What is it to me that homosexuals have or do not have the right to marry? When most marriages only have a 50-50 chance of surviving – a number driven up by the 75% failure rate of black marriages, why would I want to deny anyone else the chance to get it right?
I’m answering this question personally, because Keith Olbermann’s “Special Comment” was addressed personally, and to not take personal ownership of the issue seems a cop out, unfair, and unjust to those who are sincerely asking. Here is his special comment:
I take it Mr. Olbermann is not a religious man. If he were, he could not use some of the words he used. A religious person doesn’t start from the point of view of “no matter what the text says, my heart says different.” A religious person agonizes over that conflict, and tries to find a way to live within the constraints given. A religious person recognizes in him or herself any number of conflicts – of ways that they fall short of the text they strive to follow. A religious person turns continually to the God of their understanding for both forgiveness for their shortcomings, and understanding of why some things are required of them. A religious person turns often to God and says “that seems capricious… why did that have to happen?” And a religious person considers that ongoing struggle, argument, fight, and reconciliation – to be the substance of faith.
Because that is the way of religious life, the appeal to conscience is destined to fail. Every time someone accuses a religious person of hypocrisy, or sneers at a religion just because it says something contrary to what other people believe, they are reinforcing the behavior they hope to change. Those who are faithful expect the sneers, and those who are faithful expect the agony. Those who are faithful can honestly look at what is hypocritical in themselves, and try to make good – but making good doesn’t come by dropping their faith – it comes by clinging more to it. Whenever you ask me, “How can a loving God reject the love of homosexuals?” I ask God. (In fact,I don’t believe that God rejects the love of homosexuals – that’s a strawman argument. But I’m answering as if I did.) I don’t decide, unilaterally, that God is wrong, and I am right, or that the God of my understanding is wrong and the God of someone else’s understanding is right. That way of thinking – of changing what we believe when it is no longer convenient to believe it – is the fundamental definition of hypocrisy.
My understanding of homosexuality has evolved. I don’t believe homosexuality is a symptom of sin. I don’t hate homosexuals. And I don’t personally believe that homosexuals getting married have anything to do with me, nor do I believe it affects me in any way. But – if you ask me should they do it, I’m still likely to say “No.” I will say it because I’ve belonged, in my lifetime, to three different religions, none of which embraced gay marriage.
I THINK I would have voted “No” on Proposition 8, had that task fallen to me. I think I would have, because the supreme court already said that the right existed. But I’m not judging those who voted “yes” because I was not in their climate – I was not subject to the argument day and night – I’m not sure if everyone would automatically understand their duty to vote on the issue as a separation of church and state issue – their obligation to reserve their personal judgment in favor of voting for a civil law.
So – what does this mean? Ultimately, it means we need to find a way to articulate, loudly, clearly, that we are talking about a civil issue. We need to find ministers and other religious leaders who can authoritatively say “this is a separation of church and state” issue. We need to vote on what our conscience CAN vote on.
Having said that… I note that the landmark changes to people’s fundamental understanding of the law required intervention by the Supreme Court, and a war. Blacks did not get the right to marry, nor the right to intermarry by plebiscite. Perhaps there is something to be learned here. I would sign on for a fight all the way to the Supreme Court to make civil unions the law of the land, and marriage the domain of religious institutions to administer as they will. I would join on such a fight, wholeheartedly.
QT
