One Saturday afternoon, some twelve years ago, I was getting ready to officiate a wedding. Now, Unitarian Universalists are open to officiating marriages in gardens, restaurants, churches, home back yards...basically anywhere legally available. As I was preparing, my husband, Nick, called from the other room. "What kind of wedding is it?", he asked. Without thinking I answered, "heterosexual", and immediately realized I had become that much more a Unitarian Universalist minister.
Unitarian Universalist clergy have been marrying same sex couples for over thirty years. The ceremonies have been given many names, such as sacred unions, celebrations of life commitment, or life partnerships, and weddings. Until very recently, none of the unions were legal in the eyes of the law in the United States, but they were fully sanctioned by the Unitarian Universalist Association and made sacred by the couple's tender and vulnerable affirmation of love and committed life partnership in the witness of a gathered community.
What has been brewing recently, and now boiling over in pockets around the nation, is the issue of the legal sanction of same sex marriages.
This is a complicated issue because it touches on the very core of our way of life. It challenges deep cultural assumptions. For some people, it turns their world upside down.
Evolving consciousness does this. For those who will let this issue touch their lives, the response will range from exhilaration by the sense of a widening sphere to deep shock at the intrusion. The sands are shifting, which means folk will feel, at the very least, shakey ground and in the most extreme cases, complete loss of balance — an inability to claim ground of being.
In consciousness raising, fear and all its varied forms appear. Anger and all its faces emerge. Exaltation and all its idealism comes to life. Hope and all its vision finds voice.
The call for civil marriage equality will spur on a rough ride in this culture. Its calls for consistent, well grounded affirmation and steady reins. The reason I speak of a civil matter in church this morning is that this issue is crossing church state lines without hesitation. Religious dialogue permeates this debate and so I speak as a Unitarian Universalist in the midst of the dialogue. There are strong moral arguments against homosexual marriage casting it as a sin and of the devil, prohibited by the Bible and the downfall of civilization. There are also strong moral and ethical arguments for civil marriage equality on the side of love, respect for diversity and an understanding that certain aspects of the Bible carry over a culture that is no longer reflective of these times.
As a born and bred Unitarian Universalist, I've dwelled within the reality of homosexuality as long as I can remember. An uncle of mine was openly gay and our church hosted the Metropolitan Community Church in the 1960's, which is a faith for Christian gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered persons. One of my first boyfriends dumped me for a man and then asked me to be his confidante during the difficult transition...what a journey that was.... My work in theatre in New York presented friends of various sexual orientations, and my studies at Union Theological Seminary, a liberal Christian seminary devoted to liberation theologies included the study of gay and lesbian rights.
I mention this history to witness to the fact that, with all my life experience and some scholarship on the issue of gay and lesbian rights, I was, at first, unsure and unclear about the issue of civil marriage as a civil right. With all the training I still live in a heterosexist society and have growing edges. This fact humbles me for the work, because paradigm shifting is not easy, and I want to honor the hard work that is awaiting many, many people. I'm sure there are people here in this room...I'd venture most of us, with anxieties and questions and confusions around this issue.
The fact that we may all be in different places and the fact that some in this culture will not even entertain this issue does not mean that I need to wait for others to come to their own place of understanding and opening before I speak up. Indeed, affirmation and witness is needed in such a vulnerable time. The witness must, however, be energized by perseverance rather than quick fixes and a steady, clear positive voice, rather than a strident accusatory diatribe. Love moves this issue, not blame or shame or fear or need to control.
I stand by the tactics that the Unitarian Universalist Association have chosen and am proud to stand with them. On the building at 25 Beacon Street in Boston Massachusetts hangs a banner that reads "civil marriage is a civil right"... a simple affirmation, not a statement of who is wrong, but of what is right.
But I digress. Let's get to the issue, then come back to the affirmation. I thank you for dwelling in this place with this issue, for it goes right to the gut and stirs within.
The issue is about civil marriage. Should same sex couples receive all the rights and benefits as do heterosexual couples within the bond of marriage? Whether there are same sex unions is not at issue. There have been, throughout the centuries, committed life partnerships between two people of the same sex.
A quick word on the difference between a civil and a religious marriage. It is the civil marriage that makes a union legal in the eyes of the law. Ordained clergy are invested by the authority of the State to sign the marriage license. The marriage license is issued by the state, not the clergy. The signing of the license is what makes a ceremony legal. Ceremonies can be performed with or without clergy; however, they cannot become legal without the civil marriage license. It's all about that piece of paper and whose names get to go on it.
Clergy were not always given authority to sign the marriage license in this land. On May 12, 1621, the first civil marriage within a colony was performed, according to Dutch custom, by a magistrate in Plymouth Massachusetts. The first arrival of clergy, The Rev. Ralph Smith, did not occur until seven years later in 1629. The Dutch opposed the English custom of clerical marriage, claiming it was unscriptural. It was not until 1692, seventy years after the first marriage, that clergy were authorized to solemnize marriages. There is a long history of the distinction between civil and religious marriages. Furthermore, with the separation of Church and State, it is unlawful to impose religious belief on ones constituents in the exercise of basic civil rights.
