Yup, the “battle” is over. Same-sex marrage is here to stay, it is just a matter of time before it is national.
I still think the government needs to drop marrage completely and just do civil unions with no restrictions other than (one) human at a time.
Let the churches work out the people that can get married there. I say this as someone that would oppose it at my church, but really don’t see any point in making laws about my faith.
I’m o.k. with churches not performing the ceremonies based on their faith. Some will, and some won’t; and for some congregants the particular church’s treatment of gays will be a determining factor in whether they want to be part of that particular flock.
Of course, before too long, you start getting into those annoying questions like, if the church is getting government funding for faith based programs, can they discriminate against gays?
If the church discriminates against gay marriage, does it lose its tax exempt status? It would be best to make all marriages a civil matter, and let churches do as they please with their ceremonies.
Their tax exempt status does not require equal treatment, does it?
The church(es) make their own decisions about many things that would not be allowed in business and government, such as what positions women may have in the church leadership, or hiring based on a person’s faith.
However, I don’t understand what that has to do with tax exempt or government funding for programs. If a church does a job that the government would like done, why can’t the government help pay them to do it?
Yeah, there’s a big difference between where some of us church leaders are with this issue and where our congregations are with it. I’m waiting for the barrage of e-mails from my more conservative members about how the “big one” should be hitting California any day;-)
Yeah, I’m still trying to figure out how all the gays got into Columbus and caused all our flooding (JOKE!)
Seriously, if God dealt Karma, explain why both Obama and Bush are alive. One of the two must be pissing him off, right?
Speaking of the silly idea of Karma, I have a great Dilbert “dogbert” comic on my door right now: “I beleive in Karma. That means I can do bad things to you and assume you deserve it!”
My great legal mind (lol) tells me that a church isn’t liable for discrimination against gay marriage rights denied as long as a church wedding isn’t the exclusive way to get married.
The concept of karma has been permanently tainted for me because of its central role in “My Name is Earl.” I love the show, but because of it karma = Carson Daly.
I hit the sacredmarriage.com (think that was the correct name) website yesterday; the link was offered through one of the newspaper articles that spoke about this. Following the timeline they laid out, it just happened to take this long for it to work through the California court systems. It is just coincidence that it hit during the summer before the presidential election.
I agree that same-sex marriage will eventually be nationwide, but as a gay Hoosier, I hardly think I’ll live long enough to see it here. (BTW, my birthday was Monday – #45– 5 years past gay death.)
But I do happen to have chuckcentral’s sock — still hoping he’ll stop by for dinner, such a cutie. And yeah, I was actually in Bloomington the day the flooding started, so I coulda caused it. I mean, I took and REALLY long shower.. and.. oops!
Just judging from attitudes of high school students I taught until the mid-90’s Id say the widespread virulent anti-gay fear people my age were raised with is diminishingly prevalent starting at about 40 yrs old and younger. I give credit to MTV as a major cultural influence in 80’s,perhaps much less now.But at one point point it was the the most consistent source of social tolerance views which all teens widely watched.I viewed MTV in era as predominantly upbeat and positive.
When I retired from the classroom,the Simpsons and Seinfeld were 2 influential social mores voices of teens.That brought a certain layer of nastiness and irreverence to our social views,which are still prevalent,imo.
So my take is that the Reagan era ironically brought us more liberal social views ( no thanks to Reagan himself) but more conservative economic views.
Yeah, Lou, I teach still today and I believe that even the most conservative kids don’t care if gays get married. I mean, it doesn’t affect them. I always say that if the over 65 set would just not vote, this country would become more like Northern Europe.
I wonder if it was a national watershed or just a personal watershed with respect to views about gays that happened in the late 80s/early 90s.
For my part, I thought I was anti-gay going into college in the early 90s. Then I met someone who I came to find out was gay, decided he was a good guy, and decided I needed to rethink my outlook on the subject.
I lost my anti-gay attitude about when I discovered the evidence for existence of a god was falling below my personal threshold for belief. Without the dusty old texts to guide me, I fell back on criteria like is anybody being harmed, do opponents of certain actions really have any reasonable reason to care absent their religious attitudes, etc.
Casting aside religion is like taking blinders off. It becomes clear that people will be ambivalent about environmental rape, “collateral damage” in war, social injustice, etc., yet be consumed by anger/concern/resentment about whether two consenting adults somewhere (anywhere) are engaged in sex, and in what manner. Absent the excuse of religion, such concern just seems silly in the abstract, and in specific cases where peoples’ private lives are disrupted, it just seems obscene.
Also, life’s too short. A dear friend died suddenly a few years ago, and it really cemented my attitude toward happiness. Basically if something will bring you joy, and doesn’t cause grief to someone else, go do it now, while you can. If you find someone with the same notion, go get happy, and the uninvited “concerned” bystanders can go piss off.
At some point I heard a proponent of one religion or another say something that is undoubtedly true: “Tomorrow is not promised.”
You can’t act as if tomorrow absolutely won’t happen, but you do need to take advantage of today to the extent you can without seriously compromising tomorrow.
T-Question, do you promise to live up to the vows you made to raise your son in the faith at his baptism this past weekend? I heard you answer out loud to the affirmative. I also heard you confess the words of the Apostles’ Creed out loud. As a pastor I should have asked you that question BEFORE the service. And as your brother and uncle of “baby” T I ask it now. (Which BTW I was very honored to be a part of the service and thought it was cool that he was baptized in the same font you and I were baptized in.)
