August 8, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

This past Thursday, the Los Angeles Times ran a story from Orange County on a  Christian bikers group—you know, those people who wear lots of black leather gear and have fierce tattoos and drive enormous, intimidating motorcycles which make a lot of noise.

But this article said a Christian bikers group, known as the “Set Free Soldiers”, describing themselves as “a group of men who love Jesus and love to ride hard”  was founded by an ex-convict and ex-drug addict, Phil Aguilar over 25 years ago, after he became a Christian in prison.

This isn’t exactly my cup of tea (but then I drive a Prius, more conservatively than any other car I’ve had, to maximize my mileage). But I figure, like a lot of folks, well maybe they can reach people that ordinary churches can’t.

Steven Sawyer’s long-haired, tattooed Jesus.

The story wasn’t about this unusual ministry to ex-felons and ex-druggies, however.  The story was about seven members of the Set Free Soldiers being arrested on suspicion of attempted murder. Aguilar is being held on $1 million bail and charged with conspiracy to commit murder. All this after a double stabbing and a nasty brawl with some of the Hells Angels in a bar in Newport Beach that required 150 officers, including SWAT teams and Federal drug agents, to round up.

It sounds like a ”B movie” script, with the “biker soldiers of God” in a do-or-die struggle with the “biker soldiers of Satan.” Except, this is no black hat and white hat drama.  According to the Times, a neighbor of the Set Free Soldiers’ leader in Anaheim described the group as having a history of intimidating the neighbors and having taken over the neighborhood.  For the past several years, apparently, some of the Set Free Soldiers have even been carrying guns. 

This is a Christian bikers group? These are men who love Jesus?

LA Times caption:  Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times

An officer stands watch after an early morning raid by the Anaheim  Police department on several homes in Anaheim occupied by the Set Free Soldiers Christian motorcycle group.

I cannot help musing over some of our own times’ most-fun rