Wedded Bliss for All or None

[MountainLaurel]

Kudos to this guy for standing up for what is right!

Clarendon Presbyterian Church Pastor David Ensign has an alternative air about him. He wears an earring and has been known to pick up his guitar to play a few hymns during Sunday services.

But he surprised even some of Arlington's die-hard progressives Nov. 3 at the county's annual human rights awards ceremony, where his church was honored. He used the occasion to announce the church's new wedding policy:

Traditional marriages are out. "Celebrations of commitment" are in.

To protest Virginia's laws banning same-sex marriage, Ensign and the church's governing council decided recently that Clarendon Presbyterian will no longer have any weddings, and Ensign will renounce his state authority to marry couples.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/14/AR2005111401484.html

[no_hypocrisy]

1. It's a good start, if only symbolically. The same problem exists.

Legal recognition of "nontraditional" marriages. The right to survivorship in wills, the right to inherit, the right to be de facto power of attorney, right to spousal maintenance, right to be a parent, right to own property as an indivisible unit (tenancy by the entirety), etc. Without these rights guaranteed to these citizens, an alternative ceremony is only symbolic and changes nothing.

[xchrom]

2. i think they know that.

straight people can do what they need to do to be legally wed and have their union blessed at church.

and i'm sure many at that church will do just that -- but symbolically stand with gay folk.

[no_hypocrisy]

3. I agree with you. Blessings go a long way.

I'm truly ambitious and impatient. I want it all and I want it soon.