as “Holy Unions” or “Celebrations.” Now, she said, the preferred term is “marriage.”
"I don't care what your sexual orientation is, what’s most important to me is what you call it,” she said. “They said ‘marriage,’ and I was honored to do their ‘marriage,’ so they would not be seen as second-class in any way.”
The commission appeared to accept that rationale, writing that the Bible proclaims “a message of inclusiveness, reconciliation, and the breaking down of barriers that separate humans from each other, and that this proclamation has primacy in the conduct of the Church.”
In opening statements, Stephen L. Taber, a San Francisco attorney prosecuting Spahr for Redwoods Presbytery, argued that the case was not about gay rights, but about church discipline.
“The burden on this commission is not to decide whether same-sex marriage is or is not appropriate for the Presbyterian Church (USA),” he said. “The only question here is whether Rev. Spahr committed certain acts, and whether those acts are in violation of the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church.”
Taylor countered that it was not up to the church to judge Spahr’s actions, that this was the responsibility of a higher power.
“The reformers were clear in their assertions that the authority of the church to discipline belongs not to the church but to Christ,” she said. “Christ is the Word of God to the church and to the world.”
Spahr, who acknowledged that she has performed many same-sex marriages in her 32 years as a Presbyterian minister, said all the unions were included in annual reports submitted to Redwoods Presbytery.
“Being a lesbian clergywoman, you learn not to hide anything,” she said, adding that she has never been questioned about the marriages by any presbytery official.
Conover testified that local church officials were aware of Spahr’s actions, and that some had attended her marriage ceremonies.
Joining Spahr and Conover as witnesses at the trial included the two couples she married and Joan Runyeon, a former interim stated clerk of Redwoods Presbytery.
Runyeon said the investigation started with an inquiry from the Rev. James Berkley, a member of Seattle Presbytery.
Valois and Douglass described their wedding as the most beautiful moment in their lives. “We already know we’re married in the eyes of God,” Douglass said.
Senechal testified about how much it meant to her and Figuera to find an understanding minister in Spahr. “If you have never been in a place where you are not accepted, you won't understand,” she said.
Taber said in his closing argument Friday that he believes Spahr’s ordination vows required her to uphold the church’s position that marriage is only between a man and a woman.
“She can be here in this community and hold her conscience, but the church has its rights to its own governance,” he said.
Although the PC(USA) does not allow actively gay or lesbian members to serve as ministers, Spahr, who was ordained in 1974 in Pittsburgh Presbytery, was allowed to keep her position after she came out as a lesbian in 1978.
She was called in 1991 as co-pastor of Downtown United Presbyterian Church in Rochester, but that call was invalidated by the General Assembly PJC in November 1992.
Even without a call, the Rochester church in 1993 invited her to serve as a “lesbian evangelist” and established the group That All May Freely Serve to support her ministry, in partnership with Westminster Presbyterian Church in Tiburon, CA.
Since then, Spahr has traveled the country mustering support for the ordination of gay and lesbian Presbyterians and building a network of regional groups to help in the effort.
“It has been my honor to be in a community that is not understood many times by the church,” Spahr said. “I would not be doing the work God has called me to do if I weren’t doing these services, regardless of whether it meets the church’s position or not.”
Spahr is one of at least two Presbyterian ministers in recent years to face charges for marrying same-sex couples.
The other, the Rev. Stephen Van Kuiken, a former pastor of Mount Auburn Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati, OH, lost his job and membership in the church when the Presbytery of Cincinnati overwhelmingly voted to remove him on June 16, 2003.
Van Kuiken appealed the decision to the PJC of the Synod of the Covenant, which ruled that the presbytery erred in removing him while he was appealing a previous presbytery decision. However, he never applied for reinstatement.
Spahr was originally charged after co-officiating at a February 2004 wedding in Ontario, Canada, of two men from New York state.
A trial was scheduled for April 2005, but was delayed because of extensive legal negotiations.
Then Redwoods Presbytery, based in Napa, CA, dropped the original charge concerning the gay men and amended the complaint to charge Spahr with marrying the lesbian couples.
Taber said the presbytery’s prosecuting committee asked that the case be amended because, while Spahr co-officiated at the men’s wedding, it was not clear whether she had actually pronounced them married.
Spahr did not sign the marriage certificate. She is not licensed to perform weddings in Ontario.
“We believed, based on the facts as we discovered them, that it could not be shown beyond a reasonable doubt that she had actually performed a wedding in violation of the Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (USA),” Taber said.
An investigating committee filed the charge with the presbytery after Spahr’s participation in the Canadian same-sex wedding was brought to the presbytery’s attention last March in an email sent by Berkley, who at the time was the issues ministry director of Presbyterians for Renewal, a conservative renewal group that opposes the ordination of gays and lesbians. |
