CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A coalition of clergy members filed a federal lawsuit Monday challenging North Carolina’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, saying it violated their religious freedom.
The clergy members said that they’d like to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies in their congregations, but that they can’t because of the “unjust law.”
“North Carolina’s marriage laws are a direct affront to freedom of religion,” said the Rev. J. Bennett Guess, executive minister with the Cleveland-based United Church of Christ, which is a plaintiff in the lawsuit. “We feel that it is important that any person that comes into community life of a United Church of Christ congregation be afforded equal pastoral care and equal opportunity to religious services that clergy provide.”
But in North Carolina, clergy are often faced with a troubling decision: “whether to provide those services or break the law,” he said. “That’s something no clergy member should be faced with.”
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Along with United Church of Christ, which has more than 1 million parishioners, a dozen clergy members and same sex-couples who want to marry were listed as plaintiffs. The defendants included North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper and several county district attorneys and register of deeds.
Noelle Talley, a spokeswoman with the Attorney General’s office, said officials there hadn’t seen the lawsuit yet.
This isn’t the first legal challenge to North Carolina’s law banning same-sex marriage, which was approved by voters in 2012.
The American Civil Liberties Union earlier this month launched a new legal assault on the state’s ban on recognizing same-sex marriage, urging a federal judge to quickly negate it to help children and gay couples suffering from urgent health problems. The civil rights group said it was seeking to speed up a decision in a lawsuit filed in 2012 by citing the urgent health needs of a child who suffers from cerebral palsy who was adopted by one of the lesbian couples involved in the case.
The ACLU also filed a new lawsuit on behalf of three other lesbian couples struggling with health conditions made more difficult because they lack legal recognition of their marriages performed in other states, said ACLU staff attorney Elizabeth Gill.
The ACLU and the same-sex couples they represent argue a judge should act quickly to suspend North Carolina’s marriage ban because they are suffering immediate and irreparable harm.
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Seventeen states allow gay marriage, and federal judges have struck down bans in Michigan, Utah, Texas, Oklahoma and Virginia.
Jake Sussman, an attorney for the coalition of clergy members, said their lawsuit opens a new front in marriage equality litigation.
“This lawsuit introduces a First Amendment claim that the marriage ban in North Carolina violates the right to the free exercise of religious beliefs by denominations, clergy, and congregants who believe that same sex marriages are theologically valid and want to perform marriage ceremonies,” he said.
Follow this case: United Church of Christ v. Cooper.
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