AM I A BIGOT?

Am I a bigot? Seriously. I start with this question for a few reasons, but first let me back up by providing a bit of a disclaimer and also some background.

First the disclaimer. People do not like it when I talk or write about things related to sexuality. It is uncomfortable. Many of us are trying to find a way to “get along.” Two blog posts ago (“Most people do not set out to destroy where they work…” dated 6/3/2015) I argued the need for a formal dissenting opinion process in The Episcopal Church. In that post I suggested one of the benefits of such a process is that it helps keep people in dialog. I even worked at our most recent Convention to have that required as the Task Force on Marriage has been commissioned for another three years. That amendment was not only soundly defeated…the body voted to not even discuss it! So with that action the minority are relegated to the blog world.

Now onto the background. In my last post (“Starting in the wrong place” dated 7/3/2015) I posited that we, The Episcopal Church, in evaluating whether marriage of same-gender couples was biblical, started in the wrong place…we failed to start with our identity and purpose. And so now I am on to write about this notion of “our identity and purpose” as described in Holy Scriptures. But first…

But first I must ask if I am a bigot. Why? Because the Supreme Court of the United States declared marriage (albeit civil marriage) a fundamental human right. They upheld the idea of religious freedom…and I could take a tack to draw distinction between civil marriage and the sacrament of Holy Matrimony…but I am not going to do so. To take that path seems a bit at odds with my purpose. My purpose is to examine our fundamental—down at the very root of our being—identity and purpose.

If in the end that leads to the option of same-gender marriage, then civil marriage and the sacrament of holy matrimony should be consonant with one another. If my opinion leads to heterosexual marriage as only appropriate, then I will find myself at odds with the recent decision from SCOTUS. To be at odds with their recent decision does not mean that people who are not drawn into a lifelong view of marriage should be discriminated against. Nor does it imply that people who are single should somehow be penalized by tax policy, health care proxies, and the like. And certainly hatred and violence towards anyone in these matters is evil. Yet if I am somehow saying No to this newly acclaimed civil right, might that imply that I am a bigot.

This emotionally charged word is at times defined as someone who holds an opinion that does harm based on the judgment of another…and by me holding this opinion, I am denying people their right to marry, and thereby harming them. Being called a bigot is rather troubling. But consider, in a recent hearing at the General Convention of The Episcopal Church a man got up and testified that our Book of Common Prayer was racist in its Marriage liturgy. He drew on the recent hate crime in Charlestown, South Carolina and drew a straight line, a direct correlation, to the Prayer Book’s continued discrimination against same-gender marriage. To hold to this traditional view, in this one person’s opinion was to be a bigot. He shared this emotionally charged view right as I was thinking about my view.

Now this idea, me being prejudiced, is not a new to me. To be however immersed in the 78^th General Convention is to think about these things, to think about myself. At the convention I intentionally went up, after having shared publically my own thoughts, introduced myself to others who held opposite views, and thanked them for theirs. Most were shocked at my approach to them. My response to them was that getting up in public and testifying was hard to do…we shared this common experience…we shared in this process of trying to put ideas into the public debate…me with the label of bigot and them with other labels…and it was not pleasant for either of us, but we obviously each felt the need to do so. For the most part, those post-testimony conversations were healing.

And I continue to feel this need, this need to offer something positive to the discussion. I say positive because so far those who hold to the traditional view of marriage seem to be offering one thing…and that one thing is denial of marriage. And that has me asking, “So for people not drawn into a heterosexual relationship that has the intention of lifelong marriage, what does God have to offer them…what is their identity and purpose in God’s grand design?” With that long preamble, let me then begin.

That question, “What is my identity and my purpose in God’s grand design?” starts well before our sexual identity…in fact it starts in Genesis. Genesis…that old book about old times and deep truths. Some call it “pre-history.” Their sensitivity to dinosaurs and evolution and science cause them, when drawing on this text, uncomfortableness. I welcome this prose, this narrative so rich with its deep truths from God. Genesis chapter 1 and 2 tells the story of God as Creator and Sustainer. It tells us that God is the source of life. It tells us that we, are above and beyond all other creation and have a special role. It tells us that “human beings” are God’s image bearers to God’s good, very good creation—it begins to tell us our identity and purpose.

In my next post I want to specifically dig into that a bit more, but I wanted to really “put out there” the uncomfortableness…and the necessity of even writing about this subject.