Church Cancels Funeral As Family Waits For It To Start, Because Deceased Was A Lesbian

A Colorado church is accused of refusing to allow a lesbian woman’s funeral to take place, as her family and friends gathered waiting to pay their last respects.

Vanessa Collier (photo) was only 33 years old when she died in late December. Her wife, children, family, and friends arranged to hold a funeral at New Hope Ministries outside of Denver, in Lakewood, Colorado. They supplied the church with a memorial video for this past Saturday’s scheduled 10:00 AM service.

The church apparently lost the video, and after obtaining a second copy from the family, asked them to edit out the portion that showed Collier kissing her wife.

“We don’t want overt, open homosexuality in our sanctuary,” Pastor Gary Rolando told a local ABC News affiliate. “I love the family,” Rolando added. “I knew the deceased and knew that she led an ‘alternative’ lifestyle.” 

The family refused, and at 10:15, according to a Facebook post, the church announced the open casket funeral would have to be moved, due to technical difficulties.

Pastor Rolando ultimately conducted the service at a different church. Pastor Ray Chavez, the founder of New Hope Ministries, has refused to talk to the press. Rolando blamed a visiting funeral director for the refusal, saying “the funeral director on that day came from a different funeral home in the chain, and wasn’t familiar with New Hope’s policies.”

Friends and family today were out protesting the church, as the video above shows, with signs that read, “Dignity in Death Vanessa” and “You will not find Jesus at New Hope but you will find HYPOCRISY.”

“I’m sorry this happened the way it did,” Pastor Rolando says. “New Hope is very sorry… It’s very sad that it happened the way that it did.”

This of course is not the first time an LGBT person’s funeral has been canceled after a pastor learned the deceased was gay. Last summer, a Tampa pastor reneged on burying a legally-married gay man less than 24 hours before his scheduled funeral, calling the man’s mother as she was at his wake.

And in 2012, a woman who was attending her mother’s funeral was denied communion by the attending priest because she is a lesbian. The priest reportedly exited in the middle of the funeral, and claimed he was too ill to go to the cemetery to deliver the final blessings. “I cannot give you communion because you live with a woman and that is a sin according to the church,” the priest told her. 

 

Image via Facebook