JUDY VALENTE, correspondent: Father Charles Dahm has come to a parish on Chicago’s north side to deliver the kind of homily the parishioners have probably never heard before—one which will make some of them uncomfortable.

FATHER CHARLES DAHM: (preaching) How many of you have ever heard a sermon about domestic violence? Raise your hand. See, no one.

Domestic violence is often unnoticed, hidden from our eyes, but actually it is rampant in our society and in our communities. We know, of course, that there are probably women here this morning who have experienced violence in their own homes, and our heart goes out to you.

RITA SMITH (Executive Director, National Coalition against Domestic Violence): One in four women will be abused sometime in her lifetime.

VALENTE: Rita Smith, executive director of the National Coalition against Domestic Violence, says the problem of abuse also imposes a significant cost to society.

SMITH: Lost time at work, decreased productivity at work, health care costs related to injuries as a result of abuse, response time and cost for law enforcement to go to calls when someone is being battered.

VALENTE: But so often the problem lies hidden.

FATHER DAHM: I’ve been a priest for 48 years. I didn’t see it until I hired a pastoral counselor and one day she said, “Father, you know, almost all my clients from the parish are women who are victims of domestic violence.” And I didn’t know it. And I knew many of those women.

VALENTE: Father Dahm was surprised by the extent of domestic violence within the families he served. When he realized there was no official church outreach to abuse victims, he decided to start his own ministry.

FATHER DAHM: Priests generally do not talk about it. And most dioceses in the United States have no services, or very limited services, for victims of domestic violence.

VALENTE: He goes to parishes where he is invited. So far he has traveled to some thirty parishes in the Chicago area. He has no budget and a limited staff of volunteers to focus attention on the problem. And pastors have not always been enthusiastic about his message.

FATHER DAHM: One priest didn’t want to do it because he thought it would be offensive to the children who might be in the congregation listening to the homily. Others think we don’t have that problem here. It’s someplace else. We don’t have it. Or that it’s too difficult a topic to talk about and they don’t know how to do it.

SMITH: I would say at this point most churches are not doing a particularly good job with this. It’s not that they don’t want to. I think that this is just a very, very complex issue.

FATHER DAHM: (praying) We’re here tonight because we want to serve especially those people who suffer violence in their own homes.

VALENTE: After talking about domestic violence at Mass, Father Dahm invites parishioners to meet with him to discuss how their church might help those who are suffering abuse. On this night, six people came. Some had been victims, others simply wanted to help.

MARIA: I come from an abusive home, and it’s led me to get into abusive relationships. I’m divorced also because I divorced my abuser, but I was about to marry another abuser. So this is the cycle that continues unless you get help.

JEAN MIRABELLA (Clinical Social Worker): I left a domestic violence relationship almost 35 years ago, myself and my four kids. The sad news is not very much has changed as far as men who batter and women who struggle to get out of the relationship.

JAN BERDULIS (St. Pascal Parish): When he preached at our parish about a year ago, I was sort of surprised because I was unaware at that time of domestic violence and how prevalent it is within all communities, all neighborhoods, all levels, all ethnicities.

VALENTE: Father Dahm tells them a first step is to establish a support group, so that women who are battered know they have a safe place to tell their stories. The parish can then work to connect them with agencies that can help. Parish volunteers also need to be trained so they know how to respond to pleas for help.

FATHER DAHM: Many times victims call and they don’t say “I’m a victim of domestic violence.” They just might say, “I need to talk.” Or “I’m having problems in my home” or “My husband and I are having problems.” So that’s all. So that’s actually a code almost for “I need help.”

LAURA REYES: One day I ended up in the hospital because I had bruises on my face. He kicked me and hit me in my face many times.

VALENTE: Women often stay for years in abusive relationships, for a variety of reasons.

REYES: You think you love the person, that God wants you to be in the relationship because it was the man of your life, because he’s the father of your daughter. So you belong there.

MIRABELLA: So many of the women I’ve worked with over all these years are practicing Catholics and they cannot comprehend the idea that it would be acceptable if they were to leave and get divorced, so your message is like something I didn’t think I’d be hearing in my lifetime.

FATHER DAHM: What’s one of the worst things you can do for your children is to let them grow up in a home where there’s violence. Because your daughters are learning how to be submissive to this abuse, and your sons are learning how to be abusive and they may enter into marriages that are just like yours. Do you want that?

VALENTE: The US Conference of Catholic Bishops has said “no person is expected to stay in an abusive marriage,” adding, “We encourage abused persons who have divorced to investigate the possibility of seeking an annulment.”

Valerie Yokie is a director with Mary Kay cosmetics. She says she first became aware of the extent of domestic abuse by talking to her customers. At one point, she served on an advisory board to Chicago’s Cardinal Francis George. She brought the issue of domestic violence to his attention—forcefully, she recalls.

VALERIE YOKIE: Your Eminence, we don’t talk about it in our churches, we are not supporting women, and our church would be nowhere if it weren’t for women.

VALENTE: About 25 people showed up for a meeting on domestic violence at Yokie’s church after Father Dahm spoke at the Masses. Yokie believes churches are one of the best settings in which to address the problem.

