Same Sex Marriage
A Civil Repudiation of a Judgmental Viewpoint
Things like this pop up in the news every now and again, and I took a hit for the team today and actually listened to Pastor Steven Anderson’s full sermon entitled: “AIDS: The Judgement of God.” It came as no surprise that he generalizes people, uses stereotypes and exaggerates, and does some pretty horrible handling of scripture.
This preacher is not mainstream Christianity. He’s not even mainstream for Baptists, even non-affirming Baptists. He’s not doing good exegesis of scripture. He abuses his concordance by picking and choosing uses of English words across the breadth and width of scripture. And I have to take a moment to repudiate his message and proclamation. I won’t join him in name calling and I won’t join him in screaming. But I won’t sit by and let this be done in the name of Christ, with the accompanying laughter of his congregation, without a strident denial of the message of vilification, violence and anger.
I had hoped to just mention a few things he did wrong, but it’s a long sermon. I ended up with at least 14 things he did that were disrespectful of people and/or disrespectful of our scriptures.
1. Jokes about HIV/AIDS and people’s health and suffering. Really, he laughs about AIDS rates and people having AIDS. He repeatedly jokes about their suffering and about efforts to help them. HIV is a laughing matter to him.
2. Backward reading of Romans 1 and dismissal of Romans 2. He ignores Paul’s point to the verses in chapter 1 which is made in chapter 2: Don’t judge. Since he ignores Paul’s point of not judging, he is then free to read the verses in chapter 1 any way he wants. I outline in depth this kind of problematic reading of Romans 1 in another post here at the blog.
3. Associating HIV/AIDS with Romans 1:27. I didn’t think people still did this, but he actually makes it the sermon title that he believes HIV/AIDS is the penalty mentioned in Romans 1:27. Do we have to go into the problem of reading a disease in our current time backward into scripture from 2,000 years ago? This is so disrespectful of scripture that it defies explanation when coming from someone so stridently claiming “biblical authority” for his message.
4. Use of the word “sodomite.” If we are honest about the destruction of Sodom as biblical writers spoke of it, then we have to know that using the word (which was created long after the scriptures were written) to reference a specific sexual activity is a warning sign that we’re listening to a severe lack of education on biblical topics and a lack of respectful interpretation. Again, I wrote on this in a previous post. Using sodomite as an adjective would more correctly denote gluttony, pride or a neglect of poor people as scriptural writers spoke of Sodom’s destruction.
5. Defining words with a concordance. He jumps around an English translation of the Bible to define biblical terms in one instance by the use of that term in another instance, as if it were all originally written in English, yesterday.
6. Setting up straw arguments which he of course wins. He says, “They said *blah blah” to which I say “blah blah*” and wins the argument… of course. He makes everyone who disagrees with him sound stupid both in their intention, content and inflection.
7. Advocating the execution of homosexuals. He claims that we can have an AIDS free world in short order by killing all LGBTQ people, as we were told to do in Leviticus. His words normalize and justify violence against sexual minorities.
8. Name calling. Psycho. Homo. Satanist. Freak. Hypocrites. Bastard (speaking of President Obama). Twinkie.
9. Vilification and criminalization of homosexuals in every possible sense. He says, “Homos are gross.” “Homos go both ways.” “No queers allowed in this church.” “All homos are pedophiles.” He actually asserts that all gay men are pedophiles. He asserts that all gay men are trying to spread AIDS to straight men and women. He says that gay men are to blame for any straight person who has AIDS, which of course he can assert by believing that God gave gay men AIDS in Romans 1:27. He claims that gay people only want to be married to be insulting to straight people. *Sigh*
10. Believing the gospel means that a person cannot become gay. He asserts that becoming a Christian means that a person cannot be then tempted to explore gay sex and negates any previous leaning toward gay sexuality. Since when does faith work that way with anything we might consider a sin? And of course, since I don’t believe that being gay is a sin, then I’m left further befuddled.
11. Misuse of a verse from Jude to link homosexuals with the destruction of Sodom. He misuses a phrase “strange flesh” from Jude’s short letter, almost as an afterthought, to link homosexuality with Sodom. The phrase is sarkos heteros in the Greek… very hard to link homo-sexuality with hetro-flesh, but it doesn’t stop our preacher in this instance. I hope we all know that hetro- means different not male. Therefore heterosexuality is attraction to the opposite sex.
12. He doesn’t know any gay Christians. Not just to repeat points 9 & 10, but it’s so sad that he doesn’t know any gay Christians, whose faith has at times put my own to shame. His narrowed and incorrect view of sexuality limits him from a fellowship which would do him such good.
