PHX Minister Stops Signing Marriage Licenses in Equality Stand
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February 17, 2010
PHOENIX - Heterosexual couples taking their vows at a Phoenix church will no longer leave with a signed marriage license. The Reverend Susan Frederick-Gray of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation says she won't sign the document for opposite-sex couples until the law allows her to sign it for same-sex couples.
"As a matter of conscience, out of my own faith and my own beliefs, I am no longer willing to act as an agent of the state in carrying out this discrimination."
Frederick-Gray says her church views the family as the necessary cornerstone for raising healthy children, and that kids raised by same-sex couples in her congregation are just as happy and well-balanced as those in heterosexual families.
"Same-sex couples are raising children with the full blessings of their faith communities and their families. And what we need and what their children need is the full protection and privileges granted by the over 1400 rights that are conferred upon couples when they are legally married."
Frederick-Gray says she will continue to perform the religious sacrament of marriage without the secular portion.
"When two people in my congregation, be they two women, two men or a man and a woman, come to me and say, 'Will you marry us before the congregation? We want to celebrate this love that we've found,' they're looking for a religious sacrament."
When she can't perform the same ceremony or give all couples the same rights as an opposite-sex couple, Frederick-Gray says it inhibits the religious freedom of the congregation and the community.
Frederick-Gray says couples can go to a judge or justice of the peace to get their licenses signed.
Supporters of measures such as Arizona's Prop. 102 or California's Prop. 8 argue that marriage can only be defined as the union between one man and one woman.