YOKIE: It’s the one place where you have the perpetrator, the victim and the witnesses, the kids, hearing the message that it’s wrong, that God loves you, we’re here to support you, you don’t have to put up with it.

VALENTE: Men can also be victims of domestic abuse, often in same-sex relationships, but that number is small compared to women. And domestic violence can be other than physical.

FATHER DAHM: Emotional or psychological violence is much more difficult to detect, but it’s also more frequent, the belittling, demeaning, the insults, all the ways in which the woman is isolated from her family and friends.

VALENTE: That was the case with Elia and Roman Carreon. The first twenty years of their marriage were marked by frequent periods of emotional trauma.

ELIA CARREON: The verbal abuse, the silent treatment, the humiliation of the words. He would call me names, he would call me crazy. Every time I would bring up counseling he would say, you go to counseling, you’re the one that’s crazy.

ROMAN CARREON: To me I was a nice man. That’s what I saw about me. I never hit anybody. I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I was just…Actually I thought of myself as actually doing something better than most of my family.

VALENTE: Finally, with Father Dahm’s help, they entered counseling.

ROMAN CARREON: I would hear other men telling their story. And I would say, you know, as they were saying their story, how come you’re not expecting to get in trouble with the things you’re doing? That’s wrong. But then after a little while I realized, jeez, that’s what I do.

VALENTE: (to Elia) How would you describe your marriage now?

ELIA CARREON: Healthy. If I had to choose one word, it’s healthy. Not only are we healthier, are we more in love.

ROMAN CARREON: Now I know that she’s my partner. We’re aiming to grow old together. It’s not about me anymore. Now, if something happens to you, it happens to me too.

VALENTE: Reported incidents of domestic abuse nationwide are down. But Father Dahm says it’s difficult to measure success, because no one knows how many women who need help aren’t coming forward. A woman might leave an abusive partner as many as seven times before she finally makes the break. And the abusers don’t change easily. Father Dahm says they have to be confronted and held accountable.

FATHER DAHM: The good news about domestic violence is that it is learned behavior. It’s not something we inherit in our genes; we learn it from somebody, someplace. That means it can be unlearned.

(speaking to group) I’ve seen it with abusers who’ve converted and now have turned their lives around. They’re super active in our parish. So we have a very strong men’s group in our parish that is made up primarily of people who were perpetrators.

ROMAN CARREON: I went twenty years of my marriage without knowing all this. So I did a lot of things that now I regret. But thank God, you know, I can live the rest of my life with my wife without violence.

VALENTE: Which is why Father Dahm will continue visiting parishes, delivering a homily that will be news to some. For others, it’s a message that may change their lives.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Judy Valente in Chicago.

FRED DE SAM LAZARO, correspondent: For some months, Pooja, a 22 year old mother of three, has been coming to this crisis counseling center in a lower middle class neighborhood of Delhi.

Pooja is trying to keep her family together. Her husband and in-laws—with whom she lived in the common tradition here—threw her out of the house. The problem: all three of her children are girls.

POOJA: The family says they need sons to carry on their name and since I have only three daughters, they tried to trick me into signing divorce papers so that their son could marry again. That led to some violence when I refused and I had to run away to my mother’s house for our safety.

DE SAM LAZARO: The preference for boy children dates back centuries—driven by religious custom.

RANJANA KUMARI (Center for Social Research): Only boys can look after the parents, they are the only ones who can perform the last rites. They are the only ones who will continue the family lineage. If all that is there then why will anybody wants to have a girl child? And also on the top of that you have to pay a dowry.

DE SAM LAZARO: Ranjani Kumari has studied the dowry system, which she says is mistakenly believed to have roots in Hindu scriptures.

KUMARI: This was never a practice anywhere prescribed but certainly it was said that when the princess goes, she must carry a number of horses because she’s used to a certain level of comfort, and so it is the duty of the king to insure the daughter is…and that gets distorted so that even the poorest of the poor who cannot afford two square meals will also have to buy things for the wedding of the daughter.

DE SAM LAZARO: Dowries were outlawed half a century ago but the system remains pervasive and adds a huge commercial dimension to marriage in India. With rising aspirations in a rapidly growing economy, sociologist Ravinder Kaur says daughters have become a financial liability.

RAVINDER KAUR (Indian Institute of Technology): They don’t want to pay dowries. They want to receive dowries. They want to give more education to the boys than to the girls, because for them, the boys are still more important.

DE SAM LAZARO: India’s census starkly bears out that bias. For every 1,000 male babies born, there are just 914 females—far fewer in some regions. In nature, the numbers are about equal. The gap began to widen in the 1990s with the advent of ultrasonography, allowing early detection of a fetus’ sex. That’s been blamed for the widespread abortion of female fetuses.

(from 2001 footage): So this is your clinic?

Dr. Kakodkar: (from 2001 footage) Yes.

DE SAM LAZARO: Abortion is legal in India but it is illegal when done for sex selection. However, tracking the intent is almost impossible as gynecologist Prakash Kakodkar admitted with startling candor in a story I reported in 2001. He does them routinely.

(to Dr. Kakodkar): So you freely admit that you do, basically, contravene the law. I mean…

DR. PRAKASH KAKODKAR: Yes, most of us do, I would say. I wouldn’t deny that.

