church bans interracial couples, but...

[browncoatslytherin]

...are now reconsidering their stance. probably because they realized that they could get their asses sued off, and judging from the size of the church that i saw on the short teaser news segment, it doesn't look like they could absorb that kind of loss.

i shall update this once they run the story. and hopefully they'll even post the story online.

[Hane]

How could a church be sued over something like this? The "Bible-based" reasoning these bigots use is along the lines that larger denominations use to ban gay marriages, or marriages of persons who have been divorced, and, last I checked, nobody's bothered trying to sue the Roman Catholic Church or LDS.

[holierthanyou]

When I first read the article headline I admit I did make the crazy assumption that the church had voted to ban inter-racial relationships more than a hundred years ago, and the crazy part was that in 2011 it was still on the books.... then I read the article and learned that they first put it to a vote way back in... August of 2011! Wow!

[bananacat]

I'm pretty sure they can't be sued. It actually disproves one argument against same-sex marriage because bigoted churches can stay as bigoted as they want and will never be forced to perform same sex marriage even when it's legal. They changed their stance only because they don't want the public to see them as to tools that they are.

[BlackHawk]

The story on the local news is that the Free Will Baptist head church is saying they cannot do that. According to it all, the Free Will Baptists do not believe in such a thing and has invalidated the church's vote. It's not so much THAT church "rethinking" but being told they can't do it by the head church (or the organization, for lack of a better word).

[Jezebel]

...are now reconsidering their stance. probably because they realized that they could get their asses sued off, and judging from the size of the church that i saw on the short teaser news segment, it doesn't look like they could absorb that kind of loss.

They can't get sued for it, but if enough of the congregation objects to that decision, and decides to vote with their feet (and thus checkbooks)? They're screwed. Especially a tiny congregation like the one in question. [ETA]

The vote was made by the church's governing body, not the congregation as a whole. And IIRC, it was not a popular decision with the rest of the church's membership.

Members of the church got together and voted to overturn that decision, but that their leadership was arrogant and clueless enough to vote it into being in the first place tells me that church (as an organization) has a lot of serious, long-standing problems. In a congregation that size, I wouldn't be surprised if it came down to a grudge by Melvin Thompson (the former pastor who wrote the proposal and put it up for a vote) against Dean Harville, the father of the young woman who brought her Zimbabwean boyfriend (now fiance) to church with her. A group that small and close-knit, especially with an authoritarian structure, is a perfect environment for this sort of thing to happen.

[browncoatslytherin]

ok, here's what the story said...apparently they said that there weren't actually enough members that voted to really represent the church. out of the 40-ish members, the vote was 9-6. per the news story, a lot of the members left before the vote took place because i guess they didn't really want to get involved with that whole thing and i guess they figured "oh it'll never pass". well, that's what happens when you don't vote!