Yes, yes, I know … there shouldn’t be a question or headline about “gay marriage” in the first place (marriage is marriage, after all), but it’s common vernacular today to isolate who we want to discriminate against. I will check yes if, in fact, it ever comes to a vote of the populous to settle whether or not homosexual people should have the legal right to marry. I’ll be happy when marriage is legalized between consenting adults once and for all, through an amendment to the Constitution of the United States if necessary. And if you strongly object to legalizing “marriage” on religious grounds, can we at least agree to validate a “civil union” to get this long overdue train out of the station?
While we’re on the subject of defining marriage, let me add that plural marriage between consenting adults doesn’t offend me, either. My brother had two “sister wives,” and although I considered Kurt’s second involvement to be the dumbest thing he ever did, I defended his (pagan) right to do it. His lifestyle was his business. And between his “I do” legal marriage, the subsequent broom jumping, and the later “No wait, I guess I don’t” un-entanglements, Kurt bringing two wives to family events didn’t diminish, demean, or otherwise threaten the sanctity of my monogamous lifestyle and marriage. If anything, it made it more appealing.
While I don’t speak for any church doctrine in any capacity (but embrace my church’s official “open mind, open hearts, open doors” doctrine), you may be surprised to know that it is because I am a person of faith that I support the entitlement of gay couples to marry in every single sense of the word.
This is my non-conflicted, truest value proposition: As a Christian, I may be the only bible that some people ever read. Therefore, I try to keep myself open to the lessons taught in the New Testament, and I also encourage an openly gay family member, for example, to hold strong to her faith that someday her 25-year relationship with her partner will be as legally valid as the latest Kardashian vow.
Perhaps Martin Luther’s widest gulf with the Catholic faith, after the Reformation, was his view that marriage belonged to the realm of government. There are many ways to define or view marriage, but God’s intentions (as I interpret based on the wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption offered through Jesus Christ) rests on a single and cornerstone instruction: Love one another. I’ve studied the Bible since childhood, invested a year in formal adult Bible study, and I still find fresh revelation and direction when I open the pages. However, this is the constant: God (or the universal creative energy, if you prefer) Is Love.
I know people who open a Bible not in praise or wonder, but only to quickly reference the index as though it were Cliffs Notes for a high school debate class. These folks then stab at Holy Words with a highlighter, those convenient little phrases that, out of context, could support either a television evangelist’s revelation or political hate speech.
And, by the way, as Jesus said on the topic of homosexuality: … That’s right, silence. He preached on the morality of divorce, not homosexuality. Unless you want to infer that …, which presumes that …, which hints at …, which infers that …, which could mean … as proof. To which I answer, “Uh-uh.” Continued …
Abraham Lincoln, like Christ, had a tremendous talent for presenting an entire sermon in a short parable or single-sentence directive. My favorite quote of his is this: “My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.”
Of course, Lincoln wrote with regard to slavery. One hundred years after the bloody Civil War ended, it still was illegal for black couples to marry one another (let alone a white person) in 16 U.S. states. That was in 1966. Blacks fought valiantly shoulder to shoulder with whites in the Civil War, in part to gain entry into the legal privileges and protections afforded whites, including marriage and land ownership. Yet it took 100 years more for us lighter-skinned folks to acknowledge, as a ruling majority society, that the institution of marriage would not be destroyed from within if blacks were allowed the same legal protections, church sanctification, and respect.
In my mind, the God-inspired “Word” is an intricate, bold (yet delicate), intertwined body of work that, when seen from afar, spells out the bloodied and blessed message: “Love Others as I Have Loved You.” How does this human debate over the institution of marriage – this mosaic of human hope and suffering, inclusion and exclusion – look from afar? Say … from the distance of heaven?
Seven billion people … and yet, sometimes, so little humanity it seems. Tick tock, tick tock. Two thousand years and counting.
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