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January 09, 2013
National Cathedral in Washington Will Begin Holding Weddings For Same-Sex Couples
National Cathedral in Washington Will Begin Holding Weddings For Same-Sex Couples.
The Bishop has decided to allow weddings because same-sex marriage is legal in D.C.
When laws went into effect in three states for same-sex couples to marry, many were quick to line up at their city halls to exchange vows. Now they may do so in one of the nation’s most prominent churches — the Washington National Cathedral.
Most Americans know the house of God, also called the Cathedral Church of St. Peter and St. Paul, as a place where sacred rites are carried out on behalf of the nation. It has been host to the funerals of numerous presidents and of inaugural prayer services for four presidents, including Barack Obama.
But it is also an active house of worship in the Episcopalian Church, said the Cathedral’s dean, Gary Hall. The denomination has developed a blessing rite that mirrors current wedding ceremonies for heterosexual couples and allows each bishop to decide to allow same-sex marriages in their churches or not.
Bishop Mariann Budde decided to allow the rite, since same-sex marriage is legal in the District of Columbia and now in neighboring Maryland as well, Hall said.
It was Budde’s decision that led Hall to create the same-sex rite.
He sees it as “another historic step toward greater equality.”
The states of Washington, Maine and Maryland all legalized same-sex marriages in referendums during the 2012 general election. It was already legal in the nation's capital.
In March, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in two appeals cases related to same-sex marriage -- California's Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriage and the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which denies federal benefits to same-sex couples.
The American Episcopal Church is intimately connected with the Church of England, which last week approved the advancement of male priests in same-sex committed relationships to the position of bishop. But those relationships must be celibate.
City halls in Baltimore; Portland, Maine; and Seattle erupted in celebration as the first same-sex couples tied the knot in December and January. Seattle's ceremony included 133 couples, who walked outside and down rain-slickened steps afterward, where they were greeted by cheers, confetti and a brass band celebrating the first day same-sex couples could marry in Washington.
To wed at the National Cathedral, one member of the couple must be baptized into the Church, and both must commit to a Christian marriage of "lifelong faithfulness, love, forbearance and mutual comfort."
Wild Thing's comment.................
More bringing down of our country. I am so glad I am not a member of this idiot church.
Posted by Wild Thing at January 9, 2013 11:14 AM
Comments
Appeasement to sickness. Sad!
Posted by: TomR, armed in Texas at January 9, 2013 02:50 PM
Tom, exactly, you said it better.
Posted by: Wild Thing at January 9, 2013 04:21 PM
It doesn't matter what they call themselves. They can belong to any denomination and call their ministers priests, bishops, pastors, deacons, or whatever they want. But, if they call themselves, Christian, then they must believe the Bible. If they don't, the name is only a name and has no meaning.
Romans 1:24-27 Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
Posted by: BobF at January 9, 2013 10:50 PM
Our core values, sacrificed on the alter of P.C. Fifty years ago, I could have told folks that this was going to happen and they would have laughed me out of the room.
Posted by: Willy at January 10, 2013 03:43 PM
