Sermon by Rev. Alan Taylor
Preached at Unity Temple Unitarian Universalist Congregation
October 12, 2003
Reading 1:
I Corinthians 13:1-8,13
If I speak in tongues of
mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging
cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all
knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have
love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my
body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient;
love is kind. Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not
insist on its own way: it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in
wrongdoing, but rejoices in truth. Love bears all things, believes all things,
hopes all things, endures all things. And now faith, hope, and love abide, and
the greatest of these is love.
Reading 2:
From Rev. Fred Small, “Why Gay Marriage Matters”
Sharon Kowalski and Karen
Thompson were in love. Like many lovers, they laughed and argued and cried with
each other. As the years deepened their love, they bought a home together in
Minnesota. They exchanged rings symbolizing their lifelong commitment. On
November 13, 1983, a drunk driver smashed into Sharon’s car. When Karen got to
the hospital, they refused to let her see Sharon or even to give her
information. She wasn’t family. She was just “a friend.” Karen waited for hours
in anguish not knowing if Sharon was alive or dead. Finally, a priest told Karen
that Sharon had suffered a serious brain injury. She couldn’t walk. She could
barely speak. She would need constant care. But their nightmare was only
beginning. Sharon had never come out to her parents. When they questioned the
attention paid by this “friend” of their daughter’s, Karen finally had to
explain that she was Sharon’s lover. Her parents exploded. That was impossible.
It was insane. It was disgusting. Although Sharon was already making progress
under Karen’s devoted care, her parents moved her to a poorly equipped nursing
home three hundred miles away and forbade all visits. Karen spent nine years and
over $300,000 in legal costs to win the right to visit, care for, and finally
bring home the woman she loved. In 1992, convinced that Karen had demonstrated
greater dedication to Sharon’s rehabilitation than her own parents, a judge
granted custody of Sharon Kowalski to Karen Thompson.
Sermon:
Last year, my dear friend
David and his partner Michael celebrated their twentieth anniversary of
marriage. They knew that twenty-one years ago, the state wouldn’t acknowledge
their commitment, but they wanted others to, so they changed their names. David
Serkin and Michael Poole became David and Michael Serkin-Poole.
This past January, David was one of three clergy that
participated in the Seattle-area blessing ceremony of my wedding to Angie. He is
a cantor at a Jewish temple. When he went to work at the temple, almost no one
had a problem that he was gay, that his partner is also a man. Then fourteen
years ago, David and Michael wanted to adopt a child. The state adoption agency
told them no, but David and Michael knew they had a lot of love to offer the
world, so they persisted. Finally the adoption agency told them that there was a
child no one else wanted. This young girl was hard to handle and fourteen other
families already tried to keep her but decided they didn’t want her. David and
Michael gladly took in this child. And then they adopted two other children in
similar circumstances.
Many families at his Jewish temple felt it wasn’t okay for
their cantor, a gay man, to raise a child. The temple leadership stood by David
and Michael, even though their congregation lost a significant amount of their
membership. Today, Temple B’Nai Torah is a thriving congregation, and David and
Michael’s first child has graduated from high school while the other two are
well on their way. David and Michael are two of the most loving people I know,
as well as forerunners among the gay adoption movement.
Fear and ignorance are rampant in our culture, fueling
hatred and resistance to allowing gay people to marry, raise children, hold
religious office. Many religious institutions in the United States are being
split over just these issues. The most recent manifestation is the controversy
over the Episcopal Church’s making Gene Robinson of New Hampshire its first
openly gay bishop. Without a doubt a gay bishop comfortable with his sexuality
will gladly sanctify same-sex unions. A Los Angeles Times editorial responded
thus: “The actions taken by the New Hampshire Episcopalians are an affront to
Christians everywhere. I am just thankful that the church’s founder, Henry VIII,
and his wife Catherine of Aragon, his wife Anne Boleyn, his wife Jane Seymour,
his wife Anne of Cleves, his wife Katherine Howard, and his wife Catherine Parr
are no longer here to suffer through this assault on our ‘traditional Christian
marriage.’”
I chose to speak on the issue of gay marriage today,
because yesterday was National Coming Out Day, and I believe it is our religious
imperative to express solidarity with our gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and
transgender brothers and sisters.
My address today is especially timely as our president has
officially recognized this week beginning today to be the Defense of Marriage
Week. Our president has declared, “marriage is only between a man and a woman
and this needs to be legally codified.” The pope mirrored this statement,
adding, “Legal recognition of homosexual unions…would
mean not only the approval of deviant behavior ... but would also obscure basic
values which belong to the common inheritance of humanity.” Significant battle
lines have formed over whether legalizing same-sex marriage. The president and
the pope may think they are going on the offensive, but their language and
stances are clearly on the defensive, as genuine religious truth emerges among
more and more people who recognize the authenticity of gay love.
It amazes me how religious leaders can criticize the
so-called gay life style for promiscuity and, at the same time, refuse to give
blessing to those gays and lesbians who want to enter into committed monogamous
relationships
When EJ Graff and her partner celebrated their life
commitment, she wondered how her wedding ceremony and situation was similar or
different from traditional “marriage.” She wondered, “What is marriage for? Is
marriage a worthy or useful goal? Or is it a way of forcing people to squeeze
their lives and dreams into too-small boxes?” Her questioning led her to
research the history of the institution of marriage and wrote the book, What
Is Marriage For?, published by Beacon Press.
Graff discovered that the social mores around marriage over
the last 250 years have been remarkably fluid. The answer to the question, “What
is marriage for?” has changed drastically over time. In the 1700s and 1800s,
many laws extended the biblical idea that a husband and wife become “one flesh.”
In British Law, a 1765 statement by Lord Blackstone reads, “In law husband and
wife are one person, and the husband is that person.” That meant that a wife
could own no personal property, make no personal contracts, and bring no
lawsuits.
Prior to the 20th century, contraception was
widely viewed as immoral, especially within the institution of marriage. Any
attempt to block pregnancy was considered punishable by law. Medieval
theologians called the practice, “the crime against nature.” The 1876 book,
Conjugal Sins, insisted that an attempt at contraception “degrades to
bestiality the true feelings of manhood and the holy state of matrimony.”
As for marriage between people of different races, this was
against the law in the United States well into the 20th century. It
was not until 1967 that the United States Supreme Court declared that all
Americans are free to marry, regardless of the race of their partner.
Marriage for most of history has been considered a vow
unbreakable except in the most extraordinary of circumstances. In the nineteenth
century, the debate on divorce split the country. In many states, only sexual
infidelity or abuse was grounds for divorce. However, out on the frontier, such
as in Indiana and Illinois, men could visit, establish residency, file for
divorce, and return legally divorced before their wives knew what had happened.
The institution of marriage changed remarkably when women were able to get an
education and support themselves. They were then free to refuse someone they’d
discovered to be a tyrant. Sociologists attribute this economic reality as the
greatest reason for the skyrocketing divorce rates in the late 19th
century which continued to increase through the 20th century.
Views on marriage have changed drastically as the changes
in laws attest. Today, marriage, at least in the west, could be described as
fundamentally a home for the heart. Entering, furnishing, and exiting that home
are looked upon as your business alone. EJ Graff concludes, “When combined with
the West’s root commitment to officially treating the sexes as equal, that
marriage philosophy makes it possible—no, necessary—to recognize the marriages
of two people of one sex.” I agree with Graff conclusion that it is only a
matter of time before our cultural norms around marriage evolve to include
same-sex couples. What we as religious liberals need to do is make sure same-sex
couples in committed relationships are accorded rights and privileges as
heterosexual partnerships.
The rhetoric against same-sex marriage is today as stubborn
and vitriolic as in the past when former ideas of marriage were challenged. From
Graff’s research: “Allowing same-sex marriage would be like allowing married
women to own property, ‘virtually destroying the moral and social efficacy of
the marriage institution.’ Or it would be like legalizing contraception, which
‘is not what the God of nature and grace, in His Divine wisdom ordained marriage
to be; but the lustful indulgence of man and woman…’ Or it would be like
recognizing marriage between the races, a concept so ‘revolting disgraceful, and
almost bestial’… Or it would be like making wives the legal equals of their
husbands a proposal that ‘criticizes the Bible…degrading the holy bonds of
matrimony into a mere civil contract…striking at the root of those divinely
ordained principles upon which is built the superstructure of society.’ Or it
would be like allowing divorce, ‘tantamount to polygamy,’ thereby throwing ‘the
whole community…into a general prostitution,’ making us all ‘loathsome,
abandoned wretches, and the offspring of Sodom and Gomorrah.’”
Do some of these arguments of generations past sound
familiar? There are still some people who oppose contraception, namely the
Catholic church. There are still some people who claim that wives belong beside
their husband’s heel rather than his side, such as the Southern Baptists who a
few years ago proclaimed it church law that a woman is expected to graciously
submit to her husband. There are still some people opposed to bi-racial
marriage, as the leaders of Bob Jones University. And there will always be
people who oppose same-sex marriage.
A friend of mine from San Francisco called me four years ago, hoping I would
talk with her lesbian friends who were looking for a minister to conduct their
wedding. I was delighted but also a little nervous. I wondered if there would be
some expectation for a ceremony of union of which I was unaware. Maybe they
would want something highly unconventional. Might I be a figurehead, given a
script that I might not agree with?
Now I have many gay and lesbian friends and colleagues. Two-thirds of the
participants at my ordination are homosexual. I have learned the best dancing is
at gay bars. Between an AIDS ministry training in San Francisco, riding in the
California AIDS Ride, doing fundraising and advocacy work on behalf of the San
Francisco AIDS Project, and connecting with the Worcester AIDS community through
interfaith work, I consider myself comfortable with gay and lesbian people. And
here I was, confronted with two women who wanted a minister to marry them, and I
had difficulty not making assumptions about what they would want.
When Cara and Heather met with me, I was deeply touched by the depth of their
reflection about being in relationship, about the pain they both have worked
through in their own lives. They shared with me the love of God they both have
developed through their journeys. The three of us were in tears by the end of
the meeting, tears shed for the struggle they have each known which had readied
them for the beauty they found with one another as they longed to make a
lifelong commitment. When they left my office, I knew their ceremony would be a
milestone in my ministerial career. And I realized that until then, I suffered
from a prejudice that same-sex couples might want to remove any semblance of
solemnity to the occasion. Instead, what these two women did for me, was distill
the essence of why two people would want to get married, regardless whether
their marriage would be legal under the eyes of the law.
This was not the first time I found myself identifying with lesbian women
about love and relationships. Even in college, I was intrigued by how a number
of lesbian women worked at freeing themselves of the social expectations that
most women adhere to. There was an honesty, a clarity, that I found refreshing.
Now I don’t want to romanticize the lesbian experience, but I have witnessed a
longing for wholeness and autonomy within many relationships that serves to
highlight the equality of the two partners. I have learned from lesbian and gay
people about mutually empowering relationships.
Love is hard work. There is a myth prevalent in our culture that we should be
able to fall in love with someone and then live happily ever after. One of the
greatest mistakes that young lovers make, and young lovers can include folks who
are past middle aged, is that a lifelong partnership should be easy, light, and
joyful the vast majority of the time.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh says looking back on her life in Dearly Beloved,
“The best marriages, like the best lives, were both happy and unhappy. There was
even a kind of necessary tension, a certain tautness between the partners that
gave the marriage strength, like the tautness of a full sail. You went forward
on it.” Madeleine L’Engle goes so far to say, “I suspect that in every good
marriage there are times when love seems to be over.”
Real love is more than the magic spell of romantic love that inevitably wears
off. Anybody that gets married will in time be confronted with their beloved who
is as confused, limited, and full of weakness as each and every one of us. It is
a spiritual triumph to own up to one’s own shortcomings. It is only then, as I
mentioned last week that, when you look on another’s humanity through the lens
of your own, that the opportunity of truly loving reveals itself. For real love
is more a verb than a noun. It is much more an action than a feeling. Love takes
discipline. Just like learning how to play a musical instrument or learning a
foreign language, one must practice, practice, practice! And of course, there’s
always plenty of mistakes to learn from.
As a clergy person who believes in love and in the integrity of the
individual conscience, I understand marriage as a commitment to live up to the
rigorous demands of love, to care for each other as best as you humanly can, and
to pledge yourselves to making a lifelong partnership.
Whether or not we are in a partnership, to grow in love is our religious
imperative. May each of us, single or partnered, seek this daily conversion to
humanity.
Blessed be.
Amen.
© Copyright 2003 Alan C.
Taylor, All Rights Reserved.
