Opposition to same-sex marriage is bipartisan. Both President George W. Bush and Senator John Kerry oppose marriage for gay couples. They each support a constitutional amendment to ban such marriages (Bush supports a proposed Federal ban and Kerry supports a proposed Massachusetts state ban.) But each also says that he favors some other legal arrangements to benefit gay couples.
Most Democratic politicians, including liberal Senators Charles Schumer and Hillary Rodham Clinton, join most Republican politicians in opposing the granting of marriage rights to gay couples. Even openly-gay Democratic Congressman Barney Frank of Massachusetts says: “Let’s be fair. I don’t think it’s reasonable for the candidates to be out for gay marriage. The people aren’t out for that.” At the same time, the thrice-married former Georgia Republican Congressman Bob Barr, who wrote the Defense of Marriage Act signed into law by President Bill Clinton, is on record as saying he sees no need for an “intrusive” Constitutional amendment to ban marriage for gay couples
In his 1906 State of the Union address, President Theodore Roosevelt proposed a constitutional amendment on marriage and divorce. He did so in the aftermath of Nevada’s easy divorce laws and Mormon polygamy. (Nevada is now one of two states with an anti-gay marriage state constitutional amendment in effect.)
Roosevelt told Congress: “I am well aware of how difficult it is to pass a constitutional amendment. Nevertheless, in my judgment, the whole question of marriage and divorce should be relegated to the authority of the national Congress. At present, the wide differences in the laws of the different states on this subject result in scandals and abuses.” He went on: “Surely there is nothing so vitally essential to the welfare of the nation, nothing around which the nation should so bend itself to throw every safeguard, as the home life of the average citizen.” The proposal died in committee.
New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof notes yet another proposed Constitutional amendment on marriage – this one from 1912. Rep. Seaborn Roddenberry of Georgia proposed that “intermarriage between Negroes or persons of color and Caucasians … is forever prohibited.” He called interracial marriage “abhorrent and repugnant … debasing, ultrademoralizing, un-American and [an] inhuman leprosy.” Kristof quotes Roddenberry’s warning: “At some day, perhaps remote, it will be a question always whether or not the solemnizing of matrimony in the North is between two descendants of our Anglo-Saxon fathers and mothers or whether it be of a mixed blood descended from the orangutan-trodden shores of far-off Africa.” Kristof points out that orangutans come from Asia, not Africa. More Roddenberry: “This slavery of white women to black beasts will bring this nation to a conflict as fatal and as bloody as ever reddened the soil of Virginia.” Kristof’s column appeared on March 3.
A full-page ad in support of a Federal amendment to ban same-sex marriage ran in The New York Times on February 29th. It was signed by some of the country’s leading Fundamentalists, including Joel Belz (see current REVIEW), Jerry Falwell, R. Albert Mohler, Jr., James Dobson, Louis Sheldon, and D. James Kennedy. Other Right wing activists such as Gary Bauer, Bay Buchanan, and Paul Weyrich also signed on. More moderate Christians were represented by Franklin Graham and Michael Novak. Some of the signatories represent their denominations: The Assemblies of God, The International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, The International Pentecostal Holiness Church, The Church of the Nazarene, The Church of God (Holiness), and the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.
They’re “domestic terrorists!” They’re “a new threat to US border security!” That’s what the Religious Right’s Concerned Women for America called a newly-married gay Canadian couple that tried to enter the United States. According to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, such hysteria is on a par with CWA’s saying that same-sex partners of those killed on 9/11 were “trying to hijack the moral capital of marriage.”
The Web site of the Christian Civic League of Maine solicited “tips, rumors, speculation and facts” about state officials’ sexual orientation until a public outcry forced an apology. CCLM head, Michael Heath, said that “in the midst of fighting for something I feel very strong about [i.e., a state constitutional ban on marriage for gay couples] I wrote and said things that I should not have written and spoken.” He said he felt “terrible” for “besmirch[ing] the fine reputation and important ministry” of the CCLM.
But the “apology” was “too little too late” in the minds of many. Said Gov. John Baldacci: “The Christian Civic League’s effort to invade the privacy and destroy the careers of Maine’s gay and lesbian citizens is an offense of the highest order, deserving all of the condemnation I can muster.” House Majority Leader John Richardson received a highly unusual standing ovation after telling his fellow lawmakers that Heath’s “witch hunt” represented “an all-time low in Maine politics.” One legislator, though he is not gay, rose in solidarity with Maine’s gay citizens to say that the CCLM should “look no further for rumors and innuendos about me. I am gay.” Many legislators, lobbyists and staff members wore pink triangles to show their solidarity. The Nazis had forced homosexuals to wear pink triangles.