13. “I’m not going to stone them with stones… this is not a violent sermon about harming anyone.” After asserting that we would have an AIDS free world if we’d only execute homosexuals, he then claims that he won’t himself use stones to kill anyone and isn’t meaning to advocate violence. Too late.
14. He engenders fear, “Don’t just put your kid on a school bus.” …because gay people are waiting everywhere to devour your children, with government support. He speaks with the language of fear and abuse. He himself is fairly stereotypical in his language when not only vilifying gay people but also the public educational system and politicians.
Now I have to pray and find a way to detox from this sermon. His anger, his venom and his excited joy in condemning and ridiculing people is injuring to the soul. Please, my LGBTQ sisters and brothers, don’t listen to this man. No one should be swayed by his screaming tirade and twist of scriptural passages and words. Don’t believe that he in any way speaks for our Christ, our God or our Church.
I can’t muster the spirit at this point to listen a second time, but I’m fairly sure he never once quotes Christ in this sermon. I can’t even recall that he mentions Christ. I do know he at one point makes fun of Christians who emphasize love. Hmmmmm. Let that sink in and be a warning flag for the future. If he did mention Jesus, then it was so passing as to not even register in my memory. Know that you cannot preach as this man preaches if you are tuned into the heart of Christ, a heart that breaks with every ridiculing joke and sneering dismissal of a human being from this man’s mouth.
AMDG, Todd
Hearing that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, the Pharisees got together. One of them, an expert in the law, tested him with this question: “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus replied: ” ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Matthew 22:34-40
Acts 15 Council Redux on LGBTQ Inclusion
There’s an undercurrent of non-affirming Christianity that is sincerely seeking a way to welcome gay Christians without having to deal with gay marriage or the thought of gay people having sex, and it boils down to the idea of enforced celibacy. This means that gay folks are welcome to be gay, but not as whole sexual human beings. What I find most interesting in this proposal is what it indicates about the thinking on homosexuality among straight Christians, namely that more and more are finding it hard to assert that gay is a choice.
If you’d like to read the most civil and gentle assertion of enforced celibacy, you can read Mr. Ronald J. Sider here at Christianity Today. His article is the reason I’m writing this post. I would have eventually gotten around to writing about celibacy in our discussions of LGBTQ concerns, but his writing got me thinking, and thinking leads to pacing, and pacing leads to more writing… reminds me of a proverb I heard once, Proverbs 10:19 (NLT), “Don’t talk too much, for it fosters sin. Be sensible and turn off the flow!” Hehehehe, I can’t turn off the flow…
What is celibacy?
Celibacy is the absence of sexually gratifying physical activities. We don’t find much in the Old Testament about celibacy as the people of Israel didn’t think very highly of it. They had other concerns in mind, mainly procreation. Poor Prophet Jeremiah was commanded to be celibate as a graphic image of coming suffering. Ouch. That’s about it for the Old Testament where the idea of celibacy is not so highly celebrated. Of course, neither was same-sex relations, again as the focus was on making babies. All sexual minorities had a difficult time in those days: any LGBTQ people, eunuchs, celibates and barren women. They simply didn’t have a way to plug into the overall drive to populate the earth.
One of my favorite scenes in all the Old Testament is between Hannah and her husband Elkanah in 1 Samuel 1 (NRSV). She is barren, and her husband’s other wife ridicules her for her barrenness, but her husband loves her and says, “Hannah, why do you weep? Why do you not eat? Why is your heart sad? Am I not more to you than ten sons?” He loved his wife and celebrated their love without the need for her to bear children. Awesome.
And on a side note, Elkanah’s other wife? Yes, he was married to both Hannah and Peninnah. And God heard their prayers and Hannah’s son was the great prophet Samuel. But I thought God “ordained” marriage as one man and one woman? I would swear I’ve seen someone holding a sign that said that. So much of what we have in the biblical narrative lays outside the simplistic models we bandy around in our own day and age.
Sorry, back to celibacy. We have to move into the New Testament where the active redeeming of sexual minorities and marginalized begins to take place in its fullness. Jesus begins this by having women prominently placed around himself and his ministry and they are often the focus of his attention and conversation, to the befuddlement of his male disciples. And who is among the first Gentile converts in the book of Acts but an Ethiopian eunuch!
