throughout all their days.

God graces us with this gift for the full _expression of love between two people, who belong to

each other, and with affection and tenderness freely give themselves to one another. God graces

us with this gift for the well-being of society, for the ordering of family life, and for the nurture

of children.

God graces us with this gift as a holy mystery, in which two become one just as Christ is one

with the church. In holy union, whether honored by the state in marriage or not, the beloved are

called to a new way of life, created, ordered and bless by God. This way of life must not be

entered into carelessly, or from selfish motives, but responsibly and prayerfully.

We rejoice, then, in this gift, and insist that is shall be honored by all.

Our Commitment to Nondiscrimination

Clarendon Presbyterian Church, a progressive, inclusive and diverse community of faith, seeks

to honor each individual as a beloved child of God, understanding that God loves each of us

without regard to race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religious belief or any of the

numerous other distinctions that human beings use to distinguish one from another. Such

distinctions are too often used as the foundation for discrimination against members of groups

without power within given cultures. Too often, the church has been complicit in such injustice.

In our time, gay, lesbian, transgendered and bisexual individuals face painful discrimination in

the culture and within the church. Civil laws governing the rights to marriage and to other forms

of life partnership are overwhelmingly discriminatory against gay, lesbian, transgendered and

bisexual couples. Whatever the symbolic meaning of marriage, the real legal aspects are

crucially important and same-sex couples face daily discrimination related to taxes, wills,

property ownership, rights of next-of-kin, Social Security and others. This is particularly,

painfully true in the Commonwealth of Virginia today.

Therefore, responding to God’s call to do justice, to the command of Jesus the Christ that we

love one another as he loves us, and to the Presbyterian Book of Order statement that “The

Biblical vision of doing justice calls for: … supporting people who seek the dignity, freedom, and

respect that they have been denied; … redressing wrongs against individuals, groups and peoples

in the Church, in this nation, and in the whole world” (W-7.4002), the pastor of Clarendon

Presbyterian Church will not participate as an agent of the state authorized to pronounce legal

marriages.

Much of the present discrimination against sexual minorities in our culture focuses on the rights

of same-sex couples to enter into committed life relationships that will have standing in civil

courts. The church understands this legal aspect of marriage, and defines marriage, in part, in the

Book of Order as a “civil contract between a woman and a man. For Christians marriage is a

covenant through which a man and a woman are called to faithfully live out together before God

their lives of discipleship. In a service of Christian marriage a lifelong commitment is made by a

woman and a man to each other, publicly witnessed and acknowledged by the community of

faith” (W-4.9001).

We honor the lifelong commitments made by men and women in this community, and we

celebrate them. We will continue to celebrate heterosexual marriages and same-gender holy

unions in the sanctuary at Clarendon, but we will ask heterosexual partners first to have their

legal marriage vows witnessed by a duly authorized agent of the state and their marriage licenses

signed by such an agent. We acknowledge that this adds a slight cost and an additional burden on

couples. To lessen this impact, we will decrease the fees charged for marriages by an amount

commensurate with additional fees (presently $30), and we will provide as much guidance as

possible through the Arlington County court process.

II. Same-sex Holy Unions/Convenantal Ceremonies

For same-gender couples, the Commonwealth of Virginia not only refuses to issue marriage

licenses or to recognize equivalent legal rights or obligations but is seeking to write such

discrimination into its constitution. While some same-gender couples create legal policy

statements- ‘domestic partnership agreements’, wills, powers of attorney, guardianship, etc.,- to

duplicate some of the benefits of legal marriage, the Commonwealth has acted to make such

agreements null and void. Some benefits accorded to married couples, e.g. Social Security

benefits, income tax, and child custody, can be granted only by state and federal laws and

licenses. Therefore, it remains impossible to speak of “marriage” for same gender couples.

Beyond the civil situation, most Christian communities currently deny same gender couples the

opportunity to acknowledge their faithfulness to one another and to celebrate the joining of their

lives and spirits within the church. This was not always the case. Research into early Christian

church liturgies by the late Yale University historian John E. Boswell found Catholic and

Orthodox liturgies for same-sex unions. These ceremonies were performed throughout

Christendom into modern times.

The Presbyterian Church’s constitution, the Book of Order, says “The Christian community

provides nurture for its members through all of life and life’s transitions. … The church offers

nurture to people assuming responsibilities in the world, assisting them: … with making wise

commitments in personal relationships and marriage.” (W-6.2000-2002) “The Church recognizes

transitions which bring joy and sorrow in human life: … households are established, move to new

locations, gain and lose members; people are empowered, restored, make new commitments.”

(W-6.3010) The Book of Order provides that the worship service is appropriate when people

“make and renew covenants”. (W-2.6001[e.1]) Therefore, it is consistent with the Book of Order

to bless and celebrate same sex covenants with ceremonies in the church.

III. Requirements for Celebrations of Marriage or Holy Union at Clarendon

Participation in the Life of the Community: Ordinarily the pastor of Clarendon Presbyterian

Church shall be the worship leader at all services of celebration of marriage or of holy union.

When you ask the pastor of this church to conduct such a service, you are not asking him/her to

legitimize your status in society, but rather that God may bless your relationship. In requesting

that the ceremony be performed in the church you are asking for a worship service at the same

time. Participating in such a service demonstrates that you have a vital faith in God and a sincere

desire to understand and live up to the meaning of a committed relationship as described in the

statement above. We ask couples who are not members of this congregation to worship with us

on Sunday morning at least four times before entering into conversations about the process of

holding a service of celebration here.

Pre-celebration counseling: Ordinarily a couple preparing to enter marriage or holy union, and

planning to celebrate that in a service of worship at CPC shall participate in counseling arranged

with the pastor.

License: Heterosexual couples are responsible for obtaining a valid marriage license for

Arlington County , for having their civil marriage vows witnessed and the license signed by a

duly authorized agent of the Commonwealth of Virginia .