It's an Institute You Can't Disparage

On October 6th, the Supreme Court declined to review the decisions by federal courts that overturned gay marriage bans in Oklahoma and several other states.  The result: by that same afternoon, Oklahoma had its first same-sex wedding.  As far as I know, it's the one that occurred on the steps of the Tulsa County Courthouse at 5pm.  There were many others that same day and the following day.

I have thus far been fairly silent on the issue of gay marriage, but I think this is the right time to talk about it.  Rather than lay out an argument about it, I'd like to take you through the thought process that led me to where I am today.

When I was a child, I had no idea that people could be gay.  I was attracted to girls from the time I was 3, and had my first girlfriend while still in preschool.  I knew I was rare among boys - most wanted nothing to do with girls until they were older (4th grade seemed to be the turning point).  This actually meant that I had way more girlfriends than average before then.

It wasn't until I was a freshman in high school that I even knew homosexuality was a thing.  I still was (and am, in case anyone's worried about my use of past tense) attracted to girls and girls only, so from that perspective it didn't make any sense.  I had also been raised in, as I've said before, a very conservative home, and around the same time we started getting lessons about how homosexuality was an abomination, etc.  So, before I even met anyone who was gay (and out), I already had been turned against it.

The first gay man I knew was a guy in orchestra with me.  His boyfriend was in band, and I saw the two of them quite often.  They were both way more effeminate than other guys I knew, tending to wear tight shirts and sparkly earrings, and rainbow necklaces.  I experienced cognitive dissonance around them - for they seemed perfectly nice and friendly, and I didn't feel comfortable making fun of them due to the things I had experienced in school myself, but at the same time they didn't fit my model of expected masculinity.  Others made fun of them in secret, and so I did, too, and felt bad about it the entire time, even while feeling weirded out.

I never really felt hate toward gay people, however.  I felt that it was icky, that it was sinful, and that I should work to try to rescue people from homosexuality, but I felt my actions were loving, that they were done with a genuine worry about the final destination of their souls rather than anger.

I remember well one time when a friend came out to me.  She was a Christian, and was dating a guy, a preacher's kid, and said he was the first guy she had ever felt attracted to.  She told me she was only otherwise attracted to women, and until then had dated nothing but women.  She just knew that she was violating God's will, and so she forced herself to date guys.  She was impressed and surprised that when she told me she liked women, I didn't react with saying "can I watch?" - which, she said, is what every other guy did.  I was the first who didn't.

I still thought it, of course.  I just didn't say it.

Over the next few years, I doubled down on my beliefs, arguing that I was still loving gay people by insisting that their actions were evil, etc.  I argued that if someone could actually be born gay, that they were still required to follow God's will as I saw it laid out in the Bible.  I backed it up with scriptures that called it out as an abomination.  When people complained that homosexuals weren't being allowed to love, I busted out this scripture from 1 Cor 7:

8: Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do.

27: Are you pledged to a woman? Do not seek to be released. Are you free from such a commitment? Do not look for a wife.

32-35: I would like you to be free from concern. An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord’s affairs—how he can please the Lord. But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world—how he can please his wife— and his interests are divided. An unmarried woman or virgin is concerned about the Lord’s affairs: Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit. But a married woman is concerned about the affairs of this world—how she can please her husband. I am saying this for your own good, not to restrict you, but that you may live in a right way in undivided devotion to the Lord.

So, to Paul, being single was better than getting married.  This is the Scriptural basis behind priests and nuns of the Catholic church remaining single.  In my mind, if a man were untempted by women, that simply meant that he was perfectly created to remain single.

Unwittingly, I was calling all gay men to become priests and gay women to become nuns (in the Catholic church) or priests (in pretty much all of the rest of the church). 

It was not, of course, a loving position.  I was single most of my life, and miserable about it.  I questioned whether I would ever be married.  How could I expect a gay person would feel any better having to avoid love?

During my liberal conversion, before it was complete, while still in the midst of it - and, possibly, as part of the cause for pushing it out of the starting gate - I had a realization about marriage.  Those around me decried marriage as an institution that could be extended to gays because it was a holy Christian institution.  I did, too.

Until, one day, unbidden, I was faced with the prospect of atheists getting married.

Who were they married by, if not God?  Who were Buddhists married by, if not God?  Who were Hindus and Bahá'ís and Sikhs and any number of hundreds of other faiths married by if not the Christian God?  From my Christian perspective, certainly, God was the one joining their eternal souls, but to insist that that was happening in a legal sense was, I knew, wrong.  That is, if I insisted that the Christian God was joining the souls of non-Christians in Heaven, and that was the basis of law on Earth, that would be forcing Christianity onto non-Christians.  These people all held their own views about gods (or the lack thereof) and, just as I wanted my own views protected, I believed it was important that they have their views protected, too.  Even if I didn't agree with them.  

It was important enough to me that I could continue believing as I wanted that I would extend those rights to others.  And, as a result, I had to allow them to believe that their marriage was blessed by whatever institution they believed (or didn't believe).  

After all, if Buddhists could get married without acknowledging the Christian God, if Hindus could, if atheists could, then marriage itself is not a Christian institution.  My beliefs about marriage only apply to marriage within a Christian church, and not those marriages that take place outside of the church.

Once I realized that, there were suddenly no more objections I could throw up against gay marriage, at least outside of the Christian church.  From a legal perspective, I had to accept it.  Granted, I could have doubled-down on gay marriage laws and chosen to eschew my beliefs about religious freedom, but I felt like that would be a road to certain persecution in the future for myself... and I could not abide that.  

Still, accepting it in a legal sense is far from believing it to be "good."  It was simply legally allowed.  I still insisted homosexuality was evil, and that it should not take place within the Christian church.

Most recently - perhaps only 2 years ago - I still held to that claim, although I began to believe that there could be Christians who accepted it.  As I've mentioned before regarding Romans 14, I learned to believe that many things could be accepted as morally right, and that salvation was up to each individual person to work out with God.  That meant that I had arrived at the point where I wouldn't directly judge, I wouldn't tell gays that I thought they would burn in Hell, but I still didn't personally think it was OK.  It was a 'live and let live' approach, and that's it.  

I liked to say that since I'm not tempted by homosexuality myself, that it wasn't important to me, that my beliefs about whether it was morally right or wrong didn't matter, because they couldn't in any way affect my eternal salvation.  

It wasn't until I started going to my current church that I was really forced to face it.  My first day there, an older lady in the church, who was one of three ordained pastors in the congregation (that I'm aware of), leaned over to me and said, not unquietly during a quiet part of the service, "Do you see those four men up there? (pointing to the four guys a few rows ahead of us.)  Those are two gay couples, and I married them in this church!"  My first thought, "Why are you telling me this?"  (Having been hit on by many gay men, I had to assume that she thought that was my reason for attending the church.)  My second thought, "Uh... that's nice?"  

But then I had to decide how comfortable I was with that idea.  Because here was a church that openly welcomed homosexuals, both singles and couples, and yet I knew from the friendliness of the congregation and from the absolutely phenomenal, research-driven sermons from the pastor, that I had to attend.  

Fortunately, about 4 years ago, I developed a new philosophy, which I'm actually surprised to discover I haven't posted about yet.  I will in my next post...