Rev. Dallas Henry, the CCLM’s board chairman, announced that the board “will stand solidly behind [Heath] because we know he’s a man of integrity.”
“Why can’t we have marriages between people and pets?” Driving a wedge between Christians and gay people, Nicholas DiMarzio, Roman Catholic Bishop of Brooklyn (and Queens), was mocking marriage for gay couples and pushing for a government ban. Speaking on the radio, he went on: “I mean, pets really love their masters and why can’t we have a marriage so they could inherit the money?”
Later, in his diocesan weekly, the bishop gave his reactions to charges of anti-Semitism against Mel Gibson’s film, The Passion of the Christ. “If one goes to find anti-Semitism,” one finds it, he said. But “certainly, for an educated Catholic and Christian, I believe there is no danger of anti-Semitism.” He said Christians should oppose “any efforts that would drive a wedge between Christians and Jews.”
“If the KKK opposes gay marriage, I would ride with them.” So said a black Baptist minister, Gregory Daniels, at a Chicago meeting. The pastor of Empowerment Temple African Methodist Episcopal Church in Baltimore explains that gay men in the black church “took on that posture or their spirit because they never saw a man in church worship God. They only saw women praise God. So, they began to clap like their mamas, shout like their grandmothers and took on an effeminate spirit.”
In Boston, black ministerial groups are organizing to fight against marriage for gay folk. According to one leader, Gene Rivers, the movement for marriage for gay couples is unfairly invoking the black civil rights movement, just as the women’s movement did. Says Rivers: “This movement is particularly offensive because it hits at the Book, the Bible, and the painful history of black people all at once.” In a recent talk at Harvard Law School, Jesse Jackson rejected comparison of gay civil rights with black civil rights: “They did not require the Voting Rights Act to have the right to vote.” Later, at a church in Worcester, Jackson said: “In my culture, marriage is a man-woman relationship.”
Meanwhile, other black ministers and civil rights leaders, including Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King III, Julian Bond, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Harvard chaplain Peter Gomes and Yale chaplain Frederick J. Streets are supporting the right of gay couples to marry. Says Streets: “I am appalled by the homophobia of some clergy and other members of black churches. Homosexuals have always been members of black churches and our communities, among the pastoral leadership and the congregations. … It is ironic that members of some black churches would discriminate against homosexuals given the black church’s historical role in fighting for a more just, beloved community and society.”
Only 27 percent of black Democrats in the state of New York agree that gay couples should be allowed to marry. This contrasts with 47 percent of the state’s white Democrats. In religion terms, agreeing that gay couples should be allowed to marry, are 34 percent of Protestant Democrats, 34 percent of Catholic Democrats, 56 percent of Jewish Democrats and 73 percent of Democrats with no religious affiliation. These findings are based on interviews with 1,420 Democratic primary voters conducted for The Associated Press and five television networks on March 2.
“I’m a pastor and I don’t support gay marriage, but I resent people playing political football with our religious beliefs.” Georgia State Representative Ron Sailor, Jr. thus explained his vote in March in opposition to a state constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. He was one of the African-American legislators who all voted against the antigay bill. According to Rep. Georganna Sinkfield: “What I see in this is hate. I’m a Christian, but if we put this in the Constitution, what’s next? … You’re opening the floodgates for people to promote their own prejudice.” But Rep. Earnest Williams objected to comparisons between the black civil rights movement and same-sex marriage: “You can make a choice of who you want in your bedroom, but you can’t choose your skin color.” Others pointed out that nobody chooses his or her sexual orientation.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has apologized for antigay remarks made in a King Day observance. Sheila Koger, speaking at the Bethlehem Baptist Church in Columbia, South Carolina had asserted: “Martin Luther King was not talking about gay rights. He was talking about rights to have liberty.”
“In Fight Over Gay Marriage, Evangelicals Are Conflicted.” The headline in The New York Times (February 28) signaled news of pro-gay evangelicals in Western Michigan (‘what amounts to a small Northern Bible Belt”). “We have bigger things to worry about than whether two men or two women want to get married,” as it was put by a Republican member of Ada Bible Church in a Grand Rapids suburb. A “minority of evangelical churchgoers and even pastors … expressed ambivalence about the amendment” that’s been proposed to ban marriage for gay folk.
The report notes a survey of 4,000 voters done by the University of Akron that found that evangelicals are closely divided over whether gay Americans should have the same rights as heterosexual Americans. Corwin E. Smidt, a professor of political science at Calvin College helped conduct the study. He’s quoted as saying: “Evangelicals don’t march in lockstep. … Pushing for an amendment doesn’t really energize my support. I don’t like to see it used as a political hammer.”