I’m still very much a person of faith and came to the understanding that gays in committed relationships are the same as everyone else. There are those of us who choose to live in this tension and help the church move forward with these issues. The Bible also has a lot to say about how we should treat slaves and women that I disagree with, too. I think this is just a part of how God’s relationship evolves with society over time. Which is why I’m glad our folks chose to remain ELCA Lutherans, because at least we’re willing to admit there are contadictions in the Bible and have scholarly debates about what this means in today’s society.
I was pretty anti-gay when I started college. Okay, I was probably pretty hostile to be honest. My folks had a number of gay men who worked for them who were beyond promiscuous-it was like a gay Peyton Place around there; guys stealing partners from one another, etc. I remember one guy having a tearful conversation with my mom because he realized he needed to be tested for AIDS (he had no idea how many partners he’d been with since the 1960’s and it was now the late’80’s) but was scared to know the truth. He later was and found out he was negative! I thought this was the “norm” for gays.
When I went to IU, the first week I was there the student newspaper had a huge front-page article about how every other stall door in Ballintine Hall had to be removed to stop anonymous sex from happening there. To top it off June Reinisch (the very embattled leader of the Kinsey Institute) had a daily article from the Kinsey Institute in the paper! This boy was wondering what sort of depraved place he had chosen for college!
Then I met friends who were wrestling with their sexuality. They were good people going through tough times. I had straight friends who were open-minded. I had a friend my senior year who was mortified that a female friend (who was drunk at the time) “outed” him. I later assured him that I figured out he was gay the first time I met him, and still chose to be his friend. He wanted to go to a campus gay support meeting but was scared to go on his own. So I went with him. (This was in the early ’90’s when tight jeans were the norm. I was later told by the group I was welcome back any time, but should wear looser jeans in the future! Guess that was a compliment-I took it as such!) As I got to know Josh more, I learned that his biggest problem was not being gay, but that he was SEVERELY biploar, and self-medicating.
Also as I became active in campus ministry on the local, regional, and national level, I met friends of the Lutheran faith who were “out.” One of them would make a great pastor, except for the fact that he is unwilling to live up to the current expectations the church has for rostered leaders.
I was in seminary when this issue was really hitting the front burner in the church. It was a great time to be in graduate school. And the seminary I chose had the most diverse faculty in our nation. So I heard all sides of the debate.
My first call was with a senior pastor who is ultra-fundie. I had an idea what I was getting myself into at the first interview when he told me that the local “Lesbyterian” church had recently blessed the relationship of their gay organist and his partner. I accepted the call because I genuinely loved the congregation and its’ people when I met them, and chose not to let Dennis cahnge my views. I chose to remain silent around him about my views. However, I did end up doing most of the counseling for the “closeted” members of the congregation. I remember how Dennis counseled a mom when she found her son had been “cruising” websites with pictures of nude men. He basically told her her son was going to hell. I straightened her out, and told her to love her son no matter what, and that he needed her love and support. Found out from the associate pastor who came after me that she had to come in on her day-off to go to the hospital when the kid needed emergency surgery, because Dennis wouldn’t go there knowing the kid’s partner would be there. And his parents were there with him too as he faced surgery.
I also had a very close friend in the synod who was an ELCA pastor in the closet. After the 2005 assebly he decided he was getting into his mid-30’s and didn’t want to date behind closed doors anymore. Since the policy for rostered leaders hadn’t changed, he became an Episcopal priest. I’m sad about that because he was one of my closest friends in the synod and a damn fine pastor. And I think his congregation knew he was gay and still loved him-and this congregation was in rural Kentucky!
I have two lesbian couples in my current congregation. They know where I stand. They also know that my current congregation is far more conservative than me (that is a downside of wanting to remain in my home state-very few liberal congregations. I’d love to some day serve the congregation in Bloomington-it would be ideal for me in so many ways!). I was upfront with them about that before they became active in the congregational life. I visited with one of the women yesterday. She is in the hospital in Chicago after her fifth surgery (in three years) to have a mucous-type cancer scraped from her abdomen. She’s 42 and just found out she now has one tumor that is inoperable. So if you pray, keep Shari in your prayers. Her partner just successfully fought breast cancer this winter.
Sorry for the dissertation, but I just don’t buy the policy that you have to walk away from faith to be able to accept gays. Us Lutherans (at least of the ELCA variety) are not afraid to wrestle with these issues and know that the Bible is less than perfect. And yes, T, Nina’s death affected me in the same manner, and may have also affected some of my views on gays. With her parents so active with the opera company, her family was very open to gays.
Someone else said, “If you know what life is worth, you will look for yours on earth.â€
I do; because I know my eternal life was secured for me in my baptism-a one-time deal that happened nearly 40 years ago. But nothing, not even faith, can add to the number of days I have here on earth.
BTW I also worry about the “health” of the environment, the deaths that are happening to our troops, the affects the economy is having on the poor and now middle class, social injustice, etc. Faith does not remove me from those issues. God doesn’t want me to ignore his creation.
And Doug, I agree with both you and the Christian leader you quoted. We need to live life as if tomorrow is not promised (who knows, there may be a bus out there with my name all over it today) BUT that doesn’t negate us from needing to plan for tomorrow happening!
