"We want to celebrate with ______ and _______, who were married this past week," said the pastor at Brentwood Presbyterian Church today during the sharing time.
I didn't hear the names too clearly but turned to look at the couple and realized they were both women.
That's a first, I thought. Interesting.
In about February of this year a blessing of a same-sex couple had been celebrated at our church. It was a service of an hour or more with both women in tuxedos, enough hymns and prayers and blessings to tie a knot for sure--but it was not officially a marriage.
Neither the state of California nor Presbyterian church law would allow a marriage.
But on June 17, 2008, the California Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples have the same right to marry as heterosexual couples.
About 11,000 same-sex couples have married in California in the last three months, according to the LA Times ("Same-sex marriage total at least 11,000," Oct. 7, 2008).
The couple at our church was part of that number, probably not actually married in the sanctuary but in a civil ceremony that may be blessed in church later.
For the earlier blessing ceremony, our church came under attack from a more conservative neighbor, Bel Air Presbyterian Church, which appealed to church authorities to prevent the blessing ceremony. The tactic was not successful.
I found the couple after the service to tell them, "Congratulations! May God bless you."
I walked out thinking of Virginia Woolf, who wrote in 1929 in A Room of One's Own, "Chloe liked Olivia perhaps for the first time in literature."
The grand dame would have been pleased to learn of this year's advances. Chloe not only liked Olivia; she proposed to her and married her.
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