Lesbian couple sues Christian retirement community for denying housing application
A “married” lesbian couple is taking a Christian retirement community to court over its requirement that prospective residents abide by Christian moral principles. Friendship Village is a non-profit retirement community “guided by Biblical values” that holds “Faithful Service” as one of its core values, according to its website. Despite the Bible’s unambiguous teachings on homosexuality, Mary Walsh and Bev Nance of Shrewsbury applied in 2016 to move to Friendship Village, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports . Walsh and Nance have been together for 37 years and got “married” in Massachusetts in 2009. After they paid a $2,000 deposit and got placed on a waiting list, they say Friendship Village rejected their application on the grounds that it would violate the community’s “longstanding” policy that only allows cohabitation among parent-child relationships, siblings, or marriages of one man and one woman. So Walsh and Nance have filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Eastern ...