Texas church cancels gay vet’s memorial - Yahoo! News

Officials at the nondenominational High Point Church knew that Cecil Howard Sinclair was gay when they offered to host his service, said his sister, Kathleen Wright. But after his obituary listed his life partner as one of his survivors, she said, it was called off.

“It’s a slap in the face. It’s like, ‘Oh, we’re sorry he died, but he’s gay so we can’t help you,’” she said Friday.

Wright said High Point offered to hold the service for Sinclair because their brother is a janitor there. Sinclair, who served in the first Gulf War, died Monday at age 46 from an infection after surgery to prepare him for a heart transplant.

The church’s pastor, the Rev. Gary Simons, said no one knew Sinclair, who was not a church member, was gay until the day before the Thursday service, when staff members putting together his video tribute saw pictures of men “engaging in clear affection, kissing and embracing.”

Simons said the church believes homosexuality is a sin, and it would have appeared to endorse that lifestyle if the service had been held there.

Sorry to deploy a cliche, but I have a hard time thinking that they asked themselves, “What would Jesus do?”

Further, let’s suppose that the pictures in the tribute showed Sinclair “engaging in clear affect, kissing and embracing” of a female who was his “long time” yet unmarried partner, would the service have been canceled? I suspect not.

It isn’t as if the slide show was going to be shown during the Sunday morning worship service.

And, I must confess, statements like the following are rather difficult to take:

“Had we known it on the day they first spoke about it — yes, we would have declined then. It’s not that we didn’t love the family.”

I would guess that they aren’t feeling too loved at the moment. In fairness, it should be noted that the church offered to pay for the service at another site, including food and such.