Minister takes a wedding vow: I won't

When the Rev. Victor H. Carpenter was a minister at a Unitarian Universalist church in Cape Town during the 1960s, he took an unpopular stand: He refused to perform marriages in protest of South Africa's apartheid laws.

Now at age 75 and serving as interim minister of First Parish Church on Meetinghouse Hill, he's on another wedding strike -- this time in protest of laws banning same-sex marriage.

The question remains, he says, "a very simple one of justice." With November's landmark state Supreme Judicial Court ruling allowing same-sex marriage in Massachusetts May 17, he is ready to resume performing both gay and straight weddings when that day comes in three weeks.

And while his position may seem outside religious norms to some, it is not out of line with his faith tradition, according to John Hurley, information director for the Beacon Hill-based Unitarian Universalists. At a 1996 national convention, a delegation representing the 1,050 churches in the association voted in favor of a resolution to support equal marital rights for same-sex couples. Ministers within the Unitarian Universalist Church have been performing same-sex marriage ceremonies for more than 30 years.

Hurley says about 30 other ministers throughout the national denomination have made a pact to refuse to sign marriage certificates until gay marriage is made legal. But, he says, Carpenter is the only one he's heard of who has ceased to perform the religious ceremony altogether.

The last wedding Carpenter performed was in September, for two men in Chicago who incorporated the African-American slavery tradition of "jumping the broom" into their ceremony. Carpenter says he usually performs about 10 to 15 marriage ceremonies a year.

"Many thought me willful, stubborn, unrealistic," Carpenter said during the homily at the wedding in Chicago, about the five years he spent in South Africa. "And I must confess that there were times when I wondered if I wasn't simply being foolish -- thinking that the situation would never change; that marriage of persons belonging to different races would never be legal. The very possibility seemed so remote and so hopeless."

While living in Cape Town, Carpenter says he became acquainted with a young Margaret H. Marshall, a South Africa native who now serves as chief justice of the SJC and who wrote its ruling in favor of same-sex marriage. "She was out there too, raising hell against apartheid," says Carpenter. The next wedding Carpenter says he's willing to perform is for First Parish Church's sexton Mike Pratt and Pratt's partner of 25 years, Michael Mulyk. It's a move that would be monumental for the 374-year-old church: Pratt and Mulyk would be the first gay couple to officially tie the knot at First Parish, which was the first meeting house established by the city's first Puritan settlers. And Carpenter says he'll do it at the first moment he can, even if it requires opening the church at midnight.

"I try to be as outrageous as I can," says the tall, gray-bearded Carpenter, whose eager smile and gracious manner lend levity to his earnest speaking style. The son of a dentist, who grew up in a nonreligious Kenmore Square home, he retired from his last assignment in Belmont as minister emeritus.

About Catholic Archbishop Sean P. O'Malley's lobbying against the legalization of same-sex marriage, Carpenter says: "It is a sad thing to watch the Roman Catholic Church come down on the wrong side of history; the company this man is keeping on this issue is not the company of God's people."

About African-American clergy leaders who take offense at his argument that gay marriage is a civil rights issue, Carpenter says: "I beg them to rethink their position. It saddens my heart."

" 'Rights' is the operative word," says Carpenter. "John Adams said that."

Hurley says that the Unitarian Universalist Association endorses Carpenter's equation of gay marriage as a civil rights issue. "That's not to say the discussion is exactly the same, but there are similarities. We don't think it's right to create a hierarchy of suffering."

Chris Montani, 39, of Savin Hill, a former Catholic who joined First Parish last year and now serves as chairman of its membership committee, says he thinks the church's openness has been a boon to its increasing popularity. Montani recently placed an ad for First Parish in the wedding planner edition of the gay and lesbian newspaper Bay Windows.

"In some ways I view it as ironic, all this rhetoric surrounding civil versus religious marriage, that the civil statutes are finally catching up with the religious sentiment of the oldest congregation in the Commonwealth," says Montani.

Founded in 1630, First Parish was ministered in its earliest years as a Puritan congregational church by the grandfather of Colonial-era witch-hunter Cotton Mather. It became a Unitarian denomination during the 1830s. In 1961, the Unitarians consolidated with the Universalists.

When Carpenter took to the First Parish pulpit a year and a half ago, he preached to a congregation of two at Sunday service. (The Massachusetts Historical Society had even reported its congregation as extinct.) Since then, he says, attendance has grown to a steady 50 -- many of whom are newcomers to the faith.

A religious education program is now in the works for the church's new, young families. And this weekend, Pratt, a West Bridgewater native who now lives in Dorchester, is staging a cabaret at the church to raise funds to repair its leaning, weathered steeple. Pratt, a lifelong Unitarian Universalist, joined First Parish 10 years ago.

Neil Brunswick, 53, a shipper and receiver from Fields Corner, is one of the few congregants who grew up attending First Parish and who still attends services there. Even as a child, he says, there were only about a dozen students enrolled in his Sunday school, while hundreds studied in each of the neighboring Catholic churches.

Brunswick says he's glad newcomers have revived the church, even if he doesn't agree with their views.

"It's always been a very open church," says Brunswick, who had been unaware of Carpenter's marriage strike or Montani's Bay Windows ad -- both of which were made public at services, according to Carpenter.

"Personally, I'm not in favor of gay marriages. But I guess we can agree to disagree," he says with a shrug about Carpenter. "It's not his church. It's my church."

So where would he draw the line?

"It depends on how far it goes," he says, adding that he's undecided about what "how far" means to him. He says he wouldn't attend the anticipated Mulyk-Pratt wedding. "I like them, but I just couldn't," says Brunswick. "It more has to do with faith for me."

But Mulyk, a maintenance superintendent who joined Pratt at First Parish seven years ago after his own Catholic church shut down, says his decision to marry would have little to do with religion. He's for the first time beginning to worry about what would happen to his pension and the house he shares with Pratt if he were to die first.

As for the wedding service, Mulyk and Pratt both say a simple, candlelight ceremony would do.

"We're not looking for anything to change for us," says Mulyk. "We've been together for 25 years."

A cabaret fund-raiser to benefit the exterior restoration of the church will be performed today at 3 p.m. at the church. Tickets for $10 can be purchased at the door. First Parish Church on Meetinghouse Hill, 10 Parish St., Dorchester. 617-436-0527, 617-265-0749.

Kellyanne Mahoney can be reached at kelmahon@globe.com.