I still have my sign up. So do my neighbors.

May 24, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

We are some of the people who voted No on Proposition 8, and raised thousands of dollars to try to block this appalling piece of legislation. The number may change, but it looks more and more like there will be a 2010 ballot proposition to repeal Proposition 8 and remove it from the California Constitution.

(I didn’t think I’d be thinking about this until after the California Supreme Court speaks on Tuesday, but I can’t get this off my mind.)

I believe it is not simply a matter of majority rule when it comes to basic, inalienable civil rights. The right to marry the person of your choice should never be up for a vote (it never should have been on the 2008 ballot to start with). America established that once and for all when the U.S. Supreme Court brought in its decision on Loving vs. Virginia, which removed the legal hurdles for interracial couples to marry.

There is nothing sacred about civil marriage. Marriage is honorable and good. It is part of the fabric of our society. It creates stability in culture, community, households and individuals. It bestows rights and accepts responsibilities.

But the word “sacred” is a religious concept that should be left out of the civil marriage equation. Different religious groups think of marriage differently, and they practice different rituals to solemnize or seal a marriage. They assign their own beliefs, requirements and privileges to marriage as they define it.

We need to stress the separation of church, state and marriage. Millions of people marry every year who are not interested in any religion, and that is their right. And many religious people marry who do not contract a civil marriage yet still receive a ritual blessing which creates relationships in their religious community.

My reasoning is entirely empirical. I am certain—this does not take a Ph.D.— that what my church teaches and practices about marriage is not the same as what the Roman Catholic Church teaches and practices or what the Mormon churches teach or practice.

Mormons believe that a heterosexual couple who marry are sealed for eternity. This is not the same as what Jesus says in the Bible (in heaven they neither marry nor are given in marriage, Matthew 22). They call marriage an “ordinance” and have their own cosmology and beliefs which are not shared by many Christian churches. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, as they prefer to call their faith, may try to look respectable by supporting only heterosexual marriage, but the history of the matter, which lingers in the back country of America, is that Mormons started by permitting—really advocating—polygamy. Polygamy is not only not legal in any U.S. state, it is not supported by any Christian church organization.

In the Roman Catholic church marriage is a “sacrament.” Lutherans do not, because we have a strict and narrow definition of what a sacrament is (specifically instituted by Christ, for one thing, and so marriage fails the test right there.) And the Catholic church has not budged on the indissolubility of marriage. That church absolutely forbids re-marriage after a civil divorce. Most Protestants and many Lutherans do not look at divorce as a block against re-marriage, and we do not forbid ministers from marrying, as Catholics do.

(On the site above, the explanation of marriage from a Catholic viewpoint is a real stretch, but save that for another time.)

The ELCA tries to focus:  on sexuality. Where did they get this picture?

The bottom line is that one person’s sacred beliefs are another person’s blasphemy. Even while the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America wrestles with human sexuality and homosexuality, its new draft “social statement” on human sexuality does not forbid the blessing of same-gender couples in a Christian liturgical ceremony.

Obviously, people of faith are not all people of the same faith. And not all Christians are opposed to same-sex marriage.  Using faith and religious rites as a monkey wrench on civil marriage rights is unjust, plain and simple.  America was founded on freedom of religion, and that primarily meant that we are free to practice our own religious beliefs and to therefore avoid coercion by means of another’s religious beliefs. That is why civil marriage is not sacred, because if it were, who’s version of “sacred” couple it possibly reflect?

So I’m keeping my sign up, if necessary, until Proposition 8 is revoked, invalidated or repealed.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Bible & Interpretation, Sex, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Catholic matters, Ecumenical Issues, LGBT Christian, Public Affairs, Faith, LGBT Rights, ELCA | Print | No Comments »