DE SAM LAZARO: Do you face any legal sanctions?

DR. PRAKASH KAKODKAR: No, that’s what I said: there is no legal sanction because there is nothing on paper. I mean, who can ask you?

DE SAM LAZARO: The lopsided sex ratio has only spread in recent years. Two decades ago it was mainly in the northern farm states, where many families were entering the middle class thanks to India’s green revolution. Now Kaur says it’s in areas where a new middle class is emerging.

KAUR: Places like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa, which are becoming more prosperous where there will be greater availability of technology and more incomes in the hands of families, they will tend to shape the family and sex select.

DE SAM LAZARO: As these areas become more affluent, fertility rates—the number of children born per woman—are declining. That’s welcomed by people concerned about population growth. These are some of India’s most densely populated regions. But when it comes to gender balance, it’s not good news, Professor Kaur says.

KAUR: You know when you want a smaller family, then the squeeze is on the girls because interestingly, suppose you’re moving from a fertility rate of four, to three. Then you want two boys and one girl. So if a lot of families in populous states want two boys and one girl, then obviously there’s going to be a great excess of boys.

DE SAM LAZARO: She says the social consequences of this demographic shift are already visible in those northern farm states, where there’s a growing shortage of brides.

KAUR: And as a result, men in these states have been importing brides from let’s say the east of India, the south of India, they’re sort of going shopping for brides wherever they can and many people call it “bride trafficking.”

DE SAM LAZARO: These marriages across India’s diverse cultural landscape can be fraught with social complication. But at the same time, Kaur sees an ever so slight improvement in the gender ratio in those states that saw early prosperity.

KAUR: Once people reach the higher realms of the middle class, which are called the stable middle class, they don’t sex select. Then they tend to view girls and boys as being of equal value. So they don’t really care whether they have two girls, whether they have one girl, one boy, etcetera.

DE SAM LAZARO: But for many years, India will present a patchwork of progress—a worsening gender balance in many places, slight improvement in some. The Center for Social Research’s Kumari sees one more positive development that’s a consequence of India’s growing and urbanizing middle class: more girls are going to school.

RANJANA KUMARI: As I said, India is full of contradictions. On the one side you see women in the villages still very disempowered but on the other side there is a brighter picture. We have the largest number of doctors, lawyers, professionals, our education level is going up for the girls. When you look at the new economy girls have got lot of new opportunities, you know, media, IT industry banking, entertainment. Whichever sector you see, women are filling the ranks in a very major way.

DE SAM LAZARO: Counseling center client Pooja never set foot in a school but she wants an education for her daughters. And that’s why she says she needs her husband’s help to provide it.

POOJA: Women are progressing more in society and I need the support of their father so that they can grow up in a proper family, so that they can get a good education, so that they can grow up and have good marriages.

DE SAM LAZARO: She’ll have an uphill battle—socially if not legally—to provide daughters with the family structure she calls ideal. But she says the best dowry her daughters could have is an education.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, this is Fred de Sam Lazaro in New Delhi.

TIM O’BRIEN, correspondent: Four years ago, voters in California approved Proposition 8, an amendment to the state’s constitution banning same-sex marriage in the state, only to have it overturned two years later by a federal judge who said the amendment denied gays and lesbians the equal protection of the law guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

THEODORE OLSON (Attorney for plaintiffs in Prop 8 case): “Today, we are more American because of this decision…”

O’BRIEN: …a huge decision that would require all states to recognize gay marriage should the U.S. Supreme Court agree.

The second case involves the federal Defense of Marriage Act—DOMA, for short. The law denies same-sex couples who marry the same federal benefits routinely accorded heterosexual marriages, including many tax benefits like the right to file a joint return.

DOMA is being challenged by Edie Windsor, whose relationship with Thea Spayer spanned more than 40 years. They had met in the early sixties and were at one another’s side for decades. They registered in New York City as domestic partners as soon as they could in 1993. But they wanted much more.

Edie Windsor: “We want to do the vows and we want to exchange rings.”

O’BRIEN: Spayer had been stricken with multiple sclerosis, and her health was failing. But that did not keep her and Edie from hopping a plane to Toronto, Canada, where in 2007 they were wed.

Thea Spayer: “I Thea Spayer, choose you…until death do us part.”

O’BRIEN: Two years later Thea passed away, leaving the bulk of her estate to Edie, now 83, which resulted in an estate tax bill of $363,000. Even though New York recognized their marriage, Edie did not qualify for the marital deduction allowed heterosexual marriages because of the Defense of Marriage Act.

A federal appeals court in New York found that also violated the guarantee to equal protection, but went much further. After noting a long history of discrimination against gays and lesbians, the court concluded any law that makes distinctions based on sexual orientation must be subjected to “heightened scrutiny,” and the government must present “exceedingly persuasive” proof that the distinctions further “an important government interest.” Should the U.S. Supreme Court agree, it would be much more difficult for Congress or any city or state to discriminate against gays and lesbians on anything, not just marriage.

