Episcopal gay clergy in New York required to marry or live apart (ChristianToday)
Some of the Episcopal Church bishops in New York will require its gay clergy to avail themselves to the state’s Marriage Equality Act that legalizes same-sex marriage when it goes into effect on July 24.
Bishop Lawrence Provenzano of the Diocese of Long Island announced in a pastoral letter that clergy living in same-gender relationships in the Diocese of Long Island must either marry within nine months of the new law being implemented or live separately.
“For the gay and lesbian clergy of this Diocese who are living in domestic partnerships or civil unions, I hereby grant a grace period of nine months from the effective date of the New York State Law permitting same-gender marriages for those relationships to be regularized either by the exchange of vows in marriage or the living apart of said couples,” said Provenzano in the letter.
"I deem it to be honest and fair, and I do so direct and require, now that it is legal, that only married couples may live together, either in rectories or elsewhere as a clergy couple living in the midst of our faith community," wrote the bishop.
The Rev. Canon Mally Lloyd, Diocese of Massachusetts canon to the ordinary, however, thinks that a time-period-based recommendation is not a good idea.
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Complete article at Christian Today : http://bit.ly/qLAc72
