Bishop Now Requires Gay Priests to Marry

Well if that headline doesn't knock your socks off, what will? Your Head Trucker is still trying to get his head around the fact that the Episcopal Bishop of Long Island, the Right Reverend Lawrence Provenzano, has given all gay and lesbian priests in his diocese nine months in which to marry or split up:

"I deem it to be honest and fair, and I do so direct and require, now that it is legal, that only married couples may live together, either in rectories or elsewhere as a clergy couple living in the midst of our faith community," wrote the bishop, who had earlier welcomed the new law's passage.

Provenzano told Episcopal News Service in a telephone interview July 11 that after he consulted with the leadership of the diocese "it was clear that the consensus of thinking was that there ought to be some time frame" on fulfilling his requirement. "If we left it completely open-ended, it might not be acted on" and that inaction would create a "disparity," he said, noting that he would not allow a heterosexual clergy couple to live together outside of marriage.

The bishop said he has not received any criticism from the gay and lesbian clergy of the diocese. "At least as it applies to the Diocese of Long Island, I don't think it's going to feel to anyone that I am being unpastoral or punitive in any way or creating a hardship for them by saying nine months," he said. "I suspect that most of our partnered gay and lesbian clergy have been living in committed relationships for a fairly long period of time and that the concept of being married is exactly what they've been waiting for to happen, so the church moving in this direction with them is welcomed."

Other Episcopal bishops in New York are still weighing the matter in discussions with clergy and laity, and have not set such a firm rule.  Presbyterians, Lutherans, and other denominations in states where same-sex marriages are permitted are also reconsidering their positions on church weddings or blessings of same-sex couples, clergy as well as laypeople.

Of course, some people still think we are "godless" whether we get married in church or not.  Gee, wouldn't it be interesting to hear the comments and ravings if interracial marriage were put up for a vote today - even now, in 2011?

"Stop the Race Mixing March of the Antichrist" -
segrationists demonstrate in Little Rock, 1957