The Justice Department ordinarily defends laws passed by Congress, even those it doesn’t like. But after the New York court’s decision, President Obama said his Justice Department would no longer defend DOMA in court:

President Barack Obama:“DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act, is unconstitutional, and so we’ve said we cannot defend the federal government poking its nose into what states are doing and putting the thumb on the scale against same-sex couples.”

O’BRIEN: Those who had fought for passage of the Defense of Marriage Act were understandably dismayed.

Tony Perkins (President, Family Research Council): “This is about what our children are going to be taught in elementary school. It is about stepping in between a parent and their child and imposing a new morality, or absence thereof, upon our children.”

O’BRIEN: Republican leaders in the House said they would defend the law themselves:

John Boehner (Speaker of the House): “I raised my hand to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States and the laws of our country, and if the Justice Department was not going to defend this act passed by Congress, well, then we will.”

O’BRIEN: Whether the House has the legal right to defend the law in the Supreme Court is unclear. A similar question arises with Prop 8 in California, where the state has also decided not to defend that law, giving the justices an easy out for a narrow decision or to sidestep the issue altogether if they choose.

Historically, the court moves very slowly on social issues—following the trends, rarely leading them. The court took the lead in 1954, desegregating the nation’s schools, igniting the civil rights movement. Resistance was massive, however. It wasn’t until 1967 that the court got around to addressing interracial marriage in the case of Richard and Mildred Loving, who were convicted of violating Virginia’s law against interracial marriage, a felony punishable by prison.

Richard Loving (Plaintiff in Loving v. Virginia): “They sentenced us to one year in the state penitentiary. Then they suspended for 25 years and said that we had to leave the state.”

The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 to throw out their convictions, Chief Justice Earl Warren writing, “The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness.”

Virginia’s law “had no legitimate overriding purpose independent of invidious racial discrimination.” The decision went against public opinion. Interracial marriage was illegal in 16 states at the time, and a Gallup poll showed 73 percent of those surveyed disapproved of it. Race relations have come a long way since 1967, and proponents of same-sex marriage see similar progress for gays and lesbians.

LEE SWISLOW (Executive Director, Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders): I think this is an area in which we’ve seen tremendous movement over the last 15 or 20 years, and people are on a journey. I mean, as a lesbian I had to go through my own journey when the community first started talking about marriage, and I was, like, are you kidding? Marriage? It’s not for us. That’s never been for us. And yet, as I thought about it I realized I do want to get married. Once I let myself believe it was possible, I want to marry the woman I love.

O’BRIEN: The court will not be writing on a blank slate. Twenty years ago, the justices threw out a constitutional amendment in Colorado that would have prevented cities from protecting gays from discrimination, and in 2003, the court rejected a Texas law that made gay sex a crime. Justice Anthony Kennedy, whose vote could be critical on the same-sex marriage question, wrote both decisions and in striking down the Texas law said this about gays and the gay lifestyle:

Justice Anthony Kennedy audio: “The petitioners are entitled to respect for their private lives. The state cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime. Their right to liberty under the due process clause gives them the full right to engage in their conduct without intervention of the government. It is the promise of the Constitution that there is a realm of personal liberty which the government may not enter.”

O’BRIEN: Justice Kennedy insisted the court’s opinion did not directly apply to same-sex marriage, but dissenting Justice Antonin Scalia saw it differently:

Justice Antonin Scalia audio: “At the end of its opinion, the court says that the present case ‘does not involve whether the government must give formal recognition to any relationship that homosexual persons may seek to enter.’ Do not believe it. Today’s opinion dismantles the structure of constitutional law that has permitted a distinction to be made between heterosexual and homosexual unions.”

O’BRIEN: A federal appeals court in Boston agreed with Scalia’s interpretation and last May became the first federal appeals court to throw out DOMA, citing Kennedy’s decision in the Texas case as authority. The rules governing marriage, like the rules governing divorce, have historically been left to the states, and they differ from state to state, like how old do you have to be to get married, and what do you do to get out of a marriage? The issue of same-sex marriage is widely expected to divide the court along liberal-conservative lines, but not necessarily. Lee Swislow of Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders says there is a “state’s rights” component in the case that could win over some conservative justices.

SWISLOW: When a state says you’re married, does the federal government, as it has always done in the past, agree with that state definition? This is the first time that the federal government has ever reached in and said, “We don’t care what you say, state. We’re going to have our own definition of marriage.” And we don’t think there’s any legitimate reason for the federal government to take this unprecedented action.

O’BRIEN: Throwing out DOMA would not require all states to recognize gay marriage, but striking Prop 8 possibly could. A number of mainstream religious groups do not support gay marriage.

JIM GARLOW (Founder, Pastors’ Rapid Response Team): Authentic, biblical, historic, orthodox Christianity has always affirmed marriage being one man and one woman.

O’BRIEN: And the court in New York addressed the religious concerns, distinguishing civil marriage from holy matrimony. Judge Dennis Jacob wrote “the law is not concerned with holy matrimony. A state may enforce and dissolve a couple’s marriage, but it cannot sanctify or bless it. For that, the pair must go next door.” That the country has become more tolerant of homosexuality would seem to be unmistakable, and it may also be irreversible.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Tim O’Brien in Washington.

