Q:        Can my church be forced to host a same-sex marriage?

Pastor Carl pastors Bethel Church, which has a policy of renting the church’s new facilities to the community for events. The church’s debt is large and the money it recoups from renting the facility helps with the monthly payments. The church has leased facilities to the local high school for graduation, the city chamber of commerce for annual meetings, and to couples for weddings. In fact, the church makes a great deal of money renting out its facility. Recently, a same-sex couple came to the church desiring to rent the facility for a wedding. Is Bethel Church obligated to rent its facilities to the couple?

A:        Generally, no. However, a court could rule that the church must host a same-sex wedding.

The issue here revolves around the legal theory of public accommodation. Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 defines places of public accommodation as a limited number of facilities that are open to the public. Examples include hotels, motels, restaurants, theaters, and all other public accommodations engaged in interstate commerce. Interstate commerce is a broad legal construct that pulls almost every business that is open to the public into its vortex. Importantly, places of public accommodation may not discriminate based on a litany of federally-endorsed characteristics.

Churches, due to the nature of their religious purposes, have generally been exempt from public accommodation rules and that remains true today.

Because a church is not a place of public accommodation and because of the First Amendment’s prohibition that Congress make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion, most churches could not be ordered by a court to host a same-sex marriage as it would prohibit the church’s ability to freely exercise its beliefs. 

However, Pastor Carl and Bethel Church could have a problem. 

In this example, Pastor Carl and Bethel Church lease the church facilities for purposes not substantially connected to their religious purposes. Importantly, they lease the facility out to couples for weddings—both members and non-members, possibly Christian and non-Christian. While this area of the law is a new and almost uncharted legal territory, the argument could, and likely would be made that the church has held itself out as a place of public accommodation and that the church’s rental policy to members and non-members alike for weddings requires it to rent the facility to a same-sex couple.

What to Do

So, while a church generally cannot be forced to host a same-sex marriage, churches that lease their facilities to the public at large, operate coffee shops, host parties or receptions, operate bookstores open to the public, serve as polling places for elections, and engage in other public activities not substantially related to its religious purposes could be considered places of public accommodation and not exempt from discrimination rules.

For churches that do not want to be in such a predicament, Reynolds Law Group, PLLC offers a Religious Liberty Kit that includes three versions of a Facility Use Policy, a Facility Use Application Form, a Wedding Policy, a Wedding Application Form, and clauses for the church’s constitution and bylaws regarding marriage and sexuality. You can get all of these forms and more with our new resource DocuSource. To learn more about DocuSource click HERE.

Glenn is a speaker, ordained pastor, writer, and attorney living in Suffolk, VA. Before starting Reynolds Law Group, Glenn pastored one of the largest churches in America and was the Director of Church Planting for the Iowa Ministry Network. Glenn roots hard for the Kentucky Wildcats in basketball, the Baltimore Orioles in baseball, and the Iowa Hawkeyes in football.

To learn more about Glenn, you can read his full bio here.

You can find him on Instagram @glennsreynolds

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