So is the right to marry a basic civil right? The Massachusetts Supreme court believes it is: "The right to marry," states the majority opinion, "is not a privilege conferred by the State, but a fundamental right that is protected against unwarranted State interference (19).... The United States Supreme court has described the right to marry as 'of fundamental importance for all individuals' and as 'part of the fundamental right of privacy' implicit in the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process clause (10)"
"A fundamental right that is protected against unwarranted State interference"....
The government cannot impose a spouse on a citizen. Only the parties getting married can mutually assent to the marriage. They have the right to choose their own partner. They cannot be forced to marry, nor can the State deny marriage unless there are health and public safety issues.
This is where the argument sets in, because opponents to same sex marriage claim that homosexual unions are damaging to the health of the institution of marriage.
The obvious counter argument that is circulating is that the institution of marriage is already in trouble and that was done under heterosexual rule. But another argument that has a little less press, is the realization that the institution of marriage has evolved throughout society's history. Women's rights to name and property were non-existent in the institution of marriage just a couple hundred years ago. The fundamental nature of the relationship of man and woman in marriage is much different today. And it was not until 1967 that the United States Supreme Court deemed interracial marriage a civil right, whereas before it was considered a threat to the fundamental institution of marriage. (And by the way, Maryland did not allow interracial marriage until 1967.)
The institution of marriage, therefore, is an evolving institution. So let's simply get on with it, let it grow and deepen and include those who want to promote society and secure their homes with loving, committed, mutually supportive marriage.
Peter J. Gomes, Plummer Professor of Christian Morals comments: "To extend the civil right of marriage to homosexuals will neither solve nor complicate the problems already inherent in marriage, but what it will do is permit a whole class of persons, our fellow citizens under the law heretofore irrationally deprived of a civil right, both to benefit from and participate in a valuable yet vulnerable institution which in our changing society needs all the help it can get."
Along the same lines, an argument against same sex marriage is that same sex parents are not providing the optimal setting for child rearing. That it's not a proper family and corroding family values.
Two issues are evident here. First, there is no requirement for procreation or the raising of children in procuring a marriage license for heterosexuals. Whether a couple plans on having children or not is of no consequence to procuring a marriage license. Infertile couples can marry, couples who choose not to have children can marry, a person on a death bed can marry. Denying same sex couples the right to marry because of possible children is not in the purview of the law.
Secondly, children are already being raised by same sex couples. To deny those families the rights and privileges that can help support and protect those children is unjust.
"Although Alvin, Nigel and Kiran are a family," writes Keith Boykin, "they are still denied basic rights that most families take for granted. In 1997, the U.S. General Accounting Office compiled a list of 1049 rights and benefits related to marriage. 'In (this) family with one military veteran, one federal employee, one native of Trinidad and Tobago and with one child, marriage discrimination could deprive our family of veteran's benefits, civilian benefits, tax benefits and other benefits,' Nigel explains, 'that could expose our son to enormous instability if something should happen to us."
"If you are going to promote family values," remarked Mark Mead, spokesman for the Log Cabin Republicans, "then you have to value all families."
Throughout history humans have devised systems of oppression to keep the other, the alien, the different at a distance. That is why the stranger is a central figure in many stories of faith. The stranger is the relational challenge of faith, demanding a risk into the unknown, calling for the courage to accept all of life, creating continuous possibilities for deepening our love and understanding of life.
Unitarian Universalism promotes an atmosphere where minds are free and the issues of our lives and times are examined openly. We are open to changing our minds and hearts as we discover new knowledge given by the experiences of others. We learn justice and compassion by living our acceptance of 'the other'. No one person or system has all the answers to the intricacies of this diverse, mysterious and glorious existence.
Around the issue of gay marriage, there are people who do claim they have the answer, in fact, they claim a direct pipeline to God. We can be a dangerous species, we humans. We allow fear to rule our lives and justify vicious, mindless interchange. We ignore our power of relationship to heal. One of the worst distortions created by fear is the "I know what God thinks" psychosis. When in the grips of that particular derangement, we are very dangerous indeed. Monsters emerge. When that kind of expression emerges, there is no recourse but to remove oneself from danger and seek with kindness another with ears that will hear and eyes that will see.
Fear of difference and of change can be healed through love: fierce, honest, unabashed, enduring love. It will not be easy, nor fast. But person by person, opening one's heart to understand and embrace another strips away the false sense of danger and brings a person closer to embracing all life. We must start with who we know and share our stories, so that step by step, familiarity leads to acceptance. Eventually, as fear of difference unravels, a greater sense of the larger truth will be known in community. We are all of God or the Unity of Being, we each have the potential of the universe within us. There is an affirmation within that will help us evolve and embrace all of life.
And there are times when a voice of witness or claim of solidarity is important to encourage those who may feel alone, to catch the attention of those who wonder or want to know more, to find comfort in others who gather to agree and to learn the great power of our being that heartfelt witness claims beauty, truth and wisdom.
I see the paradigm shifting. I see some difficult times ahead. I see great shouts of joy ahead. I honor the courage of those who speak aloud their truth and I pray I will be open to that which is of the highest good. It is in that place that I can be calm and clear and persistent in claiming equal rights for my gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender brothers and sisters.
May the work continue. Blessings be. Amen
Copyright © 2004 Lisa G. Ward. All Rights Reserved.