The first same-sex wedding to be hosted at the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. (PCUSA) national office in Louisville, KY, took place on September 3. Only nine couples have been married in the Presbyterian Center since it was moved to Louisville.
"It's a privilege to have our wedding at the Center," said Paul Kempf, who was married to Robb Gwaltney. "It means a lot that our family and friends can join us in this chapel. If it wasn't for the Presbyterian Church moving here, Robb would have never come to Louisville and we would never have met."
Both Kempf and Gwaltney were or are still currently part of PCUSA's staff. Kempf has been an employee since 2012, and Gwaltney is no longer on staff but was an employee at the time that the Presbyterian Center was moved to Louisville in 1988, according to the Presbyterian News Service.
The ceremony was attended by "an intimate group of friends, family, and co-workers," the PNS states, and the wedding was presided by Reverend David Maxwell, one of the editors at the Presbyterian Publishing Corporation.
The PCUSA called the wedding service "a milestone" as "the first same-gender wedding performed at the Presbyterian Center."
Carmen Fowler LaBerge, president of Presbyterian Lay Committee, a conservative Presbyterian group, criticized the action, telling the Christian Post, "I see it as an in-your-face act designed to make a public and political statement that the PC(USA) is pro-gay marriage, alternative views be damned."
The PCUSA was the first Christian denomination to change its definition of marriage from being between "a man and a woman," to "two people, traditionally a man and a woman" by vote in mid-March, even before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriage is a constitutional right on June 26.
