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The Anarchy of Love will Prevail
The two men seemed to be in their early seventies. They asked me to sign the book to both of them, and they thanked me for writing it. It is a book in which I integrate the truth about my father Bishop Paul Moore's longtime secret bisexuality into the rest of his heroic life as a priest and social activist.
"What you've written has meant a great deal to me personally," one of them said, barely able to look at me. . "It was very," he hesitated, " healing."
I signed the book to both of them, that word "and" between their names, and then I watched as they turned and walked off, seeming to lean toward each other, the way couples do who have lived together a long time.
Is marriage a legal right or a sacred rite?
A true marriage, it seems to me, is a sacred condition. What is more blessed than the committed bond between two people, that bond we acknowledge every time we say, "Let's invite Jim and Nick, or John and Mary, or Evelyn and Louise." I see its evidence in couples I observe as I move through my life in New York City – in the diner where I have breakfast, in the park where I take walks, on the street on the way to the subway, in the movie theater on Sunday afternoons.
And I saw it in the posture of those two men, out for the evening to a bookstore reading, leaving together to go home and talk about it.
When the issue of gay marriage first emerged as a matter of national discussion nearly a decade ago, I thought of what my father said to me about it. "Marriage is a sacrament between a man and a woman; the bond between two people of the same sex is something else."
My conversion from his point of view came after his death in 2003, suddenly and thoroughly in the rapturous swirl of publicity that surrounded the multitude of San Francisco gay marriages in 2004 and those in Massachusetts that winter. Crystal clear suddenly: if the state bestows particular benefits on married people, then to deny any couple those benefits is discrimination, pure and simple. How amazing that culture had obscured something so simple for so long! It seems now so elementary – marriage is a civil right, a right that religious institutions actually have no business meddling in. Let this denomination or that parish enter into a process of coming to terms with this new human right – in the meantime, love and the desire to couple will create, adapt and piece together the rituals to celebrate these unions.
I myself love ceremony – solemnity, music, memorable language, a group of friends and family present to celebrate. We celebrate birthdays, book publications, retirements, we gather to recall the dead, to celebrate the coming together of couples. It is altogether human and natural to witness a vow between two people, to honor new love, which may in time come to share the gentle force of connection that surrounded those two men in the bookstore. But why, I hear the traditionalists saying, must the form of the rite and its language be the same for a ceremony that links two people of the same sex as it is for that which links a man and a woman? Another group of traditionalist might ask, why not?
But let's not forget that over millenia, and even in our time, the anarchy of love has composed untold numbers of alternative matrimonial rites. Feminism, for instance, brought to marriage a welter of linguistic adjustments to honor the equality of heterosexual partners, and the rebellion against hierarchical language has edited most prayer book ceremonies out of recognition. I'm thinking of the alteration that turned "love, honor and obey" into "love, honor and cherish." I am thinking of a woman pastor of my acquaintance who said at the appropriate moment in a heterosexual marriage ceremony, "You may kiss the groom."
I know the two young men whose wedding I will attend this June in upstate New York have been crafting the vows they'll exchange since they became engaged a year ago. Interestingly, for them, the legal and religious are organically split. They will take care of the legal business in a courthouse across the border in Massachusetts where they live, and they will make their vows and receive the blessing in language of their own choosing in the New York town where one of them grew up. There will be music and dancing and song. Their parents will kvell, their parents' friends will weep, and each of them will kiss the groom.
As for the sacredness of the rite, time will bestow it.
Honor Moore is the author of several books, including the new book "The Bishop's Daughter." Read an excerpt.
By Honor Moore |
May 21, 2008; 11:55 AM ET
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Posted by: E Favorite | May 22, 2008 12:54 AM
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marriage between the same sexes is wrong,it's not right biblically nor do they have a civil right to demand a marriage between the same sex.lesbians prey upon innocent girls for illicit purposes.they have done more to destroy the fabric of the family and its values.
Posted by: ron | May 21, 2008 8:06 PM
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"But why, I hear the traditionalists saying, must the form of the rite and its language be the same for a ceremony that links two people of the same sex as it is for that which links a man and a woman? Another group of traditionalist might ask, why not?"
Well, as a bisexual Pagan priestess, who just wrote a nonsectarian invocation for a straight relative's wedding, one I cannot enjoy myself, in my current relationship, let me say, it doesn't seem I'm the one who doesn't know what marriage is all about.
I suppose we could go back to Massachusetts, and have a marriage about which someone (Romney) went out of their way to dig up an overruled and overtly-racist law from the nineteen-teens against interracial couples, to specially-exempt from the 'Full Faith And Credit' clause of the Constitution,
But then we couldn't take our 'Special Rights,' (ie, those like everyone else enjoys) back to where we have to live.
All that time of gay marriage, though, and Massachusetts *still* has the lowest divorce rate in the Union.
So, there.
I think JJ here demonstrates just how irrational the anti-gay posiion is.
But, the sacredness of marriage...any marriage, isn't conferred by time. People can be in terrible marriages for years on end.
Sacredness comes from a time that is not a time, a place that is not a place, ....it comes from a moment where people take their love, join hands, and make a promise before each other, and That Which Is.
No book can take that away, or really grant it.
Maybe, if people want to think the state grants sacredness, when it should be granting fair contract law, ...they're the ones missing out.
Posted by: Paganplace | May 21, 2008 5:08 PM
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Lovely and thought-provoking. I live in Massachusetts and worked to keep same-sex marriage legal when the opposition wanted to put it on the ballot. Four years of marriage equality, four years of joy and relief as thousands of same-sex couples have wed, and my straight marriage still isn't destroyed! All is well in the Commonwealth. I'm thrilled that my home state's actions had some part in your "conversion." Enjoy the wedding!
Posted by: Lyvia | May 21, 2008 3:31 PM
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Beautiful.
Posted by: Chris Everett | May 21, 2008 2:57 PM
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REMEMBER:
"Sex Is Not LOVE" And this Means Just because Two Men or Two Girls percieve to 'Love Each the Other" does not mean Tieing their Genitles in a knot via asome State Issued Paper of a LICENSE!
Just because "i" Love My Frien Alon, does not mean "i" should Have sex With Him, thence get a License to SYMBOLiCALLY 'show the World' that our Bond (male to Male or Lady to Lady) is on Equal Footing to , most of this Planets, STRAiGHTS!
Posted by: The Case Not To Give Non-Straights Same Rights as Straights via Sacred Marriage | May 21, 2008 2:08 PM
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"Is marriage a legal right or a sacred rite?"
The legal thing is about ownership of property; the sacred thing is about commitment and trust. These are actually two worlds we live in simultaneously. Marriage brings them both together, at least in our culture. And in our culture there is a strong emphasis on license for sex. So people who believe two people of the same sex should not have such license, also believe they should be prevented from getting married. This is not my belief, but I understand it.
Posted by: L.Kurt Engelhart | May 21, 2008 1:29 PM
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Ron, you say: "lesbians prey upon innocent girls for illicit purposes.they have done more to destroy the fabric of the family and its values."
How about this slight adaptation: "Married men prey upon innocent girls, including their own daughters, for illicit purposes.they have done more to destroy the fabric of the family and its values."
This is also true, right? Does this mean straight marriage should be banned?