Jesus also affirms celibacy in a discussion of fidelity and eunuchs in the first half of Matthew 19 (NRSV). It’s a fascinating discussion in which Christ affirms fidelity in marriage by chastising the religious for casually breaking the kinship bonds (bone of bone and flesh of flesh) of marriage. He then mentions some outside the kinship/marriage bonds, those who do not marry, what seems to be three types of eunuchs:
1) natural eunuchs (asexuals? hermaphrodites?),
2) physically altered males (eunuchs made eunuchs by removal of the testicles), and
3) spiritual eunuchs (those choosing a celibate life for the work and glory of God).
There’s room to quibble on the descriptions of the types of eunuchs here, but what cannot be quibbled over is that the option to become a eunuch (presumed to be celibacy) is a choice made by one who can accept celibacy as a calling.
Matthew 19:12
“For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can.”
Paul celebrates his celibate lifestyle. He’s happy to be celibate himself, and he encourages anyone who has the gift of celibacy to exercise it…
1 Corinthians 7:7-9
“7 I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has a particular gift from God, one having one kind and another a different kind. 8 To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain unmarried as I am. 9 But if they are not practicing self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion.”
Let’s make special note of two things here from Paul…
1) celibacy is a gift for one called to it, and
2) Paul is substantially challenging many millennia of religious focus on marriage and procreation. Whoa.
I think the worst thing that happens when we engage this text is to give people the idea that they should just get married if they can’t contain their sexual desires. Marriage is much, much more than that. We shouldn’t read Paul saying there is only denied lust in celibacy and fulfilled lust in marriage. But we also make a big mistake when we don’t engage this text and slip into thinking that celibacy might be something that we may impose on someone not otherwise gifted or called to celibacy.
And how about Paul going up against all the millennia of religious preoccupation with procreation? I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a sermon about the way Paul challenged procreation as the basic reason or function for human sexuality and marriage, but there he goes. I know, the chapter goes into more than marriage and celibacy in the sense of calling. It’s a deep and unique discussion on calling as a Christian. But hey, 1 Corinthians 7:1-5 (NRSV) is actually an amazingly beautiful exposition of equality between marriage partners. It’s very not-at-all-patriarchal. I like it a lot.
Celibacy in scripture is a choice, a gift and a calling. It is not a consolation prize or a requirement that one Christian might decide to enforce upon another.
An Acts 15 Redux, please!
Ok, let’s get to the good stuff… I am calling for a repeat of the church council in Acts 15! LGBTQ folks want a place at the table with us, the table where we all sup equally of the joys of marriage, acceptance and full citizenship in our churches and civil communities. And so far the straight Christians are not all sure what to do about this insistent desire.
Let’s remind everyone what happened in Acts 15. Gentiles had begun converting to Christianity and some of the Jewish Christians felt that those new Gentile converts should be circumcised and made to adhere to the Law of Moses as a prerequisite for being in the church. Paul and Barnabas didn’t want that to happen and in the interest of settling the debate they go to Jerusalem to put the matter before the church elders and apostles. They go and tell the story of the Gentiles’ faith, and Simon Peter steps in with a great idea… don’t put rules on them that even we can’t tolerate.
Acts 15:6-11
6 The apostles and the elders met together to consider this matter. 7 After there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, “My brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that I should be the one through whom the Gentiles would hear the message of the good news and become believers. 8 And God, who knows the human heart, testified to them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us; 9 and in cleansing their hearts by faith he has made no distinction between them and us. 10 Now therefore why are you putting God to the test by placing on the neck of the disciples a yoke that neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear? 11 On the contrary, we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.”
Others agree, and James steps forward to outline a simple down-to-bases list of things to ask the Gentile Christians to avoid: idolatry, fornication, meat from strangled animals & blood. It seems totally sensible that they are asked to avoid association with idols, though it was probably a bit difficult as the new converts would be confronted with civic gods and household gods at every turn in daily life. The fornication they are asked to avoid is porneias, or a general sexual infidelity. Sounds legit, as we are called to be a people of covenant, both with God and one another. The meat of strangled animals and blood part seems weird to us today, but would have made much more sense to people steeped in purity rituals than we are.
We need a Simon Peter to stand in our midst, a rock, a voice of wisdom and liberating courage to say, “Enough with our reticence. Enough with our burdensome ideas and rules. We need to celebrate the faith of our sisters and brothers and not do anything more that causes them to stumble or lose hope.” And then we need a James who can help us chart a course of grace. Our Peter and James don’t have to be males, we just have to listen and make a move in faith.
