Time will prove the Episcopal Church’s moves toward ful acceptance of and support for GBLT (Gay, Bi-sexual, Lesbian, Transgendered) people prophetic and in accordance with God's will. The Episcopal Church needs to act more boldly, affirming the full inclusion of GLBT within the life of the Church, the equal suitability of GLBT persons with heterosexuals for ordination, and developing rites for blessing same-sex marriages. Standing for truth and justice is more important than pointless debates with Anglican conservatives elsewhere who have already decided the Episcopal Church is apostate. Similarly, the stance of Churches like the Southern Baptists and the Latter Day Saints (Mormons) who steadfastly oppose granting equal civil rights to GLBT people will prove blatantly unfaithful even as that stance is already experienced as harshly unloving.
Granting civil rights to others, such as the right to marry, costs other citizens, literally and metaphorically, nothing. Legalizing same sex marriage, for example, in no way diminishes or alters heterosexual marriage. Indeed, legalizing same sex marriage actually promotes respect for marriage as an institution because it encourages couples to commit not only to living together but also to merging two lives. From a Christian perspective, this means two become one flesh in terms of physical intimacy, emotional intimacy, fidelity, mutual destiny, financial affairs, etc. Each person becomes responsible for self and for the other, modeling the healthy mutual interdependence of people with God. Establishing marriage as a civil right for all discourages promiscuity, exploitation, and other genuinely unhealthy and therefore unchristian lifestyles and behaviors.
The California Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of a voter referendum that amended the California State Constitution to prohibit same sex marriage. I appreciate the rule of law. I appreciate living in a democracy. The Court’s ruling simply means that proponents of same sex marriage need to go back to the trenches and do the hard political work of making more converts to their cause.
The Court’s ruling is not a matter of life and death. Therefore, this ruling should not incite talk of revolution. The amendment to the California Constitution is an issue of human dignity and worth that demands people of good conscience take a stand, declare their unwavering support for equal civil rights for all people, and get involved in changing the California Constitution.
Seeking the quickest path to remedy injustice is not always the best course of action. Many pundits suspect that had the U.S. Supreme Court not legalized abortion in its landmark decision, Roe v. Wade, the legislative processes in the fifty states would have all legalized abortion within the next decade. Had that happened, the U.S. is unlikely to have experienced ongoing polarization over abortion, something unique to this country. Perhaps that controversy’s most significant fuse was that the courts rather than the legislatures legalized abortion. Consequently, abortion fifty years later remains at risk of once against being banned instead of accepted as a matter of course.
That process sharply contrasts with the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Civil Rights for people of color were centuries overdue. The promise of the Civil War as a turning point in the tragic story of this injustice never reached fruition. The progress of the 1960s in small measure resulted from some court decisions; in large measure the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s transformed America because hundreds of thousands of people, led by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and others engaged the political process demanding equal justice. Laws were passed. Lives were changed. Justice became more of a reality and less of an empty promise. Today, only a few fringe elements want to return to a segregated, de facto apartheid society. Now the debates are over the best way forward, how to move closer to full justice for all, rather than whether we as a nation should attempt to turn the clock back and rescind the significant strides made toward justice for all.
The central battleground has shifted to civil rights for GLBT persons (also for immigrants and others), a cause in many quarters no more popular than civil rights for persons of color was fifty years ago. “Lynchings” occur – not literally, but when miscreants or a mob kill, injure, or terrorize a GLBT person or one of their supporters. Legislation pending in Congress would make hate crimes illegal. People have, and should have, a constitutional right to express any view. Expressing opinions and promoting hate, however, are two different matters. Individually and collectively the time for change is now.
1 comments:
It must be noted that the alacrity of the strides made in the gay civil rights movements can only be explained by the exercising of the " memory muscles" of the previous struggles against apartheid in the US.
I agree that the decision of the California Supreme Court did little to abrogate the substantive content of rights it recognized in its earlier decision, seemingly to reduce Proposition 8 to one of semantics. But in so doing, "by playing cute" it reduced its constitutional role and trivialized the equal protection clause whose principles it had risen to defend.
The dissenting opinion argues more truthfully with a sustaining logic that stands in sharp contrast to the muddled eviscerated logic of the majority opinion.
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