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!