As the legal battle over same-sex “marriage” shifts from the Supreme Court to state capitals and lower courts, many churches are wondering if they should take steps to protect themselves against the possibility of being forced to perform same-sex “marriages” one day.
In Louisiana, for example, Baptist churches are electing to add to their bylaws a stipulation that their ministers will perform only traditional marriages on their premises. And enough churches in Alabama have asked if they should take similar steps that Rick Lance, executive director of the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions (SBOM), appointed a State Board task force in June to study the issue.
The task force came back with a suggested bylaw addition for churches interested in shoring up their congregation’s views on marriage.
Chip Smith, task force chairman and associate in the SBOM office of LeaderCare and church administration, emphasized that the recommended bylaw addition — to be approved then released publicly at the next SBOM staff meeting — was merely a suggestion for churches wanting help with a starting point.
No ‘magic language’
“The task force recommendation dealt with wedding policies but didn’t … get into the point of using words that are sparks for controversy,” Smith said. The suggested wording “stuck with a positive approach talking about Christian marriage,” he said. “Church bylaws or policies should state that marriage is between one man and one woman — a standard the Bible teaches.”
But whether a bylaw change could help a church in a legal challenge down the road is iffy, Baptist leaders admitted.
Jim Guenther, a Southern Baptist Convention attorney, said there is no “magic language” that a church can use in its governing documents to help itself.
But he also said that current First Amendment protections should hold up on churches’ behalf in court.
“Some have been anxious that a church might be required to allow its facilities to be used for a same-sex ‘marriage’ … (but) I think that is not likely at all,” Guenther said.
Smith agreed that it’s questionable whether or not a bylaw addition would be able to legally protect a church, but he noted that lawyers he has spoken with in Alabama say it may help.
“I look at it this way — it may not be worth the paper it’s written on, but then again it may,” Smith said. “It’s better than having nothing.”
No one knows what will happen, he said, adding that he would rather “go with the optimistic side” of a bylaw change — “maybe it can help at least to state where a church stands on marriage,” he said.
Greg Erwin, a Baton Rouge attorney who represents the Louisiana Baptist Convention, said if the Supreme Court becomes reliably liberal by losing one conservative judge to a liberal one, the court in a future decision could require that churches marry homosexuals.
“It would seem that the law now is that churches do not have to perform marriages that violate its beliefs,” Erwin said. “However if a church rents out its facilities for weddings to anyone but same-sex couples, then a court could find that the church is discriminating in violation of law by only refusing to rent to homosexuals.
“The free exercise of religion guaranteed by our Constitution is subject to future restriction by Congress, legislatures and the courts under the guise of balancing competing rights,” the attorney said. “We are at risk by staying true to our biblical principles.”
Already 12 cases have been filed in states from New Jersey to Hawaii to overturn measures that, until now, have been keeping same-sex “marriage” at bay. The flurry of activity is prompted in part by what gay-rights groups see as the long-term implications of the Supreme Court ruling. If federal benefits cannot be denied to “married” same-sex couples, they say, states cannot deny gays and lesbians the right to “marry.”
Guenther said he’s sure churches are watching “very closely as they see state statutes and local ordinances getting passed in other states.”
And Russell D. Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, said he thinks Associate Justice Antonin Scalia is right in stating that it “will be very difficult for the court now to allow states to state-by-state define marriage in the way that they currently do,” Moore said. “I think the language there is setting the court up for a Roe v. Wade type of decision in the future.”
Smith said if a federal rule passes, “there’s nothing anybody can do. As long as the First Amendment is not overruled, it may hold [legal struggles] off some.”
“We don’t know what is going to happen,” he said, noting that the State Board task force is “trying to be a resource and meet a need.”
“Whether we’re successful or not, that is for someone else to say down the road,” he said.
(TAB, BP, RNS)
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