For Love’s Sake
a sermon by Alan Taylor
delivered October 8, 2000 at the
Woodinville Unitarian Universalist Church
“What is marriage for? Is marriage a worthy or useful goal—or a way forcing people to squeeze their lives and dreams into too-small boxes?” In What Is Marriage For? EJ Graff says she asked these questions as she found herself in a committed relationship with another woman. Graff wondered how similar her ceremony and situation within a commitment to a lifelong partnership was to a wedding and marriage. So she researched the history of the institution of marriage and wrote the book, What Is Marriage For? What she found encouraged her—the social mores around marriage have been remarkably fluid and have changed drastically over the last 250 years. She concludes that it won’t be long before the norms of marriage evolve to publicly recognize same-sex unions as legal marriages.
Today I want to explore some of those changing mores, reflect on why people of the same sex are seeking wedding ceremonies, explore how their foundation of love is similar to any other couples, including what it means to raise a family, and finally express my hopes for the institution of marriage.
The laws that surround the institution of marriage have a complex past, as different times and peoples have had different answers about the purpose of marriage. 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 read, “In law husband and wife are one person, and the husband is that person.” This meant that a wife could own no personal property, make no personal contracts, and bring no lawsuits.
Before 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 contraceptive attempts “degrades to bestiality the true feelings of manhood and the holy state of matrimony.” And the following year, the state of Connecticut passed a law prohibiting the use of contraception.
Marriage between people of different races 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 race.
Marriage has often been considered a vow unbreakable except in the most extraordinary of circumstances. The debate on divorce split the country during the nineteenth century. In the northeast, only sexual infidelity or abuse was grounds for divorce, out on the frontier, such as in Indiana, men could visit, establish residency, file for divorce, and return legally divorced before their wives knew what had happened. Once women could get an education and make a living, they were free to refuse someone they’d discover to be a tyrant. And sociologists attribute this economic reality as the greatest reason for the 19th and 20th century skyrocketing divorce rates.
Views on marriage have changed drastically. Western marriage today is a home for the heart: entering, furnishing, and exiting that home is looked upon as your business alone.
Given earlier views of marriage, one could easily wonder with Graff, Is marriage a worthy or useful goal—or a way forcing people to squeeze their lives and dreams into too-small boxes? She concludes that, “Today’s marriage… is justified by the happiness of the pair. 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.”
The rhetoric against same-sex marriage is as 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 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 nearly two years ago made 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 George Bush learned after visiting Bob Jones University. And there are some people opposed to divorce, such as orthodox you name it. All of these people seek to control the behavior of others, for the sake of the social order. And there will always be people who oppose same-sex marriage.
Some thoughtful people call for domestic partner policies, thereby giving same-sex partners some benefits without changing the definition of marriage to be exclusively heterosexual. I respect the various positions on this topic. Let me now share with you my experience and reflections.
A friend of mine from San Francisco called me about a year 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 hadn’t ever officiated at a ceremony of union; indeed, I hadn’t even attended one. They came to a service here to check me out and then talked with me afterward. I worried, as I talked with them, that there would be some expectation for a ceremony of union of which I was unaware. I assumed that they would want a highly unconventional ceremony, and I feared that I would simply be a figurehead, given a script that I may or may 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 frequented 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.
I guess they liked the sermon, for Cara and Heather made an appointment to come meet 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, and by 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 has readied them for the beauty they found with one another as they longed to make a lifelong commitment without any shadow of a doubt. 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 would want a highly non-conventional ceremony that would 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. Indeed, Carter Heyward from whom I quoted before the silent meditation, a lesbian Episcopal priest speaks truth to my ears as she equates love of all kinds with developing 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. I don’t know about you, but I tend to see what I hate about myself in others. Relationships are great for this. It is a spiritual triumph to own up to one’s own shortcomings. It is only then, 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 acting to increase the personal or spiritual growth of another or oneself. 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.
It’s hard for me to not be perfect. I suspect that is why I have staved off a committed relationship. Although a few people tell me I’d make a great dad, I worry about all the neuroses my kid would have to endure! But who doesn’t have their own baggage? Besides, parenting is also about growing up and learning how to love more fully, even in the face of baby screams and diapers or teenage tantrums and non-compliance.
Once children are in the picture, a partnership becomes all the more sacred. The raising of healthy children requires considerable self-sacrifice and teamwork on the part of the parents. Judith Wallerstein, the nation’s leading researcher of the effects of divorce on children, has found a clear pattern: children who live in families that go through a divorce generally suffer a great deal of emotional trauma, not only at the time of breakup but well into adulthood when they are developing their own relationships. In her landmark 25 year study, The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce, she also discovered that the same children when grown up view the world differently from those peers raised by parents who had marital difficulties but stayed together.
Some of the most difficult children to raise are those that go through multiple placements in foster care. It takes an enormous amount of commitment to adopt a severely emotionally disturbed child. The vast majority of foster parents don’t want this kind of child on their hands. I know five different gay couples who have done just that. In part, because the state wouldn’t have allowed them to adopt if there were other places they could have gone; however the need for placements is so great, that same-sex partners have been one avenue for some of these children. Cantor David Serkin-Poole, the same David who participated in my ordination, with his partner, Michael adopted three severely emotionally disturbed children eleven years ago. One of the children had been in fourteen different foster placements. The children are all teenagers now. And David and Michael are one of countless gay couples who are demonstrating a foundation of love that supports what otherwise would be unwanted children. When they had their commitment ceremony, they decided to hyphenate their last names, thus their name Serkin-Poole.