What if we straight Christians would look and see God moving in the faith and lives of our amazing LGBTQ brothers and sisters, and would celebrate? What if we chose not to try to bind impossible conditions on these sisters and brothers, something as horrible and as unscriptural as enforced celibacy, but instead decided to welcome them into our shared down-to-bases understanding of God’s will for sacramental and covenantal relationships and life?
We would be faithful to ask for things like…
- Purity. We’re all called to live lives of purity, avoiding unrestrained sexual activities and lusts that can overwhelm us.
- Fidelity in Marriage. We’re all called to be faithful and committed life in the covenant of marriage.
- Full Offering of Gifts. Our LGBTQ brothers and sisters should be sharing their full gifting with the church to help us grow and mature in faith, just as we are each dependent and in need of the other, and we all share this responsibility to one another.
- Grace & Hope. And finally, as we recognize that we really aren’t two separate people at all, but one family in Christ, we would ask that our LGBTQ sisters and brothers would extend us a healthy dose of grace to overlook our delay in celebrating their faith and to join us in a deeper and more faithful hope that better days are coming for us all.
I’m going to go sit in the corner of my living room now and savor the dream. I’m going to revel in my belief that our God will be found to be much bigger than our divisions and worries. I’m going to be watching and listening for the Peter and James that God will raise up among us. And then she speaks, I’m going to be there to sing a hymn of the purest praise to our awesome God.
O my God! My God of impossible dreams and limitless peace! May your people of every nation, tribe and tongue, every color and continent and island, every gender, every sexual orientation and every corner of your amazing world call on you in joy and hope! May all of us join together in praise of you and love of one another! Speak and make us listen! Amen!
AMDG, Todd
Jesus Didn’t Weep Over Liberty
With the historic ruling this week by our Supreme Court on same-sex marriage we have been inundated with media coverage of responses from both sides of the issue. I understand that emotions run high on issues like this one, but I also know we still need to speak and react in responsible ways, especially if we step out to offer what we suppose would be God’s commentary on events, or more specifically, commentary from Jesus.
I was honestly, totally, down-right majorly peaved off when I saw this Tweet start making some headlines, from Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee), My thoughts on the SCOTUS ruling that determined that same sex marriage is okay: “Jesus wept.” He also Tweeted this gem, 5 people in robes said they are bigger than the voters of CA and Congress combined. And bigger than God. May He forgive us all.
Now, first I want to give the one nod to the Gov. that he’ll get from me, the fact that he began the “Jesus wept” Tweet with the words “My thoughts on…” But that’s all the praise he’ll get from this Pastor after moving on to a complete misuse of the tears of Jesus to essentially make Jesus appear as the enemy of our gay neighbors. Wrong, sir. For the love of all that is Holy, stop it! Here’s a bit of the text the Gov. quotes from, John 11:32-37:
32 When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” 33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. 34“Where have you laid him?” he asked. “Come and see, Lord,” they replied. 35 Jesus wept. 36 Then the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” 37 But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”
Let’s just break a few things down, shall we? Why did Jesus weep in that famously short verse the Gov. quoted? He wept over the death of a good friend whom he loved. He wept with hurting people, hurting friends. The weeping of Jesus is not a rejection of anyone, but a connection to all hurting people. Jesus wept in love, sorrow, loss and the experience of both his own pain and empathetically the pain of those around him.
To take the empathetic, beautiful weeping of our Lord and turn it into a hateful rejection of our neighbors’ search for civil justice is despicable and unGodly in the extreme. As a Pastor, I renounce this distortion of my Lord, I renounce the Gov.’s words and intentions. The Gov. rightly speaks for himself, himself alone. If he cannot do better textual work than that, he needs to shut his mouth and spend some more time in study and prayer.
Why take the time to blog on this? Because every voice that counters that kind of textual abuse is needed. Our gay neighbors who have so long been civilly disenfranchised from basic spousal rights and privileges have a lot of reason to celebrate this week. And to posit the idea that Jesus would weep at their joy, weep at their liberty, weep at this corrected injustice, is horribly wrong. In fact, I find it counter to the Jesus who wept at that scene in John 11. I find it counter to the Jesus who wept in love, not in rejection of people’s joy and liberty.
I respect the Gov.’s right to speak his own mind, hold his own opinions, and even maintain his own beliefs of what his faith may or may not say about same-sex marriage and attractions. To deny the Gov. his liberty would only lessen the hard won liberty bestowed on his gay neighbors this week by the Supreme Court. But I will not respect, condone or be silent at the abusive misuse of Jesus for the Gov.’s political, social or ratings gain.
