Homosexuality: US Anglican church suspended for performing same-sex marriage

The American branch of the 80-million-member Anglican Communion has been suspended for allowing priests to perform same-sex marriages.

A United States affiliate of the 80-million-member Anglican Communion has been suspended for permitting priests to perform same sex marriages, Buzzfeed reports.

Leaders of the Anglican Communion made the decision on Thursday, January 14, to suspend its U.S. affiliate, the Episcopal Church, for a three-year period in response to a decision last year allowing priests to marry same-sex couples.

Leaders of Anglican denominations from around the world headed into their summit this week in Canterbury, England.

"Recent developments in The Episcopal Church with respect to a change in their Canon on marriage represent a fundamental departure from the faith and teaching held by the majority of our Provinces on the doctrine of marriage," the gathered primates, or heads of each of the thirty-eight churches in the Anglican Communion, said in a statement.

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The debate over greater acceptance of same-sex relationships polarized the Communion in meetings stretching back almost two decades. When a group of conservative churches in the United States broke away in 2007 from the Episcopal Church in response to the 2003 consecration of out gay Bishop Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, some attempted to reorganize under the archbishop of the Church of Uganda.

These direct confrontations within the communion contributed to the growing concern over homosexuality in some African countries with large Anglican churches, such as Uganda and Nigeria. Both nations later enacted broad anti-LGBT laws in 2014, though Uganda's was ultimately struck down by the country's Constitutional Court.