“I think the congregation could have lived with me being gay,” McNeill said. “Announcing I was married pushed it over the edge.”

When the Rev. Laurie A. McNeill married a woman in October, she feared what it might cost her — her calling.

Days before the nuptials, McNeill asked her colleagues and congregation at Central Presbyterian Church in Montclair to rejoice with her.

It was totally possible, she said, that congregants might have known she was a lesbian for the five years she was their pastor. But it wasn’t talked about.

And until last year, she said all seemed well in the house of worship located in a progressive New Jersey town that has long been welcoming to gays and lesbians.
Several months after her legal marriage in Massachusetts, the church’s congregation voted McNeill out of her pastoral position.

“I think the congregation could have lived with me being gay,” McNeill said. “Announcing I was married pushed it over the edge.”

This could mark the first time a pastor has married a same-sex partner while simultaneously serving a congregation in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), she said…

Lisa Hoyt, clerk of Central Presbyterian Church’s Session, or 12-member Board of Elders, said the 140-member church was looking for a change, yet said McNeill was “highly regarded” for her pastoral skills. “Laurie getting married and the dissolving of the relationship are not related,” Hoyt said. “This was a church deciding that the leadership and administrative abilities just were not suiting the congregation.”