Church cancelled wedding because bride and groom supported marriage equality on Facebook

[47of74]

This happened in Australia 

Quote

A Victorian church refused to marry a young couple and cancelled their wedding plans because the bride-to-be expressed support for same-sex marriage on Facebook.

The 26-year-old bride and 25-year-old groom were to be married in November at their Presbyterian church, Ebenezer St John's in Ballarat, by minister Steven North.

In early August, when the Turnbull government announced the postal survey on same-sex marriage, the bride posted a Facebook status declaring her support for change.

Days later, the couple were summoned to Mr North's office and were told he would no longer marry them, nor would they be allowed to hold their ceremony at the church.

The couple fortunately was able to locate an alternative venue and another minister for their November nuptials.  

As for North, he should go perform an intimate act upon himself in traffic. 

[gustava]

Jesus weeps.

[Lurky]

The campaign against equal marriage is Aus is just bizarre.  I'm especially weirded out by all the slippery slope fallacies that are trotted out as if gay people haven't been getting married around the world for well over a decade, and it hasn't lead to called for people to marry animals, the birthrate to collapse, heterosexual marriage disappearing, and the general downfall of civilisation...

ETA I do wonder what this church was hoping to achieve - the couple would suddenly change their mind and their votes because petty spitefulness has persuaded them?

[Cleopatra7]

50 minutes ago, Lurky said:

The campaign against equal marriage is Aus is just bizarre.  I'm especially weirded out by all the slippery slope fallacies that are trotted out as if gay people haven't been getting married around the world for well over a decade, and it hasn't lead to called for people to marry animals...

I've never understood the argument that gay marriage is a slippery slope to mixed species marriage. No one is advocating for the latter, except maybe in some of the darkest corners of the Internet. When was the last time there was a zoophile pride march? Such a thing would never get a permit, and even if it did, it would attract the mother of all counter protests. Bestiality in the general sense does appear to be quite common in agrarian societies, presumably because access to victims is easy. The Irish penitentials from the early Middle Ages spend a lot of time discussing punishments for bestiality, and the issue also comes up a lot in old ecclesiastical records of Catholic and Protestant churches, including those from Puritan New England.

[Hane]

My daughter, who was engaged at the time (2005), went tearfully to the priest of the parish where she worked and was being married to tell him that she strongly opposed the Church's stand against marriage equality.  He just told her to live by her conscience, and went on to celebrate their nuptial Mass.

[sawasdee]

@Hane And that's a sane, sensible priest - unlike the one cited above, who seeks to impose his views on others.

If he doesn't want to marry same sex couples, the law in most countries allows him to refuse. However, refusing to marry those who disagree with his stance is objectionable, to say the least. Has the bishopric had anything to say about this - because I would have thought refusing ministry to people of good standing in the church because they disagree on a matter of principle with the pastor is pushing the line. He is there to minister, not brainwash.

What next? A doctrinal questionnaire to make sure you are ideologically pure enough to be married in his church? I think he would see a severe drop in income - fees for marriages, baptisms and funerals are usually a major part of parish, and pastor, income.