Guest Blog: Clamour Underbridge by Rev. Jim Hensley
Jim is a friend of mine who writes a column for The Letter, Louisville’s GLBT newspaper. I really enjoy his essay and asked if I could share. Below is the Clamour Underbridge for July. Past articles can be read at http://clamourunderbridge.typepad.com/clamour_underbridge/
~M
Without Further Ado…
CLAMOUR UNDERBRIDGE
What’s in a Name?
Wedding bells are ringing in California for same-sex and opposite-sex couples. The clamour is deafening. You would think it would all be anti-climactic since California already had statewide domestic partnerships. You would be wrong. It seems that the little song I learned from Sesame Street is correct. “One of these things is not like the others.” The Supreme Court of the state of California did not find any logical reason to call “an officially recognized and protected family” one thing for same-sex couples and a different thing for opposite-sex couples. It’s the name that matters.
The Supreme Court of California failed to address the entrenched and entangled relationship legal marriage has with religion and the churches. We’ll come back to that. It’s important.
Let’s hop in the way back machine for a moment and revisit the clamour from another Supreme Court decision. That one was Loving v. Virginia. Ring a bell? It’s from the Supreme Court of the United States and was handed down in 1967. That decision struck down the Commonwealth of Virginia’s marriage laws that were based on race. Anti-miscegenation laws were all the rage back in the day. It was ever so necessary to protect the sanctity of marriage from interracial couples. Kentucky’s last bite of the miscegenation apple was in 1932 when our legislature, in its wisdom, forbade marriages between whites and “negroes or mulattoes.” Co-habitation was also illegal. The punishment was $1000 fine (big money for 1932) and 12 months imprisonment if done “knowingly.”
Here’s what the “activist” court of 1967 said when they overturned the bigoted marriage laws of Virginia, Kentucky and a number of other states:
Marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man,” fundamental to our very existence and survival… To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statues, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.
The outrage was tremendous. Inter-racial marriage interfered with “God’s arrangement” of the races on separate continents. God “separated the races” and “did not intend for them to mix.” It was all very predictable and very sad. The great state of Alabama fought back by waiting until the year 2000 before taking their inter-racial marriage law off the books.
How very much like the denunciations and outrage over the California Supreme Court Decision? “God made Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve.” “Gay Marriage… The Final Abomination.” How predictable and very much beside the point. Marriage is a civil contract enforced by the state and entered into between two parties. “God” is rarely invoked to co-sign loans, liens and other contracts. How odd that this one requires the Almighty’s seal of approval.
It’s all in the name. Marriage is something that happens in church. California and a few other states (Vermont, Connecticut, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Oregon, Hawaii, the District of Columbia, Maine, and Washington) tried to keep the church crowd happy by separating church marriage from state civil unions or domestic partnerships. It’s not working. Civil unions and domestic partnerships don’t convey the rights and responsibilities of marriage and are mostly ignored by Federal agencies, disapproving businesses and other groups that have a heterosexist agenda. And in the state of California it was very clear to the Supreme Court that a domestic partnership was separate and unequal to marriage.
Let those wedding bells ring. The clamour is music to my ears.
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While he is co-pastor of Progressive Pathways Fellowship in Louisville at www.progressivepathways.org, opinions expressed by Father Jim do not usually represent the official policy of the church. Email for Father Jim or Clamour Underbridge may be directed to fatherjimppf@gmail.com. Visit http://clamourunderbridge.typepad.com to post your story about the Queandom or leave a comment.