A major argument against same-sex couples adopting children assumes that same-sex couples are more likely to split up than heterosexual couples. Although I don’t have the data to prove it, I suspect that those same-sex couples that sought to mark their union with a ceremony are much more likely to stay together than a heterosexual couple—for the simple reason that it’s much more rare. Whereas it’s the thing to do for a heterosexual couple, celebrating a lifelong commitment will be done by a same-sex couple only with considerable reflection and intention.
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.
We are called every day to a conversion to humanity and find active ways to love. Love is a choice—not simply, or necessarily, a rational choice, but rather a willingness to be present to others without pretense or guile. May we remember that love is the choice to experience life as a member of the human family, a partner in the dance of life, rather than as an alien in the world or as a deity above the world, aloof and apart from human flesh. May each of us, single or partnered, seek this daily conversion to humanity.
Blessed be. Amen
Note: The following is an addendum offered in print to the congregation, parts of the sermon that got cut from what was shared in church, but without the sermon wouldn’t be complete!
Civil marriage allows couples to enjoy benefits that aren’t open to couples not legally married. According to EJ Graff, in What Is Marriage For?, the General Accounting Office of the United States issued a January 31, 1997 report listing 1,049 “federal laws in which benefits, rights, and privileges are contingent on marital status.”
Marriage laws and rules weave a much more delicate and invisible web than most of us know. “Married” is a shorthand taken seriously by banks, insurers, courts, employers, schools, hospitals, cemeteries, rental car companies, frequent flyer programs, and more. I won’t go into the list of financial entanglements that go along with marriage, allowing couples to avoid taxes on the passing of property. But the human side of a couple can be disrupted if they are not “married.” For example, if you are married, your spouse is the one who can take care of you.
Most people think that these abilities can be acquired by certain pieces of paper. It’s not so simple. According to EJ Graff, “the difference between powers of attorney—or domestic partnership, for that matter—and marriage is the difference between a skateboard and a jet. A notarized healthcare proxy takes effect only if one of you becomes incapacitated. If I am in a domestic partnership and my partner remains conscious, the nurse or physician has no obligation to tell me anything. Further, these proxies can be overridden by disapproving hospitals or family members who insist they were signed under duress.”
You may be familiar with the case of Sharon Kowalski and Karen Thompson. After the two schoolteachers had shared their life and home for ten years, a terrible car accident left Kowalski paralyzed and unable to speak. Kowalski’s parents insisted they, not Thompson, had the legal right to control their daughter’s care. They parked Kowalski in a nursing home, and Thompson fought for seven years before she was able to bring her partner home.
As the reality of gay partnership is recognized by larger segments of the public, there is movement to expand the understanding of marriage. And there has been considerable backlash as well. Fearful of a favorable state Supreme Court rulings in Hawaii, Alaska and Vermont, the Federal government and more than 30 states in the United States have passed laws in the last four years banning the recognition of gay marriage. Favorable court rulings in Canada have moved that country along a path towards equal rights for gay couples few Canadians would have believed possible even five years ago. Battles over the rights of gay couples have erupted in countries throughout Europe, most recently in France where Conservatives fought a pitched but futile battle against the adoption of Contracts of Social Union (PACS) for unmarried straight and gay couples. In the United States, Vermont's adoption of civil union in April 2000 forever changed the nature of the national debate and demonstrated, in at least one part of the country, that the fight for equal recognition of gay relationships was entering a dramatic and exciting new phase.
On July 23rd, the day after I officiated at Heather and Cara’s wedding, the Seattle Times had as its lead editorial “Same-Sex Marriage: It’s Time to Say Yes.” Here is a portion:
The fundamental issue is not about religion or lifestyle, but about equal rights for all members of society. The harsh truth is that gay friends and family members, neighbors and co-workers are being discriminated against. A gay partner can be kept away from a seriously ill loved one. At the end of a long and loving same-sex relationship, a surviving partner has no community-property rights. When gay partners split up, neither has legal protection in property or child custody.
The lesson of Vermont is a compelling one, and brings the issue once again into the public arena for careful re-examination. On July 1, civil unions between same-sex partners became legal in Vermont, the first state to take this step. The legislature acted after the state Supreme Court ruled that gay couples were being unconstitutionally denied the benefits of marriage.
In Vermont today, same-sex partners who seek a civil union enjoy the same benefits and responsibilities as married heterosexual couples. That includes survivor benefits, taxes and medical decision-making. Also, if partners someday want to dissolve their union, they must go to family court as would any other divorcing couple. Federal benefits, such as Social Security and tax advantages or penalties, are not covered under the state law.
The great American project is to create a more equal society. We are not yet finished. In his opinion for the Vermont Supreme Court, Chief Justice Jeffrey Amestoy said the extension of benefits to gay and lesbian couples is "simply, when all is said and done, a recognition of our common humanity."
I close with the letter I sent to the editor:
As a member of the clergy, I applaud The Seattle Times lead editorial, "Same Sex Marriage: Its Time to Say Yes", Sunday July 23, 2000. I’ve been reflecting on the meaning of marriage as two women recently asked me to officiate at their wedding.
When I asked them why they wanted to marry even though they would receive no legal benefit or status, the responded: we want to pledge to each other our love and make a lifelong commitment in front of family, friends, and God.
True love, the kind that is solid enough to raise a family, is a rule of the heart, not the rule of the law. However a lifelong relationship is a daunting task for anyone without also having to fight for legal protection of property, health, and family.
I grieve that the state will not recognize their union as legal. It is a cruel reality that most public institutions in this country will not honor their deepest commitment. I believe that in the eyes of God their marital bond is worthy, beautiful, and sacred. I hope the day will soon arrive when the state shall honor and support their commitment as a legal marriage.