BOB ABERNETHY, host: For more on religious groups and same-sex marriage, I am joined by Kim Lawton, managing editor of this program. Kim, this is a tremendously powerful and divisive issue for religious groups, isn’t it?

KIM LAWTON: It is and these cases are going to be really, really important for these religious groups. They’re going to be very involved on both sides of the issue. Some of the strongest opposition to gay marriage at the legislative level, at the court level, has come from religious groups, especially evangelical groups, Roman Catholics; the Roman Catholic bishops have been speaking out in favor of traditional marriage. So I expect there’s going to be a robust amount of activity not only in terms of these religious groups writing friend-of-the-court briefs and telling the High Court what they think about the issue, but also at the grass roots. I’ve already been getting emails about prayer campaigns that are being organized. For example, the bishops after Christmas are doing a prayer campaign to support what they call traditional marriage, life, and liberty.

ABERNETHY: And how do they divide up? Catholics and evangelicals are one, but it’s not all one or the other, is it?

LAWTON: Exactly. There are growing movements within the religious community in support of gay marriage. There are religious groups who look at this as a matter of equality and justice. Jewish groups have been—Reform and Conservative Jews have been very supportive of gay marriage. Orthodox—not in the Jewish community; in the Christian community a little more complicated. Certainly while the Roman Catholic Church at the hierarchy is opposed, you have grass-roots groups, like there’s a group called Equally Blessed that says you can be a faithful Catholic and still support this on an equality issue. And then a lot of the mainline denominations really torn over the issue. United Church of Christ and Unitarians support gay marriage, but a lot of the other ones still define marriage as between a man and a woman.

ABERNETHY: And I think about conflict within one congregation, for instance, not only within the members of the congregation, but the bind the pastor can be in if the state says one thing and the Bible says another.

LAWTON: Well, exactly. This has been an issue in some cases where in states that have legalized gay marriage and the pastors are in denominations that don’t recognize it, and so congregants who are gay come to them and say we want to be married in a church, but the pastor says, well, our denomination doesn’t allow that.

ABERNETHY: Kim Lawton, many thanks.

BETTY ROLLIN, correspondent: Joel and Scott Tinsley-Hall combined their names when they married in Iowa three years ago. They were both brought up in conservative religious homes, which made their paths to this marriage long and difficult.

JOEL TINSLEY-HALL: It was ingrained in me that me being homosexual is terrible. I remember in the bathroom I would cry myself, just cry because I knew I was going to burn in hell and I used to pray to God, oh, please change me. If I’m gay, then take it away from me. Take it out. Take it out. Take it out. And I prayed and prayed and prayed, but, you know, it didn’t go away.

SCOTT TINSLEY-HALL: I was raised in a fundamentalist Baptist church. My dad was the music minister of the church. There were expectations, like he said, that you’re not gay. If you are, you can change and you can become straight.

ROLLIN: Before they married, they first tried to find a church that would accept them, which they did in the mid-west. And why was it important for them to marry?

JOEL: We deserve the same rights, so me being a homosexual male, if I am in love with my partner for 7 years, I should have that same right to marry him. It’s not a religious thing, it’s an equal rights thing.

SCOTT: It was a chance for me to stand before my family and friends and put my relationship on the same level as theirs.

JOEL: That’s right. Plus there’s that whole protection aspect of it as well, because, you know, if you have a civil union, let’s say if Scott got sick, his family could come in and deny me visitations in the hospital.

ROLLIN: Now in Baltimore, Scott and Joel have found the Open Church where their pastor, Rev. Brad Braxton, is a strong advocate for gay marriage.

REV. BRAD BRAXTON (The Open Church): The love that my lesbian, my gay, my bisexual, my transgender friends share, one with another in committed relationships is equally as valid in the sight of God, not just the State, but in the sight of God, as is the love shared by heterosexual couples.

ROLLIN: What makes you sure that God does want this?

REV. BRAXTON: Because God is love. I am persuaded that God is love, and that for me is the fundamental message of scripture.

BISHOP HARRY JACKSON (Hope Christian Church): How is it that the group that says it’s being discriminated against takes all the authority, all the privilege, all the rights, pulls all the levers and has greater rights than the rest of us?

ROLLIN: Not too far away in Beltsville, Maryland, Bishop Harry Jackson has been a major opponent of gay marriage.

(to Bishop Jackson): Where does it say in the bible that homosexuals shouldn’t marry?

BISHOP JACKSON: It says it all over. Start with Deuteronomy, Leviticus, 1st Corinthians, go on and on….

ROLLIN: It says homosexual shouldn’t marry in the Bible?

BISHOP JACKSON: No, there’s a prohibition against homosexual activity.

REV. BRAXTON: I take the Bible with the utmost seriousness. Yet I realize that there are times when the Bible misbehaves. It is not at its best self. The Bible promotes genocide, the Bible lessens half of the human race in its dehumanizing statements when it talks about women. The Bible says a lot of things.

ROLLIN: Many pastors in Maryland and elsewhere have weighed in on this issue. Rev. Al Sharpton:

REV. AL SHARPTON: This is not an issue about gay or straight, this is an issue about civil rights. You can not be for civil rights for African Americans but not for gays and lesbians.

ROLLIN: Rev. William Owens on the issue of civil rights:

REV. WILLIAM OWENS: (Coalition of African-American Pastors): When I was a boy, you couldn’t drink out of a white water fountain, you couldn’t go to a white restaurant, you couldn’t go to a white hotel. They’ve never been denied those rights.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: I believe that gay couples deserve the same legal rights as every other couple in this country.

ROLLIN: Now that President Obama has come out in favor of gay marriage, Bishop Jackson and others want their congregations to deny the President their vote.

BISHOP JACKSON: Just because somebody’s skin is black you’re going to support an anti-God, anti-Gospel agenda, no wonder you can’t get a job. Beware my Christian friend, you should not vote for Barack Obama.

ROLLIN: Rev. Braxton believes that the reason that many African Americans oppose gay marriage has to do with their history of being denied the right to marry as slaves.

REV. BRAXTON: When you are disallowed a right and you are requesting to get the right, one of the best ways to do that in the face of those who hold power is to show that you are morally respectable. And so heterosexual marriage and lifting up the family, that is the morally respectable way. And anything that deviates from that my in fact bring again upon us that whole cycle of shame and violence, and that is so deep in African American culture.

BETTY ROLLIN: Most African Americans are against gay marriage. Even so, the percentage of African Americans who support gay marriage is up from 21% in 2004 to 40% today.

SCOTT TINSLEY-HALL: As more people are open with their sexuality, our friends, our family, our mothers, our fathers, our grandparents who may have at one point had a different view, say “Wait, that’s my grandson I’m talking about now, or that’s my son, or that’s my nephew,” and that’s what’s going to change the church eventually. It’s going to bubble up from society. As society changes, the church will change.

ROLLIN: Same sex marriage is legal in 6 states. If Maryland votes in its favor, it may be the first state to legalize gay marriage as a ballot initiative. For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Betty Rollin in Baltimore, Maryland.

LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: This is the Mormon Church’s Crystal City Chapel just outside Washington, DC. There are several others in the area, but this one is unique: the 800 members who attend here are all single. Along with worshiping, they’re here for one other very important reason: to find a partner and get married.

This is Bishop Lewis Larsen, who leads a congregation of older singles aged 31 to 55.

BISHOP LEWIS LARSEN: If you were to look across the general spectrum of single adults, the trend in America is not to even marry at all but to cohabitate. That is not a trend in the Mormon Church.

SEVERSON: If there’s any doubt, talk to some of the singles here.

ADAM NILSEN: I know that God wants that for me. I know that man was not meant to be alone, nor was woman, but that we complement one another.

SEVERSON: Were you ready at 22-23 to get married?

DARLA MARBURGER: I sure think I was. I think I’ve been ready for a long time, but I haven’t been plucked from the vine yet.

BEVERLI JO DEWALT: My grandma offered to find someone to pay someone to date me, because she was fairly convinced I was not able to do that on my own.

PROFESSOR BRAD WILCOX: Mormonism is the marriage religion.

SEVERSON: Sociology professor Brad Wilcox is director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia. He says the marriage rate in the US has seen a dramatic decline since the 1970s at a 14-fold increase in couples cohabiting. But among practicing Mormons, marriage is still sacred.

WILCOX: They sacralize marriage, obviously, and they view marriage as an eternal institution that exists beyond this space and time.

SEVERSON: Professor Wilcox is speaking about temple marriages, where members in good standing are sealed together for time and all eternity.

LARSEN: When you die and your spouse dies, you will be united as a husband and wife. When your children die, they will be united with you as a family and that the family unit continues on, and I know that that’s a concept that is not generally taught in the Christian world, but it’s very sacredly held concept in Mormonism.

SEVERSON: Marriage has always been a sacred principle of the Mormon Church, but it took on an added dimension when church president Thomas Monson, who is considered a modern-day prophet, expressed alarm at the church’s most recent general conference that not enough members are getting married.

PRESIDENT THOMAS MONSON: Now I have thought a lot lately about you young men who are of an age to marry, but you have not yet felt to do so. I see lovely young ladies who desire to be married and to raise families, and yet their opportunities are limited because so many young men are postponing marriage.

SEVERSON: One reason church leaders are pushing marriage so urgently is that so many young men in the mid-20s are falling away and becoming inactive, focusing on the kinds of things that occupy other young men—getting an education, a job, and having fun.

It’s important to the church and to its young men that they get married, because only married men can hold high leadership offices, and the church says only Mormons who marry can reach the highest realm in the afterlife.

Since serving a church mission, many young Mormons in the DC area have spent their time pursuing advanced degrees. Beverli Jo DeWalt has been working on a career at the State Department.

DEWALT: Most of the folks out here are people that have pursued an education, pursued a career and not with the purpose of delaying marriage, but with the idea that we want to have a full life that includes all of those things.

SPENCER WILLIAMS: I’ve been just very busy with business, and it wasn’t until about six months ago when I really decided I do want to get married.

SEVERSON: How about you, Steve, what’s your excuse?

STEVE ARCHIBALD: Well, beyond the obvious or…?

SEVERSON: Steve Archibald is 28, has a master’s in accounting.

