A Christian retirement care facility in St. Louis, Missouri, is being sued after it turned away a lesbian couple in accordance with its biblically-based housing policy. Seventy-two-year-old Mary Walsh and Bev Nance, 68, filed a federal lawsuit last month against the Missouri-based nondenominational nonprofit senior housing community Friendship Village Sunset Hills, a case that could have greater implications when it comes to the religious freedom rights of faith-based nonprofit institutions.
The couple, married since 2009, claim that the facility violated the Fair Housing Act and the Missouri Human Rights Act when it rejected their application for housing in July 2016 because they were a lesbian couple. The refusal was based on the fact that Friendship Village’s “cohabitation policy” limits those who can live together in the same unit to spouses, parents, children and siblings. Although Walsh and Nance are legally married, Friendship Village’s policy defines marriage as “the union of one man and one woman, as marriage is understood in the Bible.” READ MORE
