“As a pastor for 27 years, I’m against it because I believe that God made male and female and I think he made male for a woman and a woman for a male,” said the Rev. Hence Coats, pastor of Pleasant Green Baptist Church in Trotwood and second vice president of the Ohio Baptist State Convention.
He said same-sex marriage “goes against the word of God.”
Phil Burress of the Cincinnati-based Citizens for Community Values, called the court’s decision a “travesty,” and said the “Supreme Court has turned into the legislative branch and is legislating from the bench.”
Businessman Seth Morgan, a Republican former state legislator and member of the CCV board, said he’s disappointed that the court didn’t uphold states rights. He said proponents of gay marriage want to force their views on others and want special protections for gays.
But Mark Owens, Montgomery County Democratic Party chairman, said it is Morgan and others like him who are trying to force their views on others.
“Seth can have an opinion of who he wants to love. Leave other people alone,” Owens said.
Owens and other proponents said the court’s ruling was a long time coming and extends the same rights enjoyed by married heterosexuals to married lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.
Married gay couples will be able to get health insurance, freely adopt children, make medical and end-of-life decisions and have the same tax benefits accorded other married people, said Randy Phillips, president of the Greater Dayton LGBT Center.
“It is an amazing development in the history of the United States and for me I just thought it was wonderful,” said Montgomery County Common Pleas Judge Mary Wiseman. “I thought it would never happen in my lifetime.”
Wiseman, a former Dayton city commissioner who during her term tried unsuccessfully to extend the city’s anti-discrimination laws to gays, married her female partner in Massachusetts in 2004. That year, Ohio voters banned same-sex marriage in a constitutional amendment that was overturned by the high court’s ruling.
“It always just felt deflating and you felt so undervalued that the state of Ohio didn’t recognize those vows,” said Wiseman.
Now, she said, Ohio must recognize “those sacred vows made to somebody you love more than anything in the world.”
Jim McCarthy, chief executive and president of the Miami Valley Fair Housing Center, said he was “thrilled by the decision.” McCarthy, who married his male partner in Washington, D.C., in 2011, said he is especially happy for what the ruling means to LGBT children.
“It is going to be tremendously different because they’re going to have role models,” said McCarthy. “It’s going to be much easier for them to see that they can grow up and meet a loving companion and enter into a committed relationship that is recognized by society and by our government.”
The next step, he said, is to make it illegal to discriminate against gays in housing, employment and public accommodations.
The Rev. Daryl Ward, senior pastor of Omega Baptist Church, said nobody should be discriminated against but he would oppose any effort to force pastors to marry same-sex couples.
“I don’t believe the Constitution should tell pastors how they have to act,” he said.
First Amendment issues related to the free expression of religion will likely be the next big issue related to gay rights, said Mark Caleb Smith, director of the Center for Political Studies at Cedarville University. He said government has historically been careful to not interfere with churches, but he said the new ruling could raise concerns for religious institutions like Cedarville in how they have to handle benefits, hiring and termination of gay employees.
Jon Wood, the college’s vice president for student life and Christian ministries, said he doesn’t anticipate any change in policies forbidding practicing homosexuals from being admitted.
“The question would be what sort of exemptions are there for religious liberty?” Wood said.
Catholic Archbishop Dennis Schnurr of the Cincinnati Archdiocese issued a statement denouncing the ruling.
“Under the false banner of ‘marriage equality’, the United States Supreme Court today redefined marriage by judicial fiat,” Schnurr said. “In so doing, it has disregarded not only the clearly expressed will of the electorate in Ohio and other states, but also an understanding of marriage that was shared by virtually all cultures — secular as well as religious — until recently.”
Other clergy applauded the ruling.
The Rev. Michael Castle, senior pastor at Harmony Creek Church in Kettering, hosted a news conference on Friday featuring clergy members from about 20 area churches celebrating the court’s decision.
Castle called Friday “a day of joy.”
“As an American citizen it is a justice, a win for equality, a win for religious liberty and a win for what is best about the United States of America,” Castle said. “As a Christian minister it also is a win for the good news of Jesus Christ.”
Jack Torry of our Washington bureau contributed to this report.
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