Mom said it was happening with or without me. I was there for him. He’s enjoying the church experience at this point, and as he matures, he will have to figure out these things for himself.
The family thought baptism was appropriate for him, and I didn’t have any strong objections. If he was going to go through the ceremony, he deserved to have both parents there. That day was about him, and not about me, so I recited the still-memorized words of the service as a courtesy to him, and the congregation. He seemed to enjoy it, and I’m glad he could do it and that I could see it. I don’t know if you know this, but atheism is sort of frowned upon. I don’t shrink away from my lack of belief–but I also know that broadcasting that fact during a religious ceremony in a church isn’t really all that productive. So, being that it wasn’t about me that day, I demonstrated a bit of social grace and didn’t make a stink among those who had invited me into their presence in that setting.
No one said you have to chuck faith in order to be accepting of gays. It just happened as a natural consequence for me, for the reasons noted.
Just sorry-and a bit sad-to see you walk away from the faith of your family, that’s all. It makes me angry that bigots in the faith cause this kind of damage in a person’s life. But you answered my question in a way I feel very comfortable with. And I will do my best to be a guiding force in his life, and yes, let him ultimately choose when he gets older.
You just touched a nerve with me about how Christians are trying their best to destroy the church-that’s all.
Looks like we need to sit down with a beer or two sometime and talk about this-not “baby” T- but our different world views.
Christians aren’t trying to destroy the church. They’re just guided by hand-me-down beliefs and moral codes that are rooted in a tradition whose foundation rests on faith, rather than evidence. That tends to limit the degree of change that takes place. It leads to situations where we celebrate dust-ups in the church that happened hundreds of years ago. Really has much happened in Lutheranism since Luther acted up?
I didn’t “walk away” from anything, really. I walked toward a more simplified life that doesn’t wrestle needlessly with the fact that I don’t have faith.
Look, there are things in this world that can be known by evidence. Despite what some peoples’ faith will tell them, the earth is billions of years old. I know I don’t have an argument with you on this point. But I was on some five thousand foot summits in New Hampshire last week that used to be under the ocean, then got covered (when Africa collided with New England) and became metamorphic rock, then got exposed again by erosion. So I have visible evidence of the timescale of the planet, with my own eyes. If someone has faith that all of that happened in thousands of years, then I feel sorry for that person because they’re really blinded to the true wonder of it all by clinging to silly, observably false fantasy.
That’s just one example. But given that humans have existed in roughly our present form for tens of thousands of years, at the very tail end of a much longer history of life on earth, you can believe a few things. One, you can believe like I do that we’re just now (in the last few thousand years) attaining the collective experience, intellect, free time, and technological ability to really have a clue what’s going on. But previously we took our best guess about it, and thought some mighty being or beings constructed it all. It was a fine hypothesis way back when, but it doesn’t work for me. Or you can believe that after billions of years of life, suddenly all was revealed to some people in a tribe in the Middle East two thousand years ago, people were given understanding of it all, and now we just have to pass that down for eternity.
It’s not just that I think logically that option A is more reasonable. It’s that to believe option B, you have to have faith. You have to have this belief that exists in a vacuum, pretty much. When told that a page of text has a supernatural origin, you have to buy that notion. If you can’t do that, option B isn’t for you. And really, at your core, you can’t choose to believe and can’t effectively just fake it. Either you believe or you don’t. And I don’t.
If you don’t have faith, you don’t see the act of ceasing to do the rituals as any kind of “walking away”.
I consider myself to be joyous and full of wonder at the world around us, so I don’t see a reason for sadness at all. I don’t worry that my lack of faith will banish me from heaven or banish me to hell, because I don’t believe those things exist. So don’t be sad about me, I’m doing fine. Regarding “traditions of the family”, it’s a handy aspect of religion that so many people assume that by luck their family ended up in the proper tradition, so that by the luck of their birth they happen to be in the true faith–whether they be catholic, protestant, muslim, jew, hindu, or what have you.
First of all, Hoosier 1st, I want my wedding ring back! It disappeared yesterday, and I know it is all your fault because gays can marry! It was cute when you stole chuckcentral’s socks-but this is going way too far, man. I mean it can’t be my fault that I’ve lost weight to the point of weighing less than when I got married 16 years ago. It’s not my fault that my fingers thinner than they’ve ever been. It’s not my fault that I probably should have had it resized. It is the fault of gays for ruining the sanctity of my marriage;-) And mom, since you’re probably reading this, I’m 99% certain it fell off in the house.
So, being that it wasn’t about me that day, I demonstrated a bit of social grace and didn’t make a stink among those who had invited me into their presence in that setting.
I’ve been thinking about this some more, and that was the right thing to do. But the point I want to make-to all-is that if you don’t believe what you are saying, then don’t say it. It would have been completely appropriate for you to have stood there silently. Words have power. No, not magical, voodooey power-but they tell the world who and what we are. I am a psych major, and am in a vocation that deals with words. I’m married to a woman who has two degrees and four majors in english, journalism, classical studies and linguistics-and a masters in linguistics. She teaches interpersonal communications at a Lutheran university. Maybe for that reason I’m hyper-sensitive to the integity of how we choose to use our words. Or maybe it’s my left-handed, right-brained, global thinking…
It also would have been appropriate for you to remain in the pew during communion, because the statement you made is that you believe that Christ is truly present “in, with, and under the elements of bread and wine.” I know you don’t believe that, but that is the statement you made to all at church.