ARCHIBALD: There’s definitely a lot of pressure to get married, but at the same time there’s not pressure to rush into any kind of decision. We can all say that we’re looking. We’re doing our best to try and find the potential “10” out there.

SEVERSON: One high church leader suggested that in looking for a mate, young Mormons like Steve should stop reaching for a “10.“

LARSEN: It’s my job as bishop is to bring a little reality on this, that what they thought they were going to marry probably never did exist. You know, people have faults. Some might be a little overweight, some might be losing their hair, and that doesn’t mean that they are not a fantastic person.

SEVERSON: This is an annual social event in Washington for single Mormons aged 31-55. Washington may not be the hub of the church, but there are between 50,000 and 70,000 members living in the area, the largest concentration East of the Mississippi. For women in their mid-30s who want to start a family, more and more are taking the initiative.

LARSEN: We are a traditional church, and you would say women don’t initiate. But I think that changes when you’re around 30. Yeah, women are much more proactive in my ward.

NILSEN: Having lived in other places I’ve seen other cultures, that women that do take a lot of the initiative.

SEVERSON: So have you had it happen to you?

NILSEN: Have I had women take the initiative with me? Yeah, absolutely.

SEVERSON: Thirty-four-year-old Beverli Jo DeWalt says she is now ready.

DEWALT: I had the opportunity to be married when I was 21—a great guy, a fantastic guy—but I didn’t feel ready, and I think had I gotten married at that point I wouldn’t have been happy.

SEVERSON: Do you think there’s a downside to getting married too young?

LARSEN: Don’t ask me, because I married in my mid-30s, so I’m kind of like my own congregation.

SEVERSON: Bishop Fonz Allen has a congregation of 21-to-30-year-old singles. He says getting married young and struggling can be a good thing.

BISHOP FONZ ALLEN: Many of us in the earlier years, we got married while we were still going to school, and we had children while we still going to school, and we look back on those times today, now when we’re older, as the best times of our life, when we were struggling. So we don’t encourage people to wait to get married.

WILCOX: Folks who get married in their teens are more likely to get divorced, and that’s true across the board. It’s true for Mormons; it’s true for secular folks. People who get married in their mid-20s are pretty safe when it comes to the risk of divorce.

SEVERSON: Nationally, the divorce rate is down, from 50 to 43 percent. Among Mormons it’s about 20 percent. Church leaders say it’s because of the strong emphasis on family—one night is set aside each week for family home evenings—and also because of the church’s teachings on chastity.

LARSEN: In our faith we don’t allow for premarital sex, and I’m sure that does happen, but it’s a rarity, and we are teaching them to hang onto their values.

SEVERSON: Twenty-six- year-old Megan Baer recently got engaged. She says she’s glad she waited.

MEGAN BAER: We have sex drives just like everybody else, so of course it’s very hard, but I love what we call the law of chastity, which is no sex before marriage and complete fidelity when you’re in marriage, and I think it’s kept me from a lot of regret and pain.

SEVERSON: Professor Wilcox says 85 percent of Americans have sex before marriage.

WILCOX: Individuals who have more sexual partners prior to marriage are more likely to get divorced compared to those who do not. It’s something about forming a bond with someone that is then broken, and the way in which that may lead to a certain distrust of the opposite sex or a certain kind of loss of faith in relationships or in romance.

SEVERSON: Another reason for the low divorce rate is that Mormons usually try to date someone of their own faith. Some we spoke with said they had dated outside the church, but it hadn’t worked out. Others are like Steve.

ARCHIBALD: I do not date non-Mormons just because we’re pretty lucky in this area. The numbers are in our favor, speaking for us guys. In our congregation alone here today will have 300 individuals, and close to 200 of them will be women.

SEVERSON: After the church service, the search for a lifelong eternal mate continues in earnest. Bishop Larsen predicts that by the end of this year, at least 20 couples in his congregation of 200 will be engaged or married.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Lucky Severson in Crystal City, Virginia.

BOB ABERNETHY, host: Finally, a love story about two old friends, Ginny Shedd and Wil Bloom, both in their seventies, both strongly religious. Both had lost their spouses. They fell in love and wanted to spend the rest of their lives together. But getting married turned out to be a problem, and they did not want to just live together. So they found another way.

It’s called a ceremony of commitment. It’s a completely religious wedding-like service, with no legal involvement by the state. No marriage license. No official recognition. No use of the words “marriage” or “husband” or “wife.”

REV. ANN ABERNETHY: In the presence of God and in the name of love, you—Ginny and Wil—come to have your union blessed by God and by this congregation.

BOB ABERNETHY: Ginny Shedd and Wil Bloom met 60 years ago at the Northern Baptist, now American Baptist conference center in Green Lake, Wisconsin. We met them at the Brooksby Village retirement center in Peabody, Massachusetts, north of Boston. Each had been married and had children and grandchildren, and each had lost his or her spouse. They rediscovered each other, fell in love, and wanted to be married. But they found that, for themselves and their families, marriage could bring substantial financial problems—issues of pensions, insurance, taxes, and bequests.

VIRGINIA SHEDD: The legal problems and inheritance problems with people our age with different families already in existence get very complicated.

