Yahoo! News - N.Y. Ministers Charged for Marrying Gays
KINGSTON, N.Y. - Two ministers were charged with criminal offenses Monday for marrying 13 gay couples — apparently the first time in U.S. history that clergy members have been prosecuted for performing same-sex ceremonies.

District Attorney Donald Williams said gay marriage laws make no distinction between public officials and members of the clergy who preside over wedding ceremonies.

Unitarian Universalist ministers Kay Greenleaf and Dawn Sangrey were charged with solemnizing a marriage without a license, the same charges leveled against New Paltz Mayor Jason West, who last month drew the state into the widening national debate over same-sex unions.

The ministers will plead not guilty at their arraignment March 22 and are prepared to go to trial, said their lawyer, Robert Gottlieb.

"There have been clergy throughout the country for years and years who have solemnized marriages between same-sex couples, and only the Ulster County D.A. feels compelled to haul them into a court and brand them a criminal defendant," Gottlieb said.

Barbara Cox, a law professor and gay marriage expert at the California Western School of Law, said the case might be difficult to prosecute because clergy had not sworn to uphold the law.

"A minister who has no authority to make a marriage legally valid, how can you say they've broken the law?" Cox said.

Look for these charges to be dropped. Gotta love the Unitarians- "Unitarian Universalists have roots in a movement that rejected Puritan orthodoxy in New England, and they support a free search for spiritual truth. Atheists and pagans are a significant part of their membership."

Maybe I should look into joining them. That's my kind of religion.