I Get Letters About Gay Marriage

...sometimes, really frustrating letters.

Everybody and their dog knows that marriage equality is on the Washington State ballot this year (Referendum 74). The statehouse approved, and Governor Gregoire signed, a bill legalizing marriage equality, and enough signatures were gained to refer the bill to the November ballot for a popular vote--ergo, a "yes" vote is a vote for marriage equality, a "no" vote is a vote against it (as opposed to, say, Proposition 8 in California in 2008, where a "no" vote was a vote for marriage equality).

Because I'm a pastor, more than a few people have taken it upon themselves to divine my political viewpoints, which I tend to find alternately entertaining and worrisome.

Never, off the top of my head, has anyone automatically thought of me as progressive simply because I'm a pastor. Once they learn more about me--where I went to school, the theology I teach, etc., they realize that I'm not a run-of-the-mill stereotype. But still, it's frustrating.

Witness, then, a letter I received earlier from the Alliance Defense Fund, and which has been stewing in my desk drawer for months, which reads, in part:

"Dear Pastor: I write to encourage you and your church to support...protecting traditional marriage in Washington. ...It is not enough to simply acknowledge that churches are legally allowed to support (traditional marriage). Every church in Washington should... 

 Churches must lead the charge on this issue as they led the charge in the past on the great moral issues of history such as independence, slavery, women's suffrage, ending child labor, and civil rights. Churches and pastors have always been at the forefront of the great moral issues confronting our culture. They have never been afraid to stand for righteousness and to urge morality in culture. And today should be no different. 

Churches in Washington have a tremendous opportunity to lead the charge to protect marriage. Churches in other states have not been as fortunate. There is nothing legally preventing churches and pastors from standing together to support and protect marriage in Washington."

Why have I been sitting on this letter for months? In part because if I blogged about it when I first got it, it would be gone from memory and consciousness by the time November 6 rolled around, but also because when I first received it, I hadn't yet been here a full year and was still feeling out the scope and scale of my own moral authority as a pastor here.

Plus, since my sermon not this Sunday (the 30th) but the next (October 7th) will tackle the stereotype of the church being a homophobic institution, consider this entry a rollout to that particular sermon. 

First and foremost, I will not be using my sermon to telling my audience how to vote. To be plain, I think it's unethical to have a captive audience and tax-exempt status and use the trappings of worship to further my own political agenda. Just because the above-quoted letter says it's legal to do doesn't make it any less unethical.

But with my blog, something that I explicitly disclaim as only representative of my views and not of the church, and something that exists outside my actual Sunday pulpit, I have fewer such reservations.

I will be voting yes on November 6 for Referendum 74, which is a vote for marriage equality. And if Referendum 74 passes, I will obey the law and treat same-sex couples who come to me seeking marriage the same as heterosexual couples.

More to the point, I was galled to see an organization use instances of affirming people's rights (again: "independence, slavery, women's suffrage, ending child labor, and civil rights") as a justification for instead denying people's rights. In all of those instances, yes, many in the church stood up for the oppressed and the outcast and the exploited.

But I would say two things: First, it is important to remember that not all of us did. I am so very, very proud of the stands of Christianity that have been ahead of the curve on human rights. But it isn't all of us, not yet.

Second, all of those instances represent the church being ahead of the curve, so to speak. Not behind the curve, which is exactly how we are perceived now on same-sex rights. I'm reasonably certain that 40-60 years from now (the same amount of time between the present day and the civil rights movements of the 50's and 60's), opponents of same-sex marriage will be thought of the same way as segregationists are now--that they were wrong. 

And, quite simply, I think it is the right thing to do.

I surely know the Scriptural injunctions that discuss same-sex intercourse--and those I will wrestle with in my sermon on the 7th.

But I'm also not about to see the church I love, that has illuminated the world for two thousand years, fall on the wrong side of history again because we cannot bear the thought of monogamous same-sex couples being married. We're better than that.

And more importantly, God's better than that.

Yours in Christ,
Eric