The answer is clear for some: Marriage is between one man and one woman. A poster for the group Protect Marriage Washington shows a silhouette of a family as a husband, wife, older son and younger daughter. For many in the Christian community, these portrayals ring true.

But not for Catherine Foote.

As a lesbian pastor at the University Congregational United Church of Christ, she sees the issue a little differently.

“We support single parents, adoptive and foster parents and same-sex couples, and we support them in their parenting,” she said. “We support a single person who is taking care of her mother in her home. That’s a family.”

Referendum 71, the ballot measure put to voters this Nov. 3, raises the question of what presumably simple words like “marriage” and “family” really mean. As local congregations like Foote’s grapple with answers, they draw the ire of Christians who greet changes to traditional doctrine with suspicion — hostility, even.

“We have to make the point that a lot of these folks that are calling themselves Christians have long ago left the faith or even maybe never had it,” said Larry Stickney, president of the Washington Values Alliance and campaign manager for Protect Marriage Washington, the political action committee that helped get R-71 on the ballot. “The rainbow coalition churches are frauds.”

Several U-District churches, however, clearly refute this notion. University Christian Church states on its Web site that it seeks a congregation of “all ages, ethnic backgrounds and sexual orientations” to worship together. Foote also sees no contradiction between her sexual orientation and her faith.

“I am also a passionate Christian; a passionate Christian that loves the path of Jesus,” she said. “It’s that path that’s taken me here just as much as my own willingness to be open to what God made me to be.”

Choice and consequence

When the church hired David Shull and Peter Ilgenfritz, two openly gay pastors who were in a relationship, Foote realized the congregation was headed in a direction that might not be popular among some of its members.

“Some people felt pretty strongly that they couldn’t stay here,” she said. “And some people said ‘thank you’ for the inclusive or social justice stand you’ve taken.”

University Presbyterian Church, adjacent to the United Church of Christ, and Mars Hill Church avoided the debate altogether and declined to comment for this story. Media representatives from both churches said their churches do not comment on “political” matters.

But some local churches have supported gay rights to the point that their nationwide church body has drawn criticism from the pope. Episcopalians in the United States have ordained one gay bishop while also appointing female priests, a move that angered conservative congregation members. The pope invited those upset with these recent moves to become Catholics.

That move, which some perceived as a threat, didn’t seem to affect the congregation at Christ Episcopal Church on Brooklyn Avenue Northeast and Northeast 47th Street.

“I think that we’ve got to expand and broaden our meaning of what it means to be a family, and it goes beyond the traditional notion of husband and wife with two-and-a-half children with the white picket fence,” said the Rev. Steve Garrett of Christ Episcopal. “People do welcome gay and lesbian folks here without reservation.”

Separating church and state

The logic goes, if you allow R-71 to pass and put domestic partnerships on the same legal grounds as marriage, the next step might be to qualify domestic partners for state-sanctioned marriage. The move, then, to reject R-71 would effectively roll back what some perceive as a threat.

The other argument — the one advanced by some local churches — involves legalizing gay marriage as a civil union, a move that would allow congregations like Foote’s to have the state recognize same-sex unions they already celebrate. As a state issue, churches could opt out.

“I would get it if my pastoral colleague who feels strongly that they can’t perform a marriage ceremony and bless it in the church if they are a same-sex couple,” Foote said. “Of course, they have the right to decline that.”

The return volley to that argument comes from the view that the state is an advocate for values and public morality, a realm that some believe excludes civil unions and expansive domestic-partnership laws.

“We also think it’s wrong that this is just [viewed as] the progression of society,” Stickney said. “We see this as the regression of society.”

Gay rights as civil rights?

On this “progressive” side stands a coalition of those willing to see gay marriage pushed forward as a civil-rights issue. Q Center coordinator Jennifer Self, who is in a long-term domestic partnership, argues our society has redefined marriage throughout history — from marrying for property and ownership to marrying for love — and that recognizing gay relationships might be the next step.

“When are we going to stop thinking that if someone is different, they don’t belong to the human race?” she asked. “Whether or not Christians believe marriage came out of the Bible doesn’t really matter. We are not a theocracy.”

To make such a claim is one thing, but those opposed to R-71 have made the point again and again: Marriage in the United States is an institution firmly grounded in a one-man, one-woman relationship.

“You can’t have a group coming in, demanding to raid the institution of marriage,” Stickney said.

His Protect Marriage Washington group has produced a poster to that same effect. Below an encouragement to reject R-71, the poster reads: “Marriage = one man, one woman” and “Protect Marriage. Protect Children.”

Self said she’d like to see R-71 pass. She, her domestic partner and their adopted child already constitute a family — with or without the referendum.

“I don’t need the state to tell me [that we’re a family],” she said.

In Foote’s office, too, a poster offers a vague but reassuring idea to families like Self’s, which lie outside of the definition of “one man, one woman.”

The words?

“Family is a circle of friends who love each other.”

Reach reporter Andrew Doughman at lifestyles@dailyuw.com.