I try to avoid serious topics in this online blathering of mine, but the recent news about a decision by the Episcopal bishops has me scratching my head. They promise to exercise restraint in consecrating gay bishops or face serious splintering within the denomination.
Why must they restrain themselves? Are they in any danger of going on a spree, wildly and with great abandon elevating random homosexuals to the see? My hunch is that they're unlikely to raise anyone to that level who isn't an Episcopal priest already, right? Right? And what do these would-be splinter groups fear from newly created gay bishops? Unsolicited fashion advice? That the traditional dog collars and "bishop purple" will be wantonly cast aside for something with lace and a subdued but elegant tone-on-tone stripe?
My mother's church in the 70s was ripped apart by faction fighting over a gay priest. My mom, bless her, took the side of the gay priest, but she watched many of her friends and fellow Vestry members leave for more traditional parishes, taking about half the congregation with them. While my mom was a comparative liberal in her day, I would never call her a leftist--or even terribly enlightened. She thought that homosexuality was possibly a psychological disorder that was simply a nuisance to the one who had it but no danger to anyone else. But you wouldn't want someone with OCD or bipolar disorder to be kept from delivering God's word, would you, if they seemed to have something valid to say? Mom felt that God was capable of speaking through anyone--humans were vessels, not sacred in and of themselves. And my understanding of Christianity tells me that this is an orthodox Protestant belief, not radical in any way.
And yet we have a group who want no gay clergy and no one blessing the marriages of homosexual couples. And it's this last one that really slays me. How are same-sex marriages any kind of threat to my marriage? Is heterosexual marriage, even mine with Nearly Perfect Husband, so frail and delicate a thing that it might fall apart because that lovely couple across the street tied the knot in Toronto?
The couple in question are legally married according to Canada, but their union is not recognized here in Maryland. They are nearing middle-age, totally in love with each other, and utterly devoted to their lives together. Isn't this what society wants people to do? My mother lamented that her homosexual friends--and she did have many--were promiscuous. If that were true, then shouldn't we be doing everything we can to celebrate the happy union of the couple across the street because they've promised to be faithful and stable? Shouldn't we do everything we can to support all couples who promise to be together forever and enrich each other's lives, including attending their weddings and their children's christening or naming ceremonies?
How on earth is my marriage threatened by the couple across the street? Sure, Jeff is adorable and anyone should want him, but they've promised themselves to each other. And should one of them stray and make my husband an inappropriate offer, remember, he's straight. Oh yes, and married. And one of the tenets of marriage, as I've repeated all too often in this post already, is that the couples promise to be faithful to each other. Anyone might break a marriage vow--plenty of straight people do. But the pressure from society (and, of course, the love of their spouses) should give them pause, gay or straight.
I don't feel threatened by the couple across the street. My marriage is more likely to suffer from my husband's friendship with the straight man in our neighborhood who has awe-inspiring power tools and an encyclopedic knowledge of how to restore crumbling historic houses like our own.
Neither do I feel threatened by a sermon delivered by a gay man or lesbian. (And no, those of you who know me, this is not because I'm unlikely ever to get my butt into a church where I could hear such a sermon!) I refuse to believe that any God would by so stingy with the Word that gay and lesbians could be unable to receive it and then pass it along to those hungry to hear it. If such a God exists, I'm willing to risk the flames of eternal damnation by refusing to follow along.
Until humans can invent a more loving and compassionate God, I'm going to continue to sleep in on Sunday mornings.
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