Don’t get me wrong, I want for people of all faiths-or no faith at all-to feel welcome to be a part of important events in their family/friends lives. You are all welcome to be a part of my worship community any time. But if you don’t believe the words that are written, don’t speak them. And it is fully respectful and appropriate to not take part in any part of the service that goes against your belief system. No one will think any differently of you-and if they do, well, that’s their problem, isn’t it? I regularly have at least two or three people a weekend who choose not to commune for various reasons. I don’t ask why-if they want to tell me they will.
I’ll step off my soap box now…
Going back to what you said in your last post, I don’t see where option A and B have to be mutually exclusive. You are right that society has evolved greatly-especially in the last hundred or so years-as far as understanding our world and what is in it. When I talk about Genesis in my confirmation class, I say that the main point in the creation story is that God created the world and all that is in it. Then I have a conversation with the kids about how science is now doing some wonderful things to explain and fill in those pieces that weren’t understood at the time the Bible was written. I challenge them to listen to their teachers, and to be amazed at how our world has evolved-at how dinosaurs once ruled the earth and are no more, at how the continents moved and shifted, at how islands are still being created through lava flows. I have no problem whatsoever reconciling Genesis and Darwin with one another. In many respects when I read creation stories from different cultures/faiths/times (and lets face it, all creation stories have the same basics to them-I will not refute that-and some of my favorites come from the Native American cultures), I’m amazed at how they got the basics right-all the way down to the fact that we are relative newcomers in the grand scheme of things. I love reading about new scientific discoveries. Bet you didn’t know this about me, but I came to the understanding that life starts at conception not from faith but from science. Freshman year in college was not a strong faith time for me. I remember sitting in Jordan 124-bet you remember the lecture hall-and hearing the prof talk about conception. The way he described it was purely scientific-not an ounce of faith-talk in there. But from that moment on I was convicned that life starts at conception (not viable life, mind you, but life just the same); and that was cemented more when I saw my oldest son’s ultrasound at six weeks, and his heart was already beating. For this reason you will not find me out with the typical pro-lifers. First of all they don’t respect all life-most are squarly for the death penalty-and certainly don’t respect the life of a woman who’s health is in danger, or who has been raped or abused. And most are against birth control-go figure! They also are unwilling to deal with the social consequences of the extra lives they want to bring into the world. I don’t like abortion, but don’t agree the right way to end it is through legislation and making it illegal. The way to end most abortions is to educate (from teaching everything from abstinence-I think it it fuly appropriate to tell kids to wait until their emotional maturity catches up to what their bodies are doing-to all forms of preventing pregnancy) so that pregnancy doesn’t happen in the first place. Don’t make it illegal; make it unnecessary. But this is really another topic for another day; which does show how both faith and science have shaped my life.
I could go on and on with how I’m glad that we live in the here and now and fully expose myself to all aspects that our world has to teach us.
Heck, I even told my congregation a few weeks ago not to listen to Jesus when he says, “Only those who are sick need a physician!” I told them that we should be glad that God has gifted doctors with the knowledge they have and should take full advantage of it! And on a personal note I’m glad that there are psychiatrists out there who can help me deal with the chemical depression I know was genetically passed down from grandmother. And for sun lights that help me deal with SAD. And for ritalin that helps my second oldest with his ADHD.
I’d love to go hiking in the mountains with you sometime and experience the world with you. I know my wife would support me in doing that-she wouldn’t want to do this with me and she’s glad we’re communicating in this way. And some day our sons (and yes, even my daughter) will be big enough to be able to experience this wonder with us. Didn’t know that the mountains in New England were formed originally by Africa slamming into that region. I seem to recall that Africa slammed into South America, but have now learned something new.
As far as my statement about Christians destroying the church; I stand by it. I know for you the biggest challenge of your vocation is people coming to you and not following your medical advice which they just paid for. Mine is this. People choose petty and small reasons to keep God in a box where he is nice and safe and doing exactly what they want him to do-and happens to look and act amazingly like them. To go back to the germane topic, which started this all, if people would just admit to themselves that God could actually love gays, then it would open their eyes to the fact that perhaps God could even want for gays to be in committed relationships, where they love one person “’til death do they part.” But that means that God is bigger than us, and most Christians give that part lip service. One of my favorite contemporary Lutheran song writers is Ken Medema. He has songs that speak about just this-and I think his words are often lost on those who want to be small-minded. And in both of our vocations it happens because people don’t want to admit they could be wrong. So yes, I think Christians are doing a damn fine job of destroying the church! And it doesn’t have to do as much with Scripture itself as it has to do with how people choose to interpret those words.
I’ll leave the part about what has Lutheranism did since Luther for another time. I have a lot to say about this because one of my favorite topics is history of any kind; and one of my favorite classes in seminary was the history of Lutheranism in America.
It’s late and the computer screen is starting to look like Chinese right now, so I’ll end with this-I want my ring back! I’m serious, Hoosier 1st, I know you know where it is;-)
Yup, the “battle” is over. Same-sex marrage is here to stay, it is just a matter of time before it is national.
I still think the government needs to drop marrage completely and just do civil unions with no restrictions other than (one) human at a time.
