In reply to Paula.

Paula, your response requires a two part reply addressing both the legal issue and an assumption you have made. The legal issue is that there are unrepentant homosexual members of the LCMS who might do code to marry. Membership of the synod involves being a confessional orthodox Christian. How this plays out is messy, but legally a good case can be made that someone who rejects the membership requirements of a given community are not actually members. Im not a lawyer, however i believe this argument is defendable in court. The assumption is that homosexual unions can be sanctified. One cannot sanctify what God has said in His word is evil, mainly because it is God Himself that does the sanctifying, not the person preforming a given ceremony. To sanctify something is to make it holy, and therefore to sanctify such a union is innately impossible.