BOSTON —Massachussetts’ highest-ranking Episcopal official on Saturday married two lesbian Episocopal priests in a ceremony that appears to be the first of its kind in the U.S. Episcopal Church.
The Rev. Mally Ewing Lloyd and the Rev. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale, both high-level Episcopal priests and the former a ranking official of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, was performed by Bishop M. Thomas Shaw in front of about 400 guests in Boston.
“God always rejoices when two people who love each other make a lifelong commitment in marriage to go deeper into the heart of God through each other,” the Rev. Shaw said. “It’s a profound pleasure for me to celebrate with God and my friends Katherine and Mally their marriage today.”
The wedding was officiated more than year after the Episcopal Diocese passed a resolution granting the state’s clergy permission to perform marriages for all eligible couples. The Episcopal Church’s canons claim that marriage is between a man and a woman, but the resolution, passed in 2009, states that, “bishops, particularly those in dioceses within civil jurisdictions where same-gender marriage, civil unions or domestic partnerships are legal, may provide generous pastoral response to meet the needs of members of this church.”
Since gay and lesbian couples can legally marry in Mass., the nuptials of the Revs. Lloyd and Hancock fall under that clause.
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