Currently, We Have No Choice
By Rev. Dr. V. Gordon Glenn, III
I sit on my conference’s Committee on Ministerial Efficiency. A few year’s back, we had to make recommendations on one of the itinerant elders in our conference who performed a same sex marriage that was held at the residence of one of their members. My position then is the same as it is today. Namely, our Discipline does not allow our ministers to perform same sex marriages. Under the rules described therein, there are penalties delineated for breaking this rule, up to and including defrocking of the offender.
How I feel about this rule in our Discipline is irrelevant. How I read and interpret the Bible’s limited ruling on the subject is a matter of my faith. The fact of the matter is that in the United States of America, these unions are legal. The Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015 made it so. In addition, same-sex marriage is legal in several countries with AME Churches, namely: Canada, Brazil, Cuba, the United Kingdom, France, and South Africa.
If you are an “originalist” as it pertains to our Discipline, claiming that our Founder Richard Allen and the men who attended the first General Conference never envisioned a world where the Supreme Court would make same sex unions legal, know this, the penalty wasn’t added until 2004 as a response to Massachusetts legalizing same sex marriages.
Full Disclosure: This is personal for me. I have a wonderful family friend. While we were growing up in Boston, this person was like another older sibling to me. This person is in a same sex relationship and has been for years. If they asked me today if I would perform their marriage, our Discipline gives me no choice but to say, “No.” I can’t bless it, affirm it, or even attend incognito not wearing my clergy collar.
The addition to our Discipline takes the choice out of the hands of our ministers and forces members, who have been members in good and regular standing, to go elsewhere to have a legal act performed on their behalf, instead of entrusting it to our well-trained, well-educated, resolute AME ministers.
Reflecting on the case in my Annual Conference, I have submitted legislation to remedy this removal of choice. It proposes to take away the penalty threatened to our ministers for performing same sex marriages since it is legal to do so in all 50 United States and territories. It is a compromise, I know. Some will feel that this proposed removal is a bridge too far and is unbiblical. Others will feel that it doesn’t go far enough, since it retains the prevention of same sex marriages to be held on AME properties. Getting this legislation out of committee and onto the floor at this year’s General Conference will be an up-hill battle, but one that is worth it.
Rev. Dr. V. Gordon Glenn, III
Pastor of Grant Chapel A.M.E. Church, Wichita, Kansas
