By Kathleen Gilbert
WASHINGTON, D.C., June 28, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – For Yvonne Moore, when her Southern Baptist congregation performed a homosexual “commitment ceremony,” it wasn't just anti-Biblical – it was a personal betrayal.
That betrayal prompted the elderly African-American, who had attended the Covenant Baptist church in Washington D.C. for 37 years, to sue for a portion of her weekly donations back – which she estimated at a quarter of a million dollars.
“I was upset – I give them ten cents out of every dollar. I pay tithes, and they didn't respect the members enough to listen to us,” said Moore in a CNN interview published Thursday. “I don't believe in that. I'm southern Baptist. The Bible speaks against it – you can't take that into a church,” she said.
Moore says she attended the event out of disbelief that it would occur in her church, and found the ceremony “totally disgusting.”
Evidently, Moore is not the only parishoner upset over the change: the CNN report mentions briefly that the congregation has lost half its families over the debacle. Pastors Christine and Dennis Wiley, however, were defiant in their decision to celebrate the lesbian couple's union.
“You cannot just read a Bible and think that somehow you have now mastered the word of God,” said Dennis Wiley.
Moore later dropped the lawsuit, although she says she won't be returning to that parish.
At an annual meeting this month, U.S. leaders of Southern Baptists approved resolutions opposing the normalization of homosexuality in the military and the workplace.
The District of Columbia began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples in March, joining five states that overturned the legal definition of marriage as between a man and a woman.