A pastor in Colorado halted the funeral of a gay woman that was taking place in the church where he serves and, according to Yahoo Parenting, there are many people upset. Click here for the article.

Apparently, the reason for the pastor halting the funeral was because of the pictures that were being shown in a slideshow. There were pictures that included moments of affection between the deceased and her partner.

Here are some observations and questions I have:

1. If the church is opposed to homosexuality, which seems to be the case, why did they agree to allow the funeral to be held there in the first place?
2. Was there an agreement between the church and the family of the deceased concerning the content of the service? The comments about the church wanting to “edit out” details of the person’s life lead me to think there were discussions about this before the service.
3. If there were discussions and there was an agreement, what responsibility does the family have to actually follow the agreement?
4. If there was an agreement and the family broke it, the church was put in a very difficult situation. To ask a church to violate their conscience is not a minor thing.

It seems this could have easily been avoided by having the service at the funeral home to begin with or by holding the service at a different location where there was no conflict of worldviews. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.