This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon: October 22, 2008 - The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod is working with its congregations in Arizona, Florida and California to support amendments to those states' constitutions defining and limiting marriage as a union between a man and a woman.
The issue is on the Nov. 4 ballots in the three states.
The Kirkwood-based denomination has 212,000 members in those three states, said its president Rev. Gerald B. Kieschnick, who announced the election effort Wednesday. The Missouri Synod has joined what he called a "broad and bright" coalition of Christians, Jews and others in those states.
Kieschnick, 65, in his eighth year as president of the 2.5 million-member Lutheran denomination, called a rare news conference to explain the denomination's efforts on the issue. The news conference was only the second that Kieschnick has called since 2001 outside of the body's national conventions, said David Strand, executive director of the denomination's Board of Communications.
Later, Kieschnick spoke by telephone to reporters in the three states.
He called on his church members to give public witness to the issue. The denomination's 2004 national convention passed a resolution affirming marriage as a union of one man and one woman.
Legalizing marriage between same-sex pairs sets up a slippery slope that accepts homosexuality and lesbian activity as normal and acceptable, he said.
This fall the Lutheran body's national staff is working with local pastors and lay leaders in the three states. The staff is providing printed materials, texts for church bulletins, Bible quotations and discussion materials that may be used in congregations' Bible study groups, in community-wide forums or from the pulpit.
Action in Missouri, Illinois, other states
Voters in 26 states have approved state constitutional marriage amendments limiting marriage to a partnership of a man and a woman. In August 2004, 70 percent of Missouri voters approved such a state constitutional amendment.
Illinois is one of 19 states that enacted state statutes, or laws, limiting marriage to legal unions between a man and woman.
Energizing the Nov. 4 efforts are two court decisions making same-sex marriages legal in California and Connecticut. In May, the Supreme Court of California tossed out the state's 1977 state statute and a 2000 proposition that voter approved. Both defined marriage as a union of a man and woman.
This month the Supreme Court of Connecticut handed down a similar judgment removing its state statute limiting marriage to a union between a man and a woman. State constitutional amendments are beyond the reach of the courts.
In California, where same-sex marriages have been legal since June, advocates of gay marriage call ballot efforts to change the state constitution "divisive." Equality California, a nonprofit rights organization that supports equal rights for California's lesbians and gays, among others, defines same-sex marriage as "a basic freedom for same-gender couples."
Similar arguments are being made by supporters of same-sex marriage in Florida and Arizona.
This month, volunteers at Equality California are working to defeat the amendment by hosting political house parties and raising money for ads by asking newly wed same-sex couples to request donations in the organization's wedding gift registry.
As Kieschnick sees it, it is his religious duty and responsibility to speak out on this issue. "Our job is to educate and inspire our respective constituencies to become a force for good in that regard," he said. Children are "blessed" and develop "more holistically, when they have a parent of each sex."
Legalizing single sex marriages contradicts Biblical definition of marriage that goes back thousands of years, he said.
While condemning homosexuality acts as a sin, Kieschnick doesn't condemn those with homosexual "proclivities" and encourages the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod to reach out to them, he said. "We all fall short of God's grace, God holds out the long hand of forgiveness to all."
Kieschnick, who has been married to his wife, Terry, for 42 years, said, "We do this with a deep conviction that exists in our minds and hearts that God intends marriage to be a picture of the relations that existed between Christ and his bride the Church."
Patricia Rice, a freelance journalist in St. Louis, has long written on religion.