The following testimony concerning the study of same-sex marriage (Items 04-12 and 04-13) was presented to the Church Polity Committee of the 218th General Assembly (2008), in San Jose, CA, on June 2, 2008.
I’m Alan Wisdom, an elder at Georgetown Presbyterian Church in DC and Vice President of the Institute on Religion & Democracy. I urge you to disapprove Items 04-12 and 04-13 with a comment. Here’s the comment: We don’t need to do a special study of same-sex families because we have already studied the larger issue of non-traditional families. And I think we came up with a good, balanced, faithful answer that still applies.
It’s the policy statement on “Transforming Families” adopted by the 2004 General Assembly after a five-year study process. Full disclosure: I was part of the process. Here’s how it went: The original task force brought to the 2003 assembly a radical proposal that affirmed all family forms as equally valid, dropping the traditional Christian understanding of marriage. This proposal in many ways reflected the same assumptions we see today in Items 04-12 and 13. And that 2003 proposal met sharp opposition from many people, including myself.
The assembly was on the verge of rejecting the proposal when it decided to give another try. A new drafting group was formed, and I and other critics of the earlier proposal were included. We produced a new proposal, “Transforming Families,” that struck a careful balance.
On the one hand, it called for marriage to be “honored by the church and society as a basic social relationship of unique importance.” On the other hand, it sought “a church and society that welcomes and nurtures all persons, regardless of their family circumstances.” We don’t have to equate other relationships to marriage in order to respond to the legitimate human needs of people in those relationships.
“Transforming Families” passed the 2004 assembly with a 90 percent majority. I hope we don’t forget the wisdom we learned in that process. And I hope we don’t have to go through another divisive study of non-traditional families. I urge you to disapprove 04-12 and 13 with comment.
No comments yet