WILBUR BLOOM: The legal entanglements that could come up later on—I mean, it could happen to be quite fierce. If one of her kids said, “Hey, wait, that’s ours, that’s not yours”—I mean, that happens.

BOB ABERNETHY: But although Wil and Ginny concluded it could be too costly to get married, as lifelong Baptists they at least wanted their relationship to be blessed by the church and respected by their families and friends.

SHEDD: We definitely wanted to be together, but we wanted to do it the proper way as an example for our own children and our grandchildren. We didn’t want to be just living together without any ceremony of any type.

BLOOM: There’s got to be something significant about what we are doing. It has to have some more meaning, and we felt that the only way to do it would be to have a ceremony or service before—not just before our friends and our family and so on, but before God.

BOB ABERNETHY: Reverend Ann Abernethy, a chaplain at Brooksby Village, knew about the service of commitment the United Church of Christ had developed originally for gays and lesbians who at that time were not allowed to marry and wanted more than a civil union. That service became the model for what Wil and Ginny chose.

REV. ANN ABERNETHY: There’s a yearning in them, and that all wants to be expressed in terms of the sacred and the holy and within the context of God’s presence.

(presiding at ceremony): Appealing to God to witness to your sincerity, do you, Wilbur, take this woman who stands before you, choosing her alone from all the world to be your beloved life partner?

BLOOM: I do.

BOB ABERNETHY: And then Ginny’s promises.

REV. ANN ABERNETHY: This is my sacred vow, spoken before the God who has brought us together.

SHEDD: This is my sacred vow, spoken before the God who has brought us together.

BOB ABERNETHY: Wil and Ginny exchanged rings, they took communion together, and then they were blessed.

REV. ANN ABERNETHY: Fulfill your promises. Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, remembering that as members of one body you are called to live in harmony, and never forget to be thankful for what God has done for you.

BOB ABERNETHY: We asked Wil and Ginny, looking back, how did they feel after their commitment service?

SHEDD: It just felt so, just such a feeling of warmth and correctness, and just felt like Christ was there with us.

BLOOM: I felt up. I felt good, and I said, “Holy mackerel, now Ginny and I are for real.”

SHEDD: I just felt it was right, and I think that was a relief to me. I needed to feel that this relationship was right.

BLOOM: Well, to be honest with you, I said, “Now she’s mine.”

BOB ABERNETHY: I asked Wil, what do you call each other? What do you call your situation now?

BLOOM: We are husband and wife, and when somebody we meet for the first time—“This is my wife, Ginny Shedd,” and she says, “This is my husband, Wil Bloom,” and as far as, you know, we are concerned, we are husband and wife until death do us part.

BOB ABERNETHY: I am grateful to my cousin, Reverend Ann Abernethy, for telling us about Wil and Ginny, and to Wil and Ginny for letting us use their video.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: At Old St. Patrick’s Roman Catholic Church in Chicago last weekend (February 11), Valentine’s Day was observed not with flowers or chocolate, but with what’s known as the Mass for Lovers. It’s a Mass in which hundreds of couples renew the vows they made to each other — in this group, from two months to more than 50 years ago. We hear about it from two of the participants, Jack and Kathy Berkemeyer.

KATHY BERKEMEYER (Parishioner, Old St. Patrick’s Church): This Mass has been going on for about 18 years.

JACK BERKEMEYER (Parishioner, Old St. Patrick’s Church): There’s something powerful for the two of us to be together with 350 other couples committing ourselves to each other again.

Ms. BERKEMEYER: For me personally, it’s so encouraging to be surrounded by people who believe in marriage, who are working at it, who love each other.

Reverend THOMAS J. HURLEY (During Mass, Old St. Patrick’s Church): Who perhaps among us has been married the longest? Anyone been married under a year?

Mr. BERKEMEYER: Shortly after Mass begins, the celebrant will determine the couple who’s been married the longest and the couple who’s been married the least amount of time. And those two couples come together and go up to the altar and light the unity candle together. And then all of us light our candles together from that unity candle when we recommit ourselves with the vows.

Ms. BERKEMEYER: The emotion of the moment for me always surprises me — how much it moves me.

Mr. BERKEMEYER (During Ceremony): I, Jack, take you, Kathy, to be my wife.

Ms. BERKEMEYER: Looking at Jack and realizing what a gift it is to have this relationship, to have this marriage, but also to be surrounded by a group of people who are living the same thing.

(During Ceremony): I, Kathy, take you, Jack …

Mr. BERKEMEYER: There may be quite a few couples in that church who really need other couples — to hear other couples making that recommitment. It’s almost as though they need us, and we need them.

Ms. BERKEMEYER (During Ceremony): … all the days of my life.

Mr. BERKEMEYER: After we make that recommitment you can hear about 350 couples all kissing each other at the same time. It’s quite a wonderful experience for all of us.

Ms. BERKEMEYER: It’s always a moving experience to be in that church on a night like tonight.

Rev. HURLEY: We dedicate ourselves to you as priests. We dedicate ourselves to you because we love it, and we love you, and we love this church.

Mr. BERKEMEYER: It does take a community to really make a marriage good and supportive and loving. And that’s why doing this together is so meaningful for the two of us.