A few months after Massachusetts became the first state to recognize same-sex marriage, a college senior in Michigan wrote an essay on why his church should do the same.

In 2004, Joseph Kuilema was getting ready to graduate from Calvin College , an affiliate of the U.S. Christian Reformed Church that is based in Grand Rapids and has a few hundred thousand followers scattered mostly across the Upper Midwest. The CRC is a Protestant denomination that sees the Bible as inspired and infallible truth, while drawing upon three Reformation-era texts called confessions to explain what that truth means in real life.

Among the lessons the CRC takes from these writings is its position on same-sex relationships. The CRC promotes love for gay members, calling past hostility toward the LGBTQ community a great failing. But it also deems homosexual behavior incompatible with Scripture because, in the churchs view, intimacy is a divine gift reserved for marriage between a man and a woman.

The CRC first staked out that position in 1973. Kuilema, writing three decades later, explained why he thought it was wrong.

In a paper that he called Tuxes for Two and submitted for a course on theological ethics, Kuilema highlighted what he saw as inconsistencies in CRC doctrine and argued for interpreting religious texts in the context of their times, which, he said, meant focusing on the nature of the loving, lifelong partnership the Bible celebrates rather than whether it is between a man and woman.

This is about couples who are in love, devoted to God and the Christian faith, ready to embark on a lifelong journey of commitment and mutuality, Kuilema wrote.

Aggressively interrogating such widely accepted principles of faith would have qualified as rebellion at many Christian colleges. At Calvin, it was a tradition, with students following a tone set by the faculty. School policies explicitly allowed professors room to criticize elements of CRC orthodoxy as long as they agreed to conduct their lives according to the churchs rules. And in a long-running internal CRC debate over how to temper biblical writings with contemporary values, Calvin faculty were frequently among those pushing hardest for more progressive views.

That environment is one reason that Kuilema returned to Calvin several years after graduation, to become a tenure-track professor in the social work department. As a researcher, he focused on the intersections between faith and activism. As a teacher, he directed study abroad programs in Liberia. He liked to speak out on issues related to race, once drawing the scorn of Tucker Carlsons website , and became a visible ally to Calvins LGBTQ students, one of whom later came to him with a request.

Nicole Sweda had gotten to know Kuilema when she was an openly queer undergraduate and had kept in touch with him afterward, when she got a full-time job at a research center that operated within the school. She was getting ready to wed her longtime girlfriend, and the two were hoping Kuilema could officiate the ceremony.

Kuilema agreed, reasoning that it would be compliant with Calvin faculty rules because he wasnt the one getting married and because the ceremony would be secular and on his own time. He checked with the elders at his Grand Rapids church, which is part of the CRC, as well as his department chair at Calvin. They said they were fine with it.

But Kuilema had run afoul of Calvin officials before. In 2018, the Board of Trustees overruled a faculty recommendation and blocked his tenure, citing concerns over the tone and substance of past statements about the LGBTQ community. Kuilema had remained at Calvin afterward, working on a two-year renewable contract that was serving as a probationary period.

Presiding at the wedding risked drawing more official ire. At the same time, Kuilema thought, there was a higher authority to consider and more important imperatives to follow.

For me, the religious question was not whether God approves of such unions, I think God absolutely does, but whether I would be faithful to God, Kuilema told me recently, thinking back to why he decided to go ahead. The question was whether I would practice what I preach and be willing to accept whatever consequences that might follow.

Those consequences would soon become clear and upend his life.