The PC(USA) Book of Order defines Christian marriage as being between “a man and a woman.”
The General Assembly Permanent Judicial Commission – the highest court in the Presbyterian system – ruled in a 2008 decision in an earlier case against Spahr that church officers should not “state, imply or represent that a same-sex ceremony is a marriage.”
The Redwoods Permanent Judicial Commission found in its ruling August 27 that Spahr “persisted in a pattern or practice of disobedience” of that ruling when she performed 15 same-gender marriage ceremonies in California between June and November 2008.
The judicial commission voted to censure Spahr — who is 68, a lesbian; a divorced mother and retired — by a rebuke, and instructed her “to avoid such offenses in the future.”
