DC Declaration of Religious Support for Marriage Equality

Word comes that more than 130 clergy, representing dozens of churches and at least two synagogues in the District of Columbia, have released a joint statement Tuesday expressing support for legalizing same-sex marriage in the city.

Huh? What? Huh? Clergy? Marriage equality?

"We declare that our faith calls us to affirm marriage equality for loving same-sex couples....One of God's greatest gifts to us is our human capacity to love one another....The ability of two people to enter into relationships and form families of love and care is one expression of this gift....We therefore affirm the right of loving same-gender couples to enter into such relationships on an equal basis with loving heterosexual couples," says the statement, in part, which the signers call a "Declaration of Religious Support for Marriage Equality."


Nearly 50 of the signatories to the declaration attended the news conference, standing at the pulpit behind the church's husband and wife pastors, Revs. Dennis and Christine Wiley, who said:

"The black church and the black community have been characterized by some as being united in opposition to same-sex marriage. This could not be further from the truth. Black people are not monolithic. We are diverse just like all other human beings."

Indeed. I was quite annoyed after Prop H8 passed, when people began to say it was the Blacks and Latinos who voted Yes; maybe some, definitely not all.

Dennis Wiley added:

"And because Covenant Baptist Church is a beloved community with a long history of celebrating the richness of our diversity, we have gathered here today to reaffirm, in the immortal words of the late Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., that 'injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.'"

You're preachin' to the choir, Rev.