Let the churches work out the people that can get married there. I say this as someone that would oppose it at my church, but really don’t see any point in making laws about my faith.
I’m o.k. with churches not performing the ceremonies based on their faith. Some will, and some won’t; and for some congregants the particular church’s treatment of gays will be a determining factor in whether they want to be part of that particular flock.
Of course, before too long, you start getting into those annoying questions like, if the church is getting government funding for faith based programs, can they discriminate against gays?
If the church discriminates against gay marriage, does it lose its tax exempt status? It would be best to make all marriages a civil matter, and let churches do as they please with their ceremonies.
Their tax exempt status does not require equal treatment, does it?
The church(es) make their own decisions about many things that would not be allowed in business and government, such as what positions women may have in the church leadership, or hiring based on a person’s faith.
However, I don’t understand what that has to do with tax exempt or government funding for programs. If a church does a job that the government would like done, why can’t the government help pay them to do it?
Yeah, there’s a big difference between where some of us church leaders are with this issue and where our congregations are with it. I’m waiting for the barrage of e-mails from my more conservative members about how the “big one” should be hitting California any day;-)
Yeah, I’m still trying to figure out how all the gays got into Columbus and caused all our flooding (JOKE!)
Seriously, if God dealt Karma, explain why both Obama and Bush are alive. One of the two must be pissing him off, right?
Speaking of the silly idea of Karma, I have a great Dilbert “dogbert” comic on my door right now: “I beleive in Karma. That means I can do bad things to you and assume you deserve it!”
My great legal mind (lol) tells me that a church isn’t liable for discrimination against gay marriage rights denied as long as a church wedding isn’t the exclusive way to get married.
The concept of karma has been permanently tainted for me because of its central role in “My Name is Earl.” I love the show, but because of it karma = Carson Daly.
Is there some kind of rule that courts can only give an ok to gay marriage a few months before presidential elections?
T,
I hit the sacredmarriage.com (think that was the correct name) website yesterday; the link was offered through one of the newspaper articles that spoke about this. Following the timeline they laid out, it just happened to take this long for it to work through the California court systems. It is just coincidence that it hit during the summer before the presidential election.
Gay people stole my socks.
chuckcentral,
Now you have nothing to wear over your peanus (how my kids say it) when you go streaking;-)
Have you checked out his other stuff? Myspace Music of Oded Gross. Parts of “My Bubble” hit pretty close to home.
I agree that same-sex marriage will eventually be nationwide, but as a gay Hoosier, I hardly think I’ll live long enough to see it here. (BTW, my birthday was Monday – #45– 5 years past gay death.)
But I do happen to have chuckcentral’s sock — still hoping he’ll stop by for dinner, such a cutie. And yeah, I was actually in Bloomington the day the flooding started, so I coulda caused it. I mean, I took and REALLY long shower.. and.. oops!
When I was at IU I remember being flooded more than once. Guess it was your fault all along;-)
I’ll hit the big 4-0 next year. Congrats on breaking the life expectancy; something tells me that curve is on its way back up.
Just judging from attitudes of high school students I taught until the mid-90’s Id say the widespread virulent anti-gay fear people my age were raised with is diminishingly prevalent starting at about 40 yrs old and younger. I give credit to MTV as a major cultural influence in 80’s,perhaps much less now.But at one point point it was the the most consistent source of social tolerance views which all teens widely watched.I viewed MTV in era as predominantly upbeat and positive.
When I retired from the classroom,the Simpsons and Seinfeld were 2 influential social mores voices of teens.That brought a certain layer of nastiness and irreverence to our social views,which are still prevalent,imo.
So my take is that the Reagan era ironically brought us more liberal social views ( no thanks to Reagan himself) but more conservative economic views.
Yeah, Lou, I teach still today and I believe that even the most conservative kids don’t care if gays get married. I mean, it doesn’t affect them. I always say that if the over 65 set would just not vote, this country would become more like Northern Europe.
I wonder if it was a national watershed or just a personal watershed with respect to views about gays that happened in the late 80s/early 90s.
For my part, I thought I was anti-gay going into college in the early 90s. Then I met someone who I came to find out was gay, decided he was a good guy, and decided I needed to rethink my outlook on the subject.
I lost my anti-gay attitude about when I discovered the evidence for existence of a god was falling below my personal threshold for belief. Without the dusty old texts to guide me, I fell back on criteria like is anybody being harmed, do opponents of certain actions really have any reasonable reason to care absent their religious attitudes, etc.
Casting aside religion is like taking blinders off. It becomes clear that people will be ambivalent about environmental rape, “collateral damage” in war, social injustice, etc., yet be consumed by anger/concern/resentment about whether two consenting adults somewhere (anywhere) are engaged in sex, and in what manner. Absent the excuse of religion, such concern just seems silly in the abstract, and in specific cases where peoples’ private lives are disrupted, it just seems obscene.
Also, life’s too short. A dear friend died suddenly a few years ago, and it really cemented my attitude toward happiness. Basically if something will bring you joy, and doesn’t cause grief to someone else, go do it now, while you can. If you find someone with the same notion, go get happy, and the uninvited “concerned” bystanders can go piss off.
At some point I heard a proponent of one religion or another say something that is undoubtedly true: “Tomorrow is not promised.”
