Southern Baptists endorse gay marriage ban

What happened

Southern Baptists, the largest U.S. Protestant denomination, voted Tuesday to endorse resolutions to ban same-sex marriage and pornography across the U.S. and condemn sports betting. The votes opened the two-day annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, being held in Dallas.

Who said what

The same-sex nuptials measure is part of a "much larger resolution" that urges Christians to "embrace marriage and childbearing," criticizes "willful childlessness" and describes declining U.S. fertility rates as a crisis, The Associated Press said. It "doesn't use the word 'ban,' but it left no room for legal same-sex marriage," calling for the "overturning of laws and court rulings, including Obergefell v. Hodges, that defy God's design for marriage and family," and for the passage of laws limiting marriage to heterosexual unions.

Southern Baptists have "long opposed gay marriage" but this was the "first time its members have voted to work to legally end it," buoyed by the "successful effort that overturned the right to legal abortions," The New York Times said. The SBC is "often seen as a bellwether for conservative evangelicalism writ large," and the resolution's success "suggests that evangelicals have long-term ambitions to dismantle an institution that many Americans now accept as a basic right."

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What next?

The 10,500 gathered SBC delegates, or "messengers," plan today to debate amendments to bar churches with women pastors and to abolish the denomination's policy arm, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, "which is staunchly conservative, but according to critics, not enough so," the AP said.