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Loading ...Evangelical pastor: Straight couples should refuse to sign Calif. licenses
09.16.2008 2:57pm EDT
(Sacramento, California) An evangelical pastor is advising couples not to sign California’s gender-neutral marriage licenses as a protest.
After the California Supreme Court struck down the ban on gay marriage in May, the state amended its marriage licenses, replacing “Bride” and ‘Groom” with “Party A” and “Party B.”Following a wedding, the license must be signed and sent to the state for registration.
The Sacramento Bee reports that the first couple to follow the advice of Pastor Doug Bird of the Abundant Life Fellowship is Bird’s own daughter.
Rachel Bird married Gideon Codding last month, but they have not signed the license nor sent it in to be registered.
Rev. Bird has called on other churches to follow hid daughter’s lead.
“I would encourage you to refuse to sign marriage licenses with ‘Party A’ and ‘Party B,’” Bird said in a letter to area churches. “If ever there was a time for the people of the United States to stand up and let their voices be heard – this is that time.”
Bird tells The Bee that he has received positive reactions from other clergy. A state spokesperson told the paper that as far as he knows, no other married couple has refused to sign their license.
Unless a marriage is registered, partners are unable to take advantage of rights accorded to married couples – including a bride taking her husband’s name.
In the case of Bird and Codding, Rachel Bird is unable to be added to Codding’s medical benefits.
Bird told The Bee that the decision not to register their marriage was “personal – not religious.”
“We just feel that our rights have been violated,” she said.
She also said she and Codding are exploring their legal options.
A proposed amendment to the California Constitution to ban same-sex marriage will appear on the ballot in November. Recent polls suggest it will not win approval.
This is ridiculous….and it’s not going to work.
….. She feels her rights are violated because she is “Party B” on a form?
What thin skin she has.
Ridiculous.
If you think about it, Rev. Bird’s daughter is not positioning herself to the homosexuals in the rest of America. She is not receiving EQUAL rights because of that one piece of paper, however she has the choice to sign it unlike those homosexuals who are deprived of that right.
The pastor actually makes a good point. There is a difference in being married (i) in the eyes of the church based on that church’s beliefs (however much homophobic)and(ii) by the state which should, and in California is , available to all.
McCain needs to hire this trio of putzs to help run his campaign! Lies and Spin that’s what this nation needs more of.
I am certain these self-appointed Naybobs of negativism are reeling in the fact that californians are rejecting Prop. 8.
To paraphrase McCain’s Advisor Graham;
“American Christians are a bunch of Whiners!”
I am trying to figure out just exactly how they figure there rights have been violated? Because they have been now classified as Spouse A & B? Is it because they now get a taste of what the GLBT folks go through everyday when we are asked about our relationships or fill out gender specific forms which do not represent us as duel husbands/wives or duel fathers/mothers?
It still astounds me that people claim that marriage has “always” been man/women. Marriage has been about ownership and property and for centuries wasn’t even part of the religious institutions (which anyone who has read the christian bible will know that they didn’t just have 1 wife, they had plural marriages, concubines, slaves etc. Bearing their children. Just exactly how gay marriage will damage a hetero marriage is beyond me. Worse yet is the claim that they are trying to protect the children…hasn’t this bigotry been thrown into most arguements to exclude one group of people from human rights (they did with inter-racial marriage)…what about my children being raised by two gay fathers – when will they get equal protection; isn’t the prohibition of our rights damaging our children – 90% of whom will be straight? Do those kids just not matter? I guess it is like most republicans that spout off about being pro-life but then will readily go to war over oil…doesn’t matter that they’ve slaughtered 10’s of thousands of civilians – those lives don’t count…just as long as they can take away a women’s right to choose whether to keep a fetus (totally unrelated – it is just the hypocrisy that kills me and causes me to ramble
).
fr the article:
>….Bird told The Bee that the decision not to register their marriage was “personal – not religious.”
“We just feel that our rights have been violated,” she said.
She also said she and Codding are exploring their legal options.<
Her “legal options” are to SIGN the marriage license and NOT alter it. She’s making a mockery of MY same-sex marriage.
Then they can live the lives that countless GLTBI couples have been living forever, WITHOUT BENEFITS!!!
Those who prattle so much about the importance of marriage would destroy it rather then support equality for gay people. Total hating hypocrites best describes them.
But lets remember, that some number of United Churches of Christ, and I think another denomination’s pastors are refusing to be the witness for the civil portion of a str8 marriage ceremony in their church, until gays can get married also. That is bravery and doing the work of God.
I don’t think it’s the UCC; I think its the Unitarians; big difference
Now if we could only get them to stop breeding like rabbits, that WOULD be something!
Their rights to be bigots have been violated. Good.
Let them do without the benefits of legal marriage, and maybe they will wake up.
Of course that is about as doubtful as getting an apology from Bin Laden for his crimes.
Religious hatred is one of the two prime failures of mankind.
The other is greed.
And these two describe lots of the people in this country of which our nation should be ashamed.
It is you, and all of you gay marriage activists, who are with the greed, and you want to turn America into a Communist nation.
Children’s basic rights are to have a mother and a father, male and female, not two fathers or two mothers.
Those homosexuals who take away children from biological parents and raise them in their household are offending the innocent and stumbling them into sin. Jesus said that whoever offends little children deserves a millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. (Matthew 18:6).