The church community is one place where we develop and nurture the relationships of faithfulness between God and people. When two people come together in life and spirit and develop a primary, committed relationship, the church is often asked to bless and celebrate the union of their lives and spirits. Marriage For heterosexual couples, that celebration takes place in Christian marriage. For Christians marriage is a covenant through which a man and a woman are called to faithfully live out together before God their lives of discipleship. In a service of Christian marriage a lifelong commitment is made by a woman and a man to each other, publicly witnessed and acknowledged by the community of faith.
People marry each other.
The state, not the church, defines the nature of legal marriage. Some benefits accorded to married couples, e.g. Social Security benefits, income tax, and child custody, can be granted only by state and Federal laws and licenses. Most Christian Protestant communities currently deny same gender couples the opportunity to acknowledge their faithfulness to one another and to celebrate the joining of their lives and spirits within the church. However, this was not always the case. Recent research into early Christian church liturgies by the late historian John E. Boswell of Yale University, has uncovered Catholic and Orthodox liturgies for same-sex unions.