Just as a reminder, back when so many children were viciously gunned down at Sandy Hook Elementary, when it would have been SO INCREDIBLY CORRECT to say that “Jesus wept,” the Gov. chose instead to rail on his political stump against gun control. He says something about slipping over to the “pastor side” and then speaking in blame about a mythical removal of God from schools. Why not let Jesus weep then with those hurting people? Why not let God be seen in the amazing person of Jesus, present with us and hurting with us and ready to make any journey with us, on good days and horribly bad days? Because the Gov. did not ever slip to the “pastor side” of things, but instead remained intrenched in his political/social agenda.
There is a lot more injustice to be righted in our country. There are still many disenfranchised neighbors waiting for us to move in their favor and right the wrongs that have often shaped their lives to their loss. God is not ignorant of their tears, even if pastors sometimes are. Jesus weeps with them, never against them, regardless of any pastor’s personal agenda.
Same-Sex Marriage, A Response
There is a comment thread in my first post on same-sex marriage that I will respond to here in this post. I’d like to make a couple of points that might get lost in just replying in that thread…
A reader named Deanna asked me to go look at a blog which leveled the charge of “idolatry” at people of faith who do not condemn their gay neighbors and same-sex marriage. My friend Greg went and read it and responded, and I checked out as well. Here are a couple of points I’d make…
First Point: Name calling is just too easy and evasive.
There are so many arenas on the web to talk about and debate what the scriptures actually say about same-sex attractions or practices, and I really encourage people to dig in and try to answer some of the tough questions surrounding the issue of same-sex activities recorded in the scriptures and how we interpret them, if living by the scriptures is one of your personal drives. I will say that I agree with Greg on his take on the referred article… too simplistic and unfair. It’s far too easy to simply accuse people you don’t agree with as idolaters. When you can’t hold a substantive argument, the recourse should be doing more scholarly homework, not resorting to name calling.
Maybe, one day soon I’ll unpack my reading of scripture and same-sex attractions and relationships here, at least as I have come to believe and read the scriptures. I am someone who holds scriptures at the core of my life and thought, dependent on and grateful for them.
However, in my previous blog post, though I did mention own belief that a same-sex orientation is not antithetical to my faith, all the ideas I expressed were about removing inequalities in our civil laws about marriages and it’s benefits. The article to which I was referred at least began at the marriage question, but only as a spring-board to move to other things, like name-calling in disagreement. Why change the subject? Scallia’s exchange was interesting, but hardly definitive.
The bottom line is that I am happy to respect anyone’s right to hold a view on same-sex marriage and to have their own thoughts on same-sex orientation, but I am not happy to have anyone’s views unnecessarily held above their neighbor’s views to their neighbor’s detriment. That is not “neighborly,” nor kind nor civil.
Second Point: Has no one ever taught us to disagree?
I’m afraid that people of faith who do believe that same-sex attractions and relationships are antithetical to their faith are missing a great opportunity to grow in their own beliefs and at the same time make a fair, just statement to their neighbors who believe differently. I wonder why we so often think that someone’s differing opinion undermines our own? Universal agreement is certainly not the best test for one’s own convictions.
Suppose that more traditional thinking people of faith who opposed same-sex mariage would say something liek this:
“Well, it is a ‘free country’ and you are responsible for your own life. So I will not try to get in your way on such a personal issue that involves consenting adults living their lives. By the way, if you ever want to consider my views on the issue, I’d be glad to buy you a cup of coffee and chat.”
Such an offer may not get many takers, but it’d be respected far more than shrill name calling and denial of people’s civil rights.
People of faith have been disagreeing poorly for a long time, so I don’t blame our current generations for the problem. I do however think we could make some real strides forward on disagreeing better. We can be part of the solution!
This is especially needed when we are thrown in the public spotlight. I grew up in churches that happily argued and condemned each other all the time, relishing the delight of publishing scathing articles about another congregation, a college or some preacher who disagreed with their view. The worst days were when one congregation would take out a full-page ad in the local paper to condemn another. What a horrible witness to the reconciling power of Christ.
People of faith who want to point to the faith of the writers of our national documents like the Declaration of Independence and Constitution should be humbled that faith had such a grand part of crafting these documents of freedom and liberty, not restriction and denial. Faith helped create the guarantees of freedom that we now debate in our national conversation and in the highest court of the land. In such a national arena we need to recognize that our views and opinions are best shared with respect, dignity and a large dose of humility.
