MARRIAGE EQUALITY
September 30 I was part of a panel that spoke at a forum about marriage equality in California. Here's the text of my speech.
DENYING MY ABILITY TO PERFORM MARRIAGES FOR SAME SEX COUPLES ON AN EQUAL BASIS WITH OPOSITE SEX COUPLES IS WRONG LEGALLY AND SPIRITUALLY.
When a couple asks me to officiate at their wedding the first thing I do with them is have a conversation about their plans for the wedding. We discuss the practical details of where and when. And I ask a lot of personal questions like how long they’ve been together, how they met, what made them fall in love. It’s not a quiz they have to pass in order for me to mary them. I don’t think that’s my place. If a couple comes to me professing and displaying genuine love, I’m eager to celebrate with them.
I think marriage is a good thing. I’m a fan. Marriage isn’t for everyone. There’s no shame in being single or in remaining single all your life if that’s your path. There’s no shame in divorce if a marriage that was right and good for a time turns out to no longer be right and good at a later time. But for those for whom a partner is found marriage can be a means to opening up the lives of the couple into fulfilling, satisfying, blessed places they could not reach alone. And when two people find their personal lives expanded in that way, others around them find their lives expanded as well.
During that initial conversation with a couple one question I always ask is, “Why do you want to get married?” Usually when I ask that question the couple smile shyly at each other and then turn to me and say something like, “We’re just so in love and we feel that marriage would make our commitment even stronger.”
Unfortunately that’s the wrong answer. As I point out to the couple, very little about a marriage is actually about strengthening their relationship. If all the goals they want to accomplish in marriage are about strengthening the bond they have between each other, then I’m still happy to perform the wedding, but I have to ask again, “Why get married?” Everything you want to pledge to each other you can pledge without having a wedding. And we know from divorce rates being what they are wedding vows don’t have any more magical staying power than promises made without a wedding.
A year ago I asked a couple why they wanted to get married and that couple answered, “We want the legal and financial benefits.” A refreshing, truthful response and actually a little more on the mark than the usual romantic answers I get. Here was an older couple that had already been together 11 years, and now that they were facing retirement and considering selling their house in California, they wanted to make sure that each of them would be recognized as the other’s legal spouse and eligible for the capital gains deduction on the property and medical insurance, and pension benefits, and social security, and visitation rights and so on that are only available in the United States to married couples.
That’s a good reason to be married. Not just for the practical reasons but because it actually points to the real, spiritual reason to marry.
The real reason for a wedding is that the wedding and the marriage that follows, takes the private relationship of two people in love and places it in a context that makes them a part of and accountable to something larger than themselves. That “something larger than themselves” has three aspects.
First there is the aspect of family. Two families are joined in a wedding, as well as two people. Two sets of friends are joined as well. That’s why we get married in public and invite our friends and family to witness. The friends and family participate in the wedding because they have a stake in the marriage. If the marriage succeeds they benefit. If the marriage fails the new family and friendship bonds they create that day will also be broken.
The second “something larger than themselves” (actually it’s the third thing but I’ll get back to the second in a minute) is God. The really real most important reason for a wedding is the covenant that is created between the two people and God, in which the couple pledges that they will use the power of their joy and love, magnified by their being together, to serve not merely their own purposes but to serve the joyful, loving universal purposes of God. It’s because of that spiritual promise that we hold weddings in holy places and invite clergy to officiate.
And then the final, “something larger than themselves” context for a wedding is the State, the State of California, and the United States. A wedding moves a couple from the private sphere of their own love and agreements to care for each other, and makes them legally responsible to care for each other. Marriage matters to the state. And this is why a legal wedding includes the signing of a marriage license. If the marriage succeeds the state benefits from having citizens who will take care of each other instead of relying on the resources of the state. And if the marriage fails the state will be involved in making sure that assets are divided fairly. If children become a part of the family, marriage means the state can hold the parents legally responsible for the care and upbringing of these future citizens.
When I officiate at a same sex wedding I can speak about only two of those three larger contexts. The joining of family and friends still apply. The pledge to larger holy purpose certainly applies. But with two men, or two women I can say nothing about the state, because the state doesn’t legally recognize the marriage. Grossly unfairly, the state does benefit from the marriage, because the pledge of two men or two women to care for each other and relieve the state of that burden is just as heartfelt as with the opposite sex couples I marry. But though the state receives the benefit of the same sex couple’s marriage it extends to them none of the support it gives to opposite sex couples.
What this means is that because same sex marriage is not recognized in the State of California or the United States I as a clergy person am forced to perform a different wedding service for some of the loving couples who ask me to marry them, then I can perform for other loving couples who ask me to marry them. This is religious discrimination in violation of the separation of church and state guaranteed by both the California and United States constitutions. That is reason enough to support marriage equality for both faith-based and legal reasons.
But finally, there is an even more fundamental spiritual reason for me to support marriage equality. This spiritual reason goes to the very root of my faith.
My faith is founded on two very simple yet very broad and profound theological principles. One of these principles is connection, the spiritual truth that every particle of existence is intimately connected to every other particle and that any human action that attempts to separate existence into different groups and treat the groups differently is fundamentally spiritually flawed. It’s not just that separate but equally is never really equal, it’s that imposing separation, whether equal or not, is a violation of the spiritual nature of the universe.
And the second fundamental spiritual principle for me is freedom. Freedom is the spiritual principle that holds that every particle of existence was created with its own unique nature and its own unique purpose to fulfill in the ongoing co-creation of the universe moving inevitably toward God’s holy ends. Any human action that blocks any individual from freely expressing their true deep nature, and thus prevents that individual from fulfilling the unique purpose they were created to fulfill, and that only they can fulfill, thwarts our universal movement toward God’s holy ends. If we don’t encourage every voice to sing its song, every set of legs to walk their path, every heart to love whom it longs to love, if we don’t let every bowed head lift up to share the light, then we can not get where God urges us to go, and we have failed in our religious task.
As a person of faith my heart sinks at every human action that tends to ignore the spiritual truths of our fundamental connection to all that exists, and our fundamental need to let the flower God has planted in each of us bloom. My heart sinks at the numerous instances in our world today of injustice, of oppression, of hatred, of violence. And my heart sinks when two women or two men eager to make actual the spiritual connection they feel, eager to freely express their deep true natures, approach the court house anywhere in the State of California or nearly anywhere in the United States, hoping to apply for a license to wed, and the answer from the state of which I too am a citizen is an unholy, “No."
|