You can’t act as if tomorrow absolutely won’t happen, but you do need to take advantage of today to the extent you can without seriously compromising tomorrow.
Someone else said, “If you know what life is worth, you will look for yours on earth.”
T-Question, do you promise to live up to the vows you made to raise your son in the faith at his baptism this past weekend? I heard you answer out loud to the affirmative. I also heard you confess the words of the Apostles’ Creed out loud. As a pastor I should have asked you that question BEFORE the service. And as your brother and uncle of “baby” T I ask it now. (Which BTW I was very honored to be a part of the service and thought it was cool that he was baptized in the same font you and I were baptized in.)
I’m still very much a person of faith and came to the understanding that gays in committed relationships are the same as everyone else. There are those of us who choose to live in this tension and help the church move forward with these issues. The Bible also has a lot to say about how we should treat slaves and women that I disagree with, too. I think this is just a part of how God’s relationship evolves with society over time. Which is why I’m glad our folks chose to remain ELCA Lutherans, because at least we’re willing to admit there are contadictions in the Bible and have scholarly debates about what this means in today’s society.
I was pretty anti-gay when I started college. Okay, I was probably pretty hostile to be honest. My folks had a number of gay men who worked for them who were beyond promiscuous-it was like a gay Peyton Place around there; guys stealing partners from one another, etc. I remember one guy having a tearful conversation with my mom because he realized he needed to be tested for AIDS (he had no idea how many partners he’d been with since the 1960’s and it was now the late’80’s) but was scared to know the truth. He later was and found out he was negative! I thought this was the “norm” for gays.
When I went to IU, the first week I was there the student newspaper had a huge front-page article about how every other stall door in Ballintine Hall had to be removed to stop anonymous sex from happening there. To top it off June Reinisch (the very embattled leader of the Kinsey Institute) had a daily article from the Kinsey Institute in the paper! This boy was wondering what sort of depraved place he had chosen for college!
Then I met friends who were wrestling with their sexuality. They were good people going through tough times. I had straight friends who were open-minded. I had a friend my senior year who was mortified that a female friend (who was drunk at the time) “outed” him. I later assured him that I figured out he was gay the first time I met him, and still chose to be his friend. He wanted to go to a campus gay support meeting but was scared to go on his own. So I went with him. (This was in the early ’90’s when tight jeans were the norm. I was later told by the group I was welcome back any time, but should wear looser jeans in the future! Guess that was a compliment-I took it as such!) As I got to know Josh more, I learned that his biggest problem was not being gay, but that he was SEVERELY biploar, and self-medicating.
Also as I became active in campus ministry on the local, regional, and national level, I met friends of the Lutheran faith who were “out.” One of them would make a great pastor, except for the fact that he is unwilling to live up to the current expectations the church has for rostered leaders.
I was in seminary when this issue was really hitting the front burner in the church. It was a great time to be in graduate school. And the seminary I chose had the most diverse faculty in our nation. So I heard all sides of the debate.
My first call was with a senior pastor who is ultra-fundie. I had an idea what I was getting myself into at the first interview when he told me that the local “Lesbyterian” church had recently blessed the relationship of their gay organist and his partner. I accepted the call because I genuinely loved the congregation and its’ people when I met them, and chose not to let Dennis cahnge my views. I chose to remain silent around him about my views. However, I did end up doing most of the counseling for the “closeted” members of the congregation. I remember how Dennis counseled a mom when she found her son had been “cruising” websites with pictures of nude men. He basically told her her son was going to hell. I straightened her out, and told her to love her son no matter what, and that he needed her love and support. Found out from the associate pastor who came after me that she had to come in on her day-off to go to the hospital when the kid needed emergency surgery, because Dennis wouldn’t go there knowing the kid’s partner would be there. And his parents were there with him too as he faced surgery.
I also had a very close friend in the synod who was an ELCA pastor in the closet. After the 2005 assebly he decided he was getting into his mid-30’s and didn’t want to date behind closed doors anymore. Since the policy for rostered leaders hadn’t changed, he became an Episcopal priest. I’m sad about that because he was one of my closest friends in the synod and a damn fine pastor. And I think his congregation knew he was gay and still loved him-and this congregation was in rural Kentucky!
I have two lesbian couples in my current congregation. They know where I stand. They also know that my current congregation is far more conservative than me (that is a downside of wanting to remain in my home state-very few liberal congregations. I’d love to some day serve the congregation in Bloomington-it would be ideal for me in so many ways!). I was upfront with them about that before they became active in the congregational life. I visited with one of the women yesterday. She is in the hospital in Chicago after her fifth surgery (in three years) to have a mucous-type cancer scraped from her abdomen. She’s 42 and just found out she now has one tumor that is inoperable. So if you pray, keep Shari in your prayers. Her partner just successfully fought breast cancer this winter.
Sorry for the dissertation, but I just don’t buy the policy that you have to walk away from faith to be able to accept gays. Us Lutherans (at least of the ELCA variety) are not afraid to wrestle with these issues and know that the Bible is less than perfect. And yes, T, Nina’s death affected me in the same manner, and may have also affected some of my views on gays. With her parents so active with the opera company, her family was very open to gays.
I do; because I know my eternal life was secured for me in my baptism-a one-time deal that happened nearly 40 years ago. But nothing, not even faith, can add to the number of days I have here on earth.
