Press Releases

Saturday, February 14, 2004

The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry Launches Web-Based Marriage Project

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Jay Johnson or Alvan Quamina, 510-849-8206

BERKELEY, CA - The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry (CLGS) today launched its web-based Marriage Project, available as a link from the CLGS website (www.clgs.org). The launch date not only coincides with Valentine's Day, the culmination of Freedom to Marry Week, but also with the historic decision by the Mayor of San Francisco to defy California State law by issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

"On this historic occasion, when same-sex couples were for the first time legally married in the United States, the CLGS Marriage Project provides a wide range of resources for understanding the complex religious issues in the marriage debate," says Dr. Mary A. Tolbert, the Center's Executive Director. "CLGS is particularly well suited to help both LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered) people and communities of faith make important distinctions between the civil and religious issues involved in marriage."

In its public statement, CLGS points to the failure in American public discourse to distinguish clearly between every citizen's civil right to civil marriage, and the freedom of religious communities to determine who benefits from their religious rites of marriage.

The full text of the Center's statement follows:

On this Valentine's Day, 2004, the culmination of Freedom to Marry Week, CLGS makes its Marriage Project available as a link from the CLGS website (www.clgs.org). The CLGS Marriage Project offers resources to help social activists and religious leaders alike make important distinctions between civil and religious marriage and addresses the critical need for education on the religious history of marriage.

The Marriage Project has emerged as a response to the vigorous debate over the right to marry in our society, a debate that promises to be one of the more divisive "wedge" issues in this year's presidential campaign. Reactionary religious organizations have obscured the important difference in our public discourse between civil rights and religious rites. Marriage equality for same-sex couples is a matter of civil rights, of enjoying the same benefits and responsibilities as any other married couple. Securing these civil rights has nothing to do with whether or not our churches and faith communities choose to celebrate and bless same-sex couples with religious and liturgical rites.

As the City of San Francisco just this week took the bold step of issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, the legal battle over this issue will likely intensify. Faith communities need the appropriate tools and resources for sorting through the religious and civil issues involved in the San Francisco decision and in the wider national debate on marriage.

"On this historic occasion, when same-sex couples were for the first time legally married in the United States, the CLGS Marriage Project provides a wide range of resources for understanding the complex religious issues in the marriage debate," says Mary A. Tolbert, Executive Director of CLGS and Professor of Biblical Studies at Pacific School of Religion. "CLGS is particularly well suited to help both LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered) people and communities of faith make important distinctions between the civil and religious issues involved in marriage."

"At the same time," Tolbert notes, "faith communities deserve access to biblical, historical and theological resources for affirming same-sex committed relationships and for devising the liturgical means to honor those relationships. The CLGS Marriage Project will be an ever-expanding resource for both LGBT people and communities of faith for understanding the historical, ethical, and theological issues involved in marriage, for locating liturgical materials and sermons, and for becoming articulate advocates for marriage equality."

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