Warning: This is a long post. Go do what you need to do - get a beverage, whatever - and settle in...
I generally don’t post sermons. But parts of this blog post are extracted from a sermon I gave a couple of years ago. Originally written for a preaching class, it was polished and delivered publicly in response to my home state putting a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage on the ballot.
Ms. Kitty has a wonderful post at her blog about her journey to supporting gay marriage. Here’s mine…
G and R were friends I met while living in the dormitory towers of a large university. G was as blond as R was dark – both were stocky young men - small town kids who’d gone to the big city to escape small town life. They’d met each other at college and fallen in love. We went our separate ways at the end of the school year.
The next fall they didn’t return to the dorms. They had been living in their respective family homes over the summer, writing to each other and, in one of those sentimental gestures that young lovers are fond of, affixing the postage stamps upside-down.
For those unfamiliar with postage stamp communication, an upside-down stamp means “I love you.” The volume of mail, and the stamp position, was noticed and a letter had been intercepted, and read, by a parent. After confrontations, accusations, lots of tears, and a visit from a priest to one household, my friends were told to leave their respective family homes. They were still in school, but part-time, and without any parental support.
The following summer my husband and I married, and the planning beforehand was a major topic of conversation. R & G told me one day that they were very happy for us, but sad, too. They both strongly held values about fidelity and commitment which they’d been raised with, and believed themselves to be every bit as married as my DH & I were soon to be. It caused them considerable pain to be reminded that their relationship couldn’t enjoy the legal sanction ours would. Marriage, for them, was simply out of the question in the 1970’s.
Several years later, I met K at another university. She was in several of my classes, a large woman with a zest for life and laughter. We studied together and worked on programs at the women’s center. One day she introduced me to D. D seemed to be K’s opposite in so many ways – so petite, so quiet, and so serious – but they had discovered a shared passion for writing, and for each other. On a bright spring day, they gathered a small group of friends together in a cramped apartment, where they pledged to love and care for each other – and declared themselves married. K also promised to love and care for D’s two daughters. A few years later, they had a child together.
Living together as a family wasn’t as easy. K called me a few years ago to let me know she and D had separated after many years together, and she was mourning the divorce. Her biggest fear was losing contact with her child. She knew she had no legal right to custody or visitation since the child was biologically D’s. Court cases in other states had shown all the contracts in the world mean nothing to a judge in a custody suit when a non-biological, homosexual, parent sues for visitation or custody. Marriage remained a legal impossibility.
By the late 1990’s our family had joined a Unitarian Universalist church, which was served by an openly gay minister. I was working at an elementary school when one of the teachers started complaining in the lounge one day about the “gay agenda” in response to some story in the news. Now, Mr. B. is really quite nice, but he has some outdated ideas. He still thought that homosexuality, per se, was considered a psychological disorder. He made a few comments about gays “flaunting themselves” (whatever that means) ending with the complaint of why couldn’t “those people” just keep quiet.
I could have kept my mouth shut and ignored him. Feeling annoyed, I let him know that being gay hadn’t been considered a mental disorder by psychologists since the late 1970’s. Then I asked him if the photos on his desk of his wife and children might be viewed as flaunting his heterosexuality. He replied that it was normal to have photos of his family at his desk.
“Well, if it’s normal, then don’t you think that someone whose partner is the same gender might want to have a photo on her or his desk – especially if they have children together?” (And this was before I went to seminary and learned the term, "heterosexism.")
He’d never thought of that. Never considered that gay folks might be so “square” as to have families! He still thought they shouldn’t talk about it, though. "Don't ask, don't tell..."
Fast forward to today…
I’ve lost contact with both couples I’ve written about from my past. But I remember them – and have new friends, both gay and straight, who question and challenge the “tradition” of marriage. I’ve posted before about my friends, a straight couple, who chose to have a commitment ceremony. Not a wedding, and no marriage license, because they didn’t want the state involved in their lives. I find this ironic, knowing so many gay couples who would happily marry if they could.
While in seminary, my home state (like many others) had a state-wide referendum on a constitutional amendment which defined marriage in narrow terms, making even civil unions impossible for gay or lesbian couples. Attending a liberal Christian seminary, I have a number of classmates, friends and acquaintances who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. My best seminary friend, now an ordained minister in another denomination, has been with his beloved partner for almost two decades. Fortunately, he can be open about his relationship, they could even be married in their church, but the state will not allow them to legally marry. What Would Jesus Do, indeed.
And I know a couple who married in California, during the brief time that marriage was available for gay couples, who are now in limbo again, waiting to see if the state will summarily divorce them.
I’ve been thinking about love and justice, preparing a worship service for this coming weekend – multigenerational, so it will be a joy and a challenge! And I found part of a book entitled
Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics online that brings the central point home – the author, Margaret Fraley, talks about the concept of a “just love.” She writes that the criterion for a just love must be the “concrete reality of the beloved.”
As a parent, I recognize this – for in loving my children I must recognize their unique natures, their individuality, their separateness from me. If I only love them because of how they are like me, I’m missing the point and not loving them justly.
In the same way, the people who say they have no problem with gays but would like them to not “flaunt” their lives miss the point. They fail to recognize that everyone needs to be loved. And everyone should have a right to proudly and publicly acknowledge their beloved, a right to make a legal commitment, a right to form a family with legal protections, and a right to care for each other – in sickness, in health, for better, for worse, as long as they are together.
UU minister Mark Belletini wrote a poem several years ago entitled “Because,” in which he attempts to answer the “why do you have to talk about it” question – the “it” being sexual preference. The end of the poem rings in my ears every time I read it or hear it read:
“Because lying all the time is still wrong isn’t it?
Oh, and because, whether you believe it or not,
my life is just as important to me as yours is to you.”
In this Freedom to Marry Week, let us make others' lives as important to us as our own – and let us love each other justly.
