The Standing Committee of the Episcopal Diocese of Milwaukee has published its report on the feedback it received from parishes on the trial liturgy for Same Sex Blessings. It has also made a recommendation to Bishop Miller on how he might respond to those findings.

I would like to highlight a few things in the report. First of all, most parishes responded in some way to the Standing Committee’s request. Second, out of the forty-three parishes that did respond, only one expressed itself strongly opposed to the authorization of the use of the liturgy (1 on a scale of 1-5). In contrast, 13 parishes were strongly in favor (5 on the scale of 1-5), and 11 were generally in favor (4 on the scale). 11 staked out middle ground (3). To put that in percentiles: 55.8% were either strongly or generally in favor; 18.6% generally or strongly opposed; with 25.6% in the middle.

When looking at how these parishes break down in terms of average Sunday attendance, a total of 16.1% of total Sunday attendance were either generally or strongly opposed over against 59.7% of total attendance in parishes either generally or strongly in favor (with over 40% attendance in parishes strongly in favor). What both of these figures show is wide-ranging and overwhelming support for the trial rite.

Based on these findings, the Standing Committee made the following recommendation to Bishop Miller:

The Standing Committee recommends that Bishop Miller authorize a local option for a rite of blessing of same-gender couples living in committed, lifelong, covenant
relationships. A local option would give permission for individual clergy of the diocese to decide to use the rite or not in his or her own parish.

The entire document is available here: Standing Committee Report2 (1).

Here is Grace’s statement of inclusion: LGBTstatement_revised_01292014, developed in response to the conversations we held over the fall and winter.

Of course, we’ve been talking about this for much longer than that. General Convention 2012 approved the trial use of the liturgy; we had conversations among bishop and clergy in the Diocese of Milwaukee in  the months after General Convention and again in 2013.

Meanwhile, the courts continue to act. Constitutional bans in Kentucky and Indiana have been overturned and just today the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals (a court that also has jurisdiction in Wisconsin) ruled in favor of an emergency request by an Indiana couple to have their marriage recognized in Indiana. The story is here: