Uncivil Religion

It was a lovely neighborhood, young families like ours, older neighbors who had already raised their children, and across the street, Doug and Daryl. In the midst of this Conservative Orthodox Jewish Catholic Baptist enclave of a neighborhood, they lived openly as a gay couple. They watched our kids, shared their home for neighborhood parties and were a part of us in all the important ways.
At the seminary, gay and lesbian students were beginning to find their voices. The AIDS illness and death of a Baptist minister’s son helped this group come together as they formed a care team for his family and for him. Michael and I had known this young man since he was a teen struggling with his sexual orientation. Because of his involvement with this family, Michael became a safe haven for these young people of faith who were searching for a solid rock upon which to stand as Christians.
Our home was their home. They were our friends, our teachers, our babysitters, but most of all they taught us how to be courageous and honest when faced with condemnation and abuse. We celebrated their finding love and life partners even as we grieved their inability to receive the same kinds of blessings and affirmations Michael and I took for granted as a married heterosexual couple... and I’m not talking religion here... I’m talking about civil rights.
Forty years later I had so hoped we were beginning to understand the differences that divide us. Sexual orientation not as some arbitrary choice made from malicious desire to undermine the fabric of Faith, Family and America but as a result of complicated origins of genetics and life experiences. Why in the world would one “choose” to live beyond the pale, subject to scorn and satire, if one truly had a choice? We are born blue eyed, brown eyed, blonde and brunette, male and female, Caucasian and African American, straight, gay, lesbian, transgendered and we all spring from the Image of our Creator.
And now we are voting in North Carolina on a constitutional amendment to protect marriage.
From my perspective, marriage does need protection but not from an assault mounted by gays and lesbians. The divorce rate among Christians, fundamentalists, moderates and liberals, is indistinguishable from all the other groups in our society. Spousal abuse finds a scriptural foothold in misusing and misquoting the scripture that admonishes women to be submissive to men. We need to be proactive in our Christian work with marriage, providing support for couples and families in our churches, not reactive, drawing lines and erecting barriers to keep the Samaritans out. Most of all, we need to be very, very careful how we use our own particular faith to buttress our civil religion. It didn’t work well for the Puritans and that is how the Baptists came to Rhode Island.
I remember how it felt to join a Congregational church and be looked down on because I was a Baptist. I remember when Baptists scorned Catholics. I remember churches that would not allow you to participate in the Lord’s Supper if you were not a member of that particular church. I remember preachers preaching against the granting of basic civil rights to African Americans, using the Bible to support their stand. And now I worship in an African American church where I have never been made to feel like an outsider. How I wish we could all behave not like Christians because our track record for loving the alien is lousy, but behave like Jesus who never turned anyone away... adulterers, tax collectors, Romans, women, children.
I am proud of my daughter Alison and her husband David who are a part of a courageous faith family, College Park Baptist. This church was the site of a community gathering Monday night, 650 people from Greensboro, pastors, rabbis, men, women and children who stood up to say no to this infringement on our individual rights as citizens of the United States of America. Ron Paul, where are you when we need you? Where is the liberty and justice for all in this amendment?