Same-Sex Marriage
Ok, here we go. Over twenty years ago I was so very blessed to marry my life’s love, my soul mate and best friend, Teresa. I cannot imagine having taken this journey with someone else. I am so thankful.
Because Teresa and I are Christians, our marriage took place in a church building, with a Christian minister officiating. But interestingly, the “paper trail” of our wedding began earlier, not in a church building, but in a county office in Abilene, Texas. The civil authorities issued our marriage license and demanded a copy back, signed, for their records.
I believe our faith has framed and guided our marriage, and it is integral to who we are. But it was the civil government which allowed us to marry and have all those rights and privileges afforded a married couple. Those privileges, by the way, have nothing intrinsically to do with gender, faith or sexual orientation… visitation rights, filing joint taxes, hospital visitation, insurance coverage, etc.
Why does the civil government do this? Well, because we have this amazing document we call The Constitution that was created to, among other things, “..secure the Blessings of Liberty…” Those nation builders were poetic rascals, and that phrase rings very similar to the idea put forth in our nation’s Declaration of Independence that all people have certain rights as human beings including the rights of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Being married has made me so happy! Living with the liberty to seek marriage to the one I love, and then to obtain marriage to the one I love, has been one of the most worthwhile pursuits of my life. It has been a pursuit and realization of happiness.
Today, in the same country many simply do not have the same rights and protections as I do, because they love and wish to marry someone of the same gender. In some way, we have decided their endowed right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness shall have restrictions imposed that are not imposed on my own. All those rights and privileges I mentioned, that have nothing to do with gender or faith, can and are most often denied to them.
My friends, I do not believe that my own faith instructs me to oppose same-sex marriage. I do however understand that many of you believe that your faith does not allow you the option of same-sex marriage or orientation. And for the sake of your conscience, and because it is your right to live life based on your faith convictions, I respect and support your living by that faith. No one should ever force you to live in an orientation or marriage that you do not desire. But we are talking civil rights, folks. We are talking about the very base of civil rights which afford you and I and everyone the opportunity to worship and live according to personal faith, as one’s conscience dictates. These are shared rights to pursue happiness in freedom.
While proofing this blog for me, my previously mentioned wife, the beautiful Teresa, asked me to mention something about interracial marriage in our nation. She said, “This isn’t a new issue” meaning that the denial of people’s right to marry whom they choose is not a new problem. Many Americans fought the civil right of others to marry someone of different ethnicity, often again on religious grounds. Though it was legal in many States, marrying a person of another ethnicity was not a protected right for all people in our country until a 1967 ruling by the Supreme Court. 1967!
You may answer the question of same-sex marriage by any criteria you wish to use, for your own life. This is your right. Answering it for your neighbor, by any criteria of your own choosing, is not however your moral, ethical or constitutional right.
Everyone can empathize with a person’s desire to pursue life-long love with their chosen partner. And we can also empathize with the desire simply to be free to do something, even if we ultimately choose not to do it. We know that the burden of not being free is an emotional, psychological and spiritual injury. We must not be a people who do such injury to others.
For straight people, the freedom to marry remains their right whether they marry or not. A freedom is strength. A freedom is joy. Not being free is painful. Right now, a majority of people in our country enjoy the strength and happiness of a basic civil right to pursue personal happiness in the agreement of marriage and all it’s attendant rights and privileges. And at the same time in the same country a minority is held bound in the pain and loss of being denied the same right.
For me, the burden of my own rights will necessitate that I support the rights of my neighbor. My freedom to marry cannot be a selfishly hoarded treasure. If I am given this gift by my civil authorities, pursuant to the execution of our nation’s founding documents, then this gift is also for my neighbor, regardless of ethnicity, gender, orientation or personal faith.
In short, I stand with my homosexual neighbors, now and always, in support of their intrinsic human dignity and their full, complete set of civil rights. My faith tells me that they are beloved of God, and so it is my joy to serve them and love them. Whether my gay neighbor is a citizen of my country or not, I will always support their freedom and human rights, but especially in the country of my birth, I will expect that they are treated as full citizens, endowed with every right I myself enjoy.
And maybe one day, one glorious day off sometime in the future… I won’t have to even clarify that I am standing with my gay neighbor, or my straight neighbor, or my Christian neighbor, or my Muslim neighbor, or Hindu neighbor, my atheist neighbor, my male neighbor, my female neighbor… maybe, just maybe, we’ll grow up into a mature respect of people that no longer needs such labels to engage their amazing worth, value and dignity as human beings. Amen.
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