A February 27th editorial in The Lariat, Baylor University’s student newspaper, came out in support of marriage for gay couples. “Just as it isn’t fair to discriminate against someone for their skin color, heritage or religious beliefs, it isn’t fair to discriminate against someone for their sexual orientation. Shouldn’t gay couples be allowed to enjoy the benefits and happiness of marriage, too?” The editorial was approved by the editorial board, 5 to 2.
But the Southern Baptist-affiliated university’s president quickly and publicly denounced the editorial. Said Robert B. Sloan, Jr.:“We have already heard from a number of students, alumni and parents who are, as am I, justifiably outraged over this editorial. Espousing in a Baylor publication a view that is so out of touch with traditional Christian teachings is not only unwelcome, it comes dangerously close to violating university policy, as published in the student handbook, prohibiting the advocacy of any understandings of sexuality that are contrary to biblical teaching.”
Meanwhile, Baylor has revoked a seminary student’s scholarship because he’s gay. Halfway through his studies at Baylor’s Truett Theological Seminary, 24-year-old Matt Bass was confronted by two assistant deans and asked if he was gay. He had confided his homosexuality to a local minister who then reported that to the school. According to seminary dean Paul Powell, the Bible forbids homosexuality and that’s all that needs to be said on the subject. Bass now plans to transfer to Emory University.
Andrew Sullivan says: “When people talk about gay marriage, they miss the point.”
Writing in his column for Time, the openly gay and Catholic conservative commentator explains: “This isn’t about gay marriage. It’s about marriage. It’s about family. It’s about love. … These family values are not options for a happy and stable life. They are necessities.”
“In more than 20 years of pastoral ministry, I have seen many threats to marriage, but these threats haven’t come from gay men and lesbians.” Lutheran seminary professor Barbara K. Lundblad, in a letter to The New York Times, protesting a federal ban on same-sex marriage, continued: “I’m certain that a survey of pastors, priests and rabbis would confirm that adultery, abuse and addictions are far more destructive.” She added that the ban “would do grave harm to many and nothing to protect marriage.”
Trinity United Methodist Church in Kansas City (MO) will no longer perform weddings for heterosexual couples so long as a denominational rule forbidding same-sex union services remains in effect. According to the pastor, Sally Haynes, 30 to 40 percent of the congregation’s membership of 275 is gay or lesbian. Her bishop, Ann Sherer, says she supports her right to make “worship decisions.”
The gay man who envisioned the popular Good News for Modern Man translation of the Bible has died. The former general secretary of the American Bible Society, Laton Holmgren, was retired in California when he passed away on January 25 at age 88. He was a graduate of Asbury College and Drew University. Christianity Today noted his death and published his portrait but did not note, as his New York Times obituary did, that he is survived by the man who was “his companion,” Kiyoshi Hagiya.
“An open belief in God, beyond a generic spirituality is considered the most extreme form of bad taste” in many lesbian and gay circles. This is as Eric Gutierrez sees it in the January issue of Out, a magazine for gay readers. He objects to the fact that gay Christians are so often expected to keep their faith in the closet around other gay people. He calls these Christian gay folk “a new caste of queer untouchable.” Gutierrez concludes: “We must not only confront the hostility of religion toward us but also the hostility of [gay] culture toward religion.”
The Roman Catholic Archbishop of Cincinnati is supporting the repeal of a local anti-gay amendment. A 1993 city charter amendment that prohibits the Cincinnati City Council from passing any legislation protective of gay people is being reconsidered. In the February issue of the local Catholic Telegraph, Archbishop Daniel Pilarczyk called the antigay amendment morally wrong and “detrimental to the public good.” He added, though, that he believes “homosexual behavior” should not be as “legally acceptable as heterosexual behavior.”.
Students at Notre Dame University are seeking official recognition for their gay student group. The group is also asking that sexual orientation be added to the University’s nondiscrimination clause.
A minister in the Church of the Brethren has moved his ordination to the United Church of Christ after his home denomination invalidated his credentials when he came out as gay. Matthew Smucker of Kalamazoo, (MI) says he’s “physically drained” by the controversy over his being the first openly gay minister in the Brethren denomination. He now works at the UCC’s Chicago Theological Seminary as director of developmental operations.
A female Episcopal priest in Mississippi has resigned to protest the elevation of a gay man as bishop in New Hampshire. Rev. Sandra DePriest says: “I took vows to uphold Scripture.” She said she believes homosexuality is sinful.
AND FINALLY:
The Santa Cruz (CA) Bible Church awarded two women a prize for being the most recently married couple in attendance at a church meeting in February. The two were the last still standing at the end of a newlywed contest. The prize was a free dinner at a local restaurant. But later, pastor David Gschwend explained that his congregation had been caught off-guard and that he supports only heterosexual marriage. The couple had attended this fundamentalist church without incident on several previous occasions.