BTW I also worry about the “health” of the environment, the deaths that are happening to our troops, the affects the economy is having on the poor and now middle class, social injustice, etc. Faith does not remove me from those issues. God doesn’t want me to ignore his creation.
And Doug, I agree with both you and the Christian leader you quoted. We need to live life as if tomorrow is not promised (who knows, there may be a bus out there with my name all over it today) BUT that doesn’t negate us from needing to plan for tomorrow happening!
Mom said it was happening with or without me. I was there for him. He’s enjoying the church experience at this point, and as he matures, he will have to figure out these things for himself.
The family thought baptism was appropriate for him, and I didn’t have any strong objections. If he was going to go through the ceremony, he deserved to have both parents there. That day was about him, and not about me, so I recited the still-memorized words of the service as a courtesy to him, and the congregation. He seemed to enjoy it, and I’m glad he could do it and that I could see it. I don’t know if you know this, but atheism is sort of frowned upon. I don’t shrink away from my lack of belief–but I also know that broadcasting that fact during a religious ceremony in a church isn’t really all that productive. So, being that it wasn’t about me that day, I demonstrated a bit of social grace and didn’t make a stink among those who had invited me into their presence in that setting.
No one said you have to chuck faith in order to be accepting of gays. It just happened as a natural consequence for me, for the reasons noted.
Just sorry-and a bit sad-to see you walk away from the faith of your family, that’s all. It makes me angry that bigots in the faith cause this kind of damage in a person’s life. But you answered my question in a way I feel very comfortable with. And I will do my best to be a guiding force in his life, and yes, let him ultimately choose when he gets older.
You just touched a nerve with me about how Christians are trying their best to destroy the church-that’s all.
Looks like we need to sit down with a beer or two sometime and talk about this-not “baby” T- but our different world views.
Christians aren’t trying to destroy the church. They’re just guided by hand-me-down beliefs and moral codes that are rooted in a tradition whose foundation rests on faith, rather than evidence. That tends to limit the degree of change that takes place. It leads to situations where we celebrate dust-ups in the church that happened hundreds of years ago. Really has much happened in Lutheranism since Luther acted up?
I didn’t “walk away” from anything, really. I walked toward a more simplified life that doesn’t wrestle needlessly with the fact that I don’t have faith.
Look, there are things in this world that can be known by evidence. Despite what some peoples’ faith will tell them, the earth is billions of years old. I know I don’t have an argument with you on this point. But I was on some five thousand foot summits in New Hampshire last week that used to be under the ocean, then got covered (when Africa collided with New England) and became metamorphic rock, then got exposed again by erosion. So I have visible evidence of the timescale of the planet, with my own eyes. If someone has faith that all of that happened in thousands of years, then I feel sorry for that person because they’re really blinded to the true wonder of it all by clinging to silly, observably false fantasy.
That’s just one example. But given that humans have existed in roughly our present form for tens of thousands of years, at the very tail end of a much longer history of life on earth, you can believe a few things. One, you can believe like I do that we’re just now (in the last few thousand years) attaining the collective experience, intellect, free time, and technological ability to really have a clue what’s going on. But previously we took our best guess about it, and thought some mighty being or beings constructed it all. It was a fine hypothesis way back when, but it doesn’t work for me. Or you can believe that after billions of years of life, suddenly all was revealed to some people in a tribe in the Middle East two thousand years ago, people were given understanding of it all, and now we just have to pass that down for eternity.
It’s not just that I think logically that option A is more reasonable. It’s that to believe option B, you have to have faith. You have to have this belief that exists in a vacuum, pretty much. When told that a page of text has a supernatural origin, you have to buy that notion. If you can’t do that, option B isn’t for you. And really, at your core, you can’t choose to believe and can’t effectively just fake it. Either you believe or you don’t. And I don’t.
If you don’t have faith, you don’t see the act of ceasing to do the rituals as any kind of “walking away”.
I consider myself to be joyous and full of wonder at the world around us, so I don’t see a reason for sadness at all. I don’t worry that my lack of faith will banish me from heaven or banish me to hell, because I don’t believe those things exist. So don’t be sad about me, I’m doing fine. Regarding “traditions of the family”, it’s a handy aspect of religion that so many people assume that by luck their family ended up in the proper tradition, so that by the luck of their birth they happen to be in the true faith–whether they be catholic, protestant, muslim, jew, hindu, or what have you.
First of all, Hoosier 1st, I want my wedding ring back! It disappeared yesterday, and I know it is all your fault because gays can marry! It was cute when you stole chuckcentral’s socks-but this is going way too far, man. I mean it can’t be my fault that I’ve lost weight to the point of weighing less than when I got married 16 years ago. It’s not my fault that my fingers thinner than they’ve ever been. It’s not my fault that I probably should have had it resized. It is the fault of gays for ruining the sanctity of my marriage;-) And mom, since you’re probably reading this, I’m 99% certain it fell off in the house.
I’ve been thinking about this some more, and that was the right thing to do. But the point I want to make-to all-is that if you don’t believe what you are saying, then don’t say it. It would have been completely appropriate for you to have stood there silently. Words have power. No, not magical, voodooey power-but they tell the world who and what we are. I am a psych major, and am in a vocation that deals with words. I’m married to a woman who has two degrees and four majors in english, journalism, classical studies and linguistics-and a masters in linguistics. She teaches interpersonal communications at a Lutheran university. Maybe for that reason I’m hyper-sensitive to the integity of how we choose to use our words. Or maybe it’s my left-handed, right-brained, global thinking…
It also would have been appropriate for you to remain in the pew during communion, because the statement you made is that you believe that Christ is truly present “in, with, and under the elements of bread and wine.” I know you don’t believe that, but that is the statement you made to all at church.
Don’t get me wrong, I want for people of all faiths-or no faith at all-to feel welcome to be a part of important events in their family/friends lives. You are all welcome to be a part of my worship community any time. But if you don’t believe the words that are written, don’t speak them. And it is fully respectful and appropriate to not take part in any part of the service that goes against your belief system. No one will think any differently of you-and if they do, well, that’s their problem, isn’t it? I regularly have at least two or three people a weekend who choose not to commune for various reasons. I don’t ask why-if they want to tell me they will.
I’ll step off my soap box now…
Going back to what you said in your last post, I don’t see where option A and B have to be mutually exclusive. You are right that society has evolved greatly-especially in the last hundred or so years-as far as understanding our world and what is in it. When I talk about Genesis in my confirmation class, I say that the main point in the creation story is that God created the world and all that is in it. Then I have a conversation with the kids about how science is now doing some wonderful things to explain and fill in those pieces that weren’t understood at the time the Bible was written. I challenge them to listen to their teachers, and to be amazed at how our world has evolved-at how dinosaurs once ruled the earth and are no more, at how the continents moved and shifted, at how islands are still being created through lava flows. I have no problem whatsoever reconciling Genesis and Darwin with one another. In many respects when I read creation stories from different cultures/faiths/times (and lets face it, all creation stories have the same basics to them-I will not refute that-and some of my favorites come from the Native American cultures), I’m amazed at how they got the basics right-all the way down to the fact that we are relative newcomers in the grand scheme of things. I love reading about new scientific discoveries. Bet you didn’t know this about me, but I came to the understanding that life starts at conception not from faith but from science. Freshman year in college was not a strong faith time for me. I remember sitting in Jordan 124-bet you remember the lecture hall-and hearing the prof talk about conception. The way he described it was purely scientific-not an ounce of faith-talk in there. But from that moment on I was convicned that life starts at conception (not viable life, mind you, but life just the same); and that was cemented more when I saw my oldest son’s ultrasound at six weeks, and his heart was already beating. For this reason you will not find me out with the typical pro-lifers. First of all they don’t respect all life-most are squarly for the death penalty-and certainly don’t respect the life of a woman who’s health is in danger, or who has been raped or abused. And most are against birth control-go figure! They also are unwilling to deal with the social consequences of the extra lives they want to bring into the world. I don’t like abortion, but don’t agree the right way to end it is through legislation and making it illegal. The way to end most abortions is to educate (from teaching everything from abstinence-I think it it fuly appropriate to tell kids to wait until their emotional maturity catches up to what their bodies are doing-to all forms of preventing pregnancy) so that pregnancy doesn’t happen in the first place. Don’t make it illegal; make it unnecessary. But this is really another topic for another day; which does show how both faith and science have shaped my life.
I could go on and on with how I’m glad that we live in the here and now and fully expose myself to all aspects that our world has to teach us.
Heck, I even told my congregation a few weeks ago not to listen to Jesus when he says, “Only those who are sick need a physician!” I told them that we should be glad that God has gifted doctors with the knowledge they have and should take full advantage of it! And on a personal note I’m glad that there are psychiatrists out there who can help me deal with the chemical depression I know was genetically passed down from grandmother. And for sun lights that help me deal with SAD. And for ritalin that helps my second oldest with his ADHD.
I’d love to go hiking in the mountains with you sometime and experience the world with you. I know my wife would support me in doing that-she wouldn’t want to do this with me and she’s glad we’re communicating in this way. And some day our sons (and yes, even my daughter) will be big enough to be able to experience this wonder with us. Didn’t know that the mountains in New England were formed originally by Africa slamming into that region. I seem to recall that Africa slammed into South America, but have now learned something new.
As far as my statement about Christians destroying the church; I stand by it. I know for you the biggest challenge of your vocation is people coming to you and not following your medical advice which they just paid for. Mine is this. People choose petty and small reasons to keep God in a box where he is nice and safe and doing exactly what they want him to do-and happens to look and act amazingly like them. To go back to the germane topic, which started this all, if people would just admit to themselves that God could actually love gays, then it would open their eyes to the fact that perhaps God could even want for gays to be in committed relationships, where they love one person “’til death do they part.” But that means that God is bigger than us, and most Christians give that part lip service. One of my favorite contemporary Lutheran song writers is Ken Medema. He has songs that speak about just this-and I think his words are often lost on those who want to be small-minded. And in both of our vocations it happens because people don’t want to admit they could be wrong. So yes, I think Christians are doing a damn fine job of destroying the church! And it doesn’t have to do as much with Scripture itself as it has to do with how people choose to interpret those words.
I’ll leave the part about what has Lutheranism did since Luther for another time. I have a lot to say about this because one of my favorite topics is history of any kind; and one of my favorite classes in seminary was the history of Lutheranism in America.
It’s late and the computer screen is starting to look like Chinese right now, so I’ll end with this-I want my ring back! I’m serious, Hoosier 1st, I know you know where it is;-)