By STEVEN G.
VEGH, The Virginian-Pilot , © February 3, 2005 Last updated: 5:28
PM
NORFOLK — Testing their political muscle, more than 50 clergy from
an interracial mix of denominations gathered today to demand legislators’
support for a state constitutional amendment that would forbid same-sex
marriage.
“We have got to lift our prophetic voices at this time and let the
world know where we are as a faith community: We are supporting this
amendment,” the Rev. G. Wesley Hardy of Cathedral of Faith Church of God in
Christ in Chesapeake said at the news conference hosted by the Tidewater
Pastor’s Council . The event was held at Garden of Prayer Temple on Church
Street.
Five bills before the General Assembly call for changing the state
constitution to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman. If the legislation
is approved, same-sex marriages and civil unions ratified outside the state
would not be recognized within Virginia.
Virginia has already outlawed same-sex marriages. Proponents of
the legislation say the constitutional amendment would prevent courts from
overturning the state statute that only allows a man and woman to marry.
Opponents of the law and the amendment say they could intrude into private
arrangements such as advanced medical directives.
The churches represented at Thursday’s gathering were socially
conservative congregations in South Hampton Roads with memberships ranging from
a few hundred to several thousand.
In one sense, the event brought together strange bedfellows,
drawing as it did from Pentecostal, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Episcopal and
Baptist churches that differ in styles of worship and other traditions.
But the 100 people at the event nodded in agreement as an array of
ministers called marriage a religious, civic and anthropological norm that
homosexual activists and the “new morality” of secularism want to distort and
redefine.
Ministers also signed a statement registering their opposition to
“any legal sanction of marriage counterfeits” and “the granting of
marriage-like benefits to same-sex couples, cohabiting couples or any other
non-marital relationship.”
The event was the first public initiative of the pastors council,
which hopes to become a religious voice that politicians must reckon with on
moral issues that intersect with public policy. That voice has been “nearly
silenced” in Hampton Roads and a world “awash in moral relativism,” according
to a council position paper.
“There is no organization that matches the church,” said the Rev.
Nate Atwood, senior pastor of Kempsville Presbyterian Church in Virginia Beach
and co-organizer of the council. “The folks in our churches vote ... and we
vote our biblical convictions. We think that’s just part of Christian
citizenship.”
Atwood said after the rally that his fellow clergy would encourage
congregants to lobby delegates at the Capitol in support of the amendment.
Any of the bills that win approval of the General Assembly would
have to be approved again next year by the House and Senate. The measure would
then go to voters in a referendum in November 2006.
Reach Steven G. Vegh at 446-2417 or steven.vegh@pilotonline.com
© 2005 HamptonRoads.com/PilotOnline.com