SALT LAKE CITY -- Episcopalians voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to allow religious weddings for same-sex couples, more than a decade after the church's pioneering election of the first openly gay bishop.
The vote came in Salt Lake City at the Episcopal General Convention, just days after the U.S. Supreme Court legalized gay marriage nationwide. It passed in the House of Deputies, the voting body of clergy and lay participants at the meeting. The House of Bishops had approved the resolution Tuesday by a vote of 129-26 with five abstaining.
The Rev. Brian Baker of Sacramento said the church rule change was the result of a nearly four-decade-long conversation that has been difficult and painful for many. Baker, chairman of the committee that crafted the changes, said church members have not always been kind to one another but that the dynamic has changed in recent decades.
"We have learned to not only care for, but care about one other," Baker said. "That mutual care was present in the conversations we had. Some people disagreed, some people disagreed deeply, but we prayed and we listened and we came up with compromises that we believe make room and leave no one behind."
Baker said the House of Bishops prayed and debated the matter for five hours earlier this week before passing it on to the House of Deputies.
"For the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in our congregations now know under the eyes of God and in every single state in this blessed country, they are welcome to receive all the sacraments," said the Rev. Bonnie Perry of Chicago, a lesbian married to a fellow Episcopal priest.
The vote eliminates gender-specific language from church laws on marriage so that same-sex couples could have religious weddings. Under the new rules, clergy can decline to perform the ceremonies. The changes were approved 173-27.
The measures take effect the first Sunday of Advent, Nov. 29.
Many dioceses in the New York-based church of nearly 1.9 million members have allowed their priests to perform civil same-sex weddings, using a trial prayer service to bless the couple. Still, the church hadn't changed its own laws on marriage until Wednesday.
The Episcopal Church joins two other mainline Protestant groups that allowed gay marriage in all their congregations: the United Church of Christ and the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). The 3.8 million-member Evangelical Lutheran Church in America lets its congregations decide for themselves, and many of them host gay weddings.
The United Methodist Church, by far the largest mainline Protestant church with 12.8 million members, bars gay marriage, although many of its clergy have been officiating at same-sex weddings recently in protest.
After the Supreme Court ruling last week, many conservative churches, including the Southern Baptist Convention and the The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, renewed their opposition to gay marriage.
Elsewhere in the U.S., a federal appeals court in Jackson, Miss., instructed judges in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas to wrap up gay-marriage cases in their states in line with the Supreme Court ruling.
The order Wednesday from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals clears one of the final procedural roadblocks in the three cases, which had been pending before the New Orleans-based court. The 5th Circuit had heard arguments in the appeals but hadn't ruled.
The 5th Circuit's ruling was issued on the same day that a federal judge in Alabama ordered a handful of counties in that state still refusing to issue gay-marriage licenses to abide by the high court's decision.
U.S. District Judge Callie Granade of Mobile issued a brief order saying state probate judges can't discriminate against gay couples since the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled gay marriage is legal everywhere.
Granade's order doesn't affect counties that have stopped issuing all marriage licenses in response to the Supreme Court decision, but a gay-rights attorney said other counties must treat people equally or face penalties.
"We will ask Judge Granade to hold them in contempt if they'd don't," said Shannon Minter of the San Francisco-based National Center for Lesbian Rights in Washington.
Possible penalties include fines, cost assessments and even jail time, Minter said.
Minter said his group knew of seven of Alabama's 67 counties that were issuing licenses to heterosexual couples but not gay couples early in the day, but some said later in the day that they would issue licenses to anyone.
A dwindling number of local officials in other states also continued to refuse same-sex marriages Wednesday.
Information for this article was contributed by Jay Reeves, Janet McConnaughey, Jeff Amy, Jim Salter and staff members of The Associated Press.
A Section on 07/02/2015