Reverend found guilty for marrying gay couples during 2008 legalized period

The Presbyterian Church handed down a rather confusing decision on Friday concerning same sex marriage.

Rev. Jane Adams Spahr was before the Permanent Judicial Commission of the Redwoods Presbytery for her performance of same sex marriages during the brief period that it was legal in California during 2008, Prop 8 and the temporary stay against gay marriage went into effect.

While Spahr was found guilty on 3 counts of violating the church’s policy forbidding same sex marriage, she was also commended by the same commission for helping them see that “peace without justice is no peace.”

After the board ruled that she was “hereby censured by rebuke,” the council ask for forgiveness from the couples involved in the marriages for the harm that has been done to them in the name of Jesus Christ. It went on to urge the church’s higher authorities to “do what needs to be done to move us as a church forward on this journey of reconciliation.”

Rev. Spahr told The Chronicle: "To ask forgiveness from the couples, who were there in the room, and to say I was preaching to gospel, and then to say I was guilty was ... just so sad. I turned around and looked at these couples, and the looks on their faces, the stunned looks, the crying, the outrage, just broke my heart.”

Rev. Spahr is currently planning an appeal to the next higher church authority, the Presbyterian Synod of the Pacific, where she won a similar appeal for performing same sex marriage before they were legal.