A
few weeks ago at USC, I attended a lecture at USC given by Monte Neil Stewart,
Utah lawyer and president of the Marriage Law Foundation. Mr
Stewart argued that same-sex marriage, which he calls “genderless
marriage”, was part of a plan to destroy the institution of marriage
altogether. He said it would water down the meaning of marriage to the
point where it would lose its meaning completely. His argument hinged
on the idea that genderless marriage would eliminate the social value
of marriage as the structure in which children are raised.
Based on what was said in the question and answer session that followed, it appeared to me that all of the 50 attendees, except myself, were voting for Prop 8, the California ballot initiative that would eliminate the new-found right of same-sex couples to marry in this state. The proposition inserted this unprecedented elimination of a civil right into the state’s constitution.
I spoke up and said “I am a Protestant pastor who has counseled and performed ceremonies for hundreds of loving, deeply committed couples, heterosexual and homosexual. I am a man married to a woman, and my wife and I feel no threat whatsoever to our marriage from the fact that same-sex couples can marry. In fact, we feel that our marriage is ennobled by our knowing that gay and lesbian couples can marry. I pastored a church which had a gay couple raising two happy, well-adjusted children who love their same-sex parents as dearly as other children love their heterosexual parents. Your argument that same-sex marriage eliminates the social value of marriage as the institution in which children are raised is hard to understand, when so many heterosexual couples marry late in life with no intention of having kids. I’ve performed such marriages many times and find these couples to be no less invested in the concept of marriage than younger couples who do plan to have children. People seem as eager to be married, and as clear about it as a social value, as ever – despite the fact that there are so many divorces and so many different forms of family life.”
I got no response from Mr Stewart to my comments except for a pained expression on his face. He then said that it upset him that liberal clergy would support same-sex marriage, because it was a threat to religious liberty. He invoked the specter of the loss of tax-exempt status for church organizations if they didn’t go along with gay marriage. I responded by saying that no church would ever be forced to perform a same-sex marriage, so I didn’t understand how this could be a problem. (There might be a challenge for churches which don’t want to hire or provide marital benefits for a person in a same-sex marriage, but in effect this existed before same-sex marriage was legal in California, due to other rules about non-discrimination and provision of benefits. And it’s hard to feel too badly for folks who are frustrated in their attempt to deny rights and benefits to any class of people.)
Same-sex marriage is a reality today, it will be a reality when Proposition 8 goes into effect, and it will be a reality whether or not the state ever recognizes it as a legal status. I am scheduled to perform a same-sex service for a loving lesbian couple in the next few months, and that ceremony will happen no matter how this proposition plays out in the courts. The young people of California overwhelmingly voted against Proposition 8. That means that in 20 years, this issue will be history, and people will wonder how same-sex marriage was ever a matter of debate.
Meanwhile, to advance that day, the progressive pastors and rabbis and imams of California will continue to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies, recognizing that such unions deserve the celebration and support of faith communities. Over time, as more and more of these ceremonies are performed, same-sex marriage is going to become a normal, publicly-recognized reality. And then the law will change to reflect it. This is an example of civil initiative: the establishment of law by the exercise of a natural right, even if it isn’t yet codified by government. Civil initiative is a concept I first discovered in the writings of Jim Corbett, the co-founder of the Sanctuary Movement in the 1980’s. Corbett, an Arizona cowboy, Quaker, and activist, helped Central American refugees enter into the US to escape persecution and death during the civil wars of that era. When the movement started, these refugees were deported back to their war-torn countries. Beginning with his efforts, a nationwide effort to protect the refugees in churches and synagogues helped convince the government to change the asylum rules to enable the Central Americans to get legal protection in the US. Corbett saw his work not as civil disobedience, but rather as following the law that would one day emerge into full recognition as a consequence of its exercise:
“Civil initiative maintains and extends the rule of law – unlike civil disobedience, which breaks it, and civil obedience, which lets the government break it. The heart of a societal order guided by the rule of law is the principle that the nonviolent protection of basic rights is never illegal. These basic rights and their matching obligations constitute standards of just conduct that government counter-enforcement is unable to nullify, short of destroying the societal order itself. While openly submitting to the trials and penalties imposed by government, the free community refuses to be coerced into collaborating with violations of the law (that is, of right). Rather, it exercises its rights and protects the violated. This is how liberty grows and free societies form.” (Goatwalking by Jim Corbett, Viking Press, 1991, p 104)
As the Central Americans, with faith communities at their sides, exercised their fundamental right to asylum until it became recognized as the law of the land, so will same-sex couples exercise their right to marry, with faith communities by their sides, until Proposition 8 is repealed!
