FORT MITCHELL, Ky. (AP) — A minister who continued to marry same-sex couples despite Presbyterian Church (USA) law was ousted from the denomination and the clergy June 16 by a church council.

The Cincinnati Presbytery’s special meeting on the Rev. Stephen Van Kuiken was held even as he pursues an appeal of a church court’s April directive forbidding him to marry same-sex couples.

The council voted 119-45 to remove Van Kuiken as the minister at Mount Auburn Presbyterian Church in Cincinnati and from membership in the Presbyterian Church (USA).

“I am grieving right now. And part of this grieving is over the forced separation from my congregation,” said Van Kuiken, 44, a minister for 19 years. “I love them, and my heart will always be with them.”

Members of the presbytery, a cluster of Presbyterian churches in the Cincinnati region, were asked to decide whether Van Kuiken had renounced the constitution and governance of the Presbyterian Church (USA) by refusing to abide by a church court order.

There was an attempt to substitute a motion that would have removed him only as minister at Mount Auburn, but it was defeated.

Van Kuiken, a married heterosexual originally from Grand Rapids, Michigan, said the church is discriminating against homosexuals and he feels an obligation to continue pressing for same-sex marriages.

He said his fight was “worth it despite getting beat up and despite the pain and the struggle and the hardship.”

Earlier, Van Kuiken said the presbytery would unfairly intrude on his appeal in the church courts if it took action against him.

“It circumvents the due process afforded by the church courts,” said Van Kuiken, who has appealed to the court of the Presbyterian synod that covers Ohio and Michigan.

“He was only enforcing the policy of our church. This action is really a defrocking of our church,” said a tearful Jennifer McKettrick, one of about 500 people to attend the three-hour meeting.

Van Kuiken married McKettrick, 37, and her partner at Mount Auburn.

“I am deeply saddened and I cannot imagine staying in a Presbyterian church that doesn’t want me,” she said.

Van Kuiken says he is following the teachings of Jesus by marrying gay couples.

The highest Presbyterian court ruled in 2000 that ministers may bless same-sex unions, but cannot marry the couples. The denomination follows the biblical interpretation generally held by major Christian denominations that marriage can be a covenant only between a man and a woman.

The Cincinnati Presbytery court that tried Van Kuiken in April gave him the mildest form of punishment: a public rebuke that directs him to only marry men to women. At that time, he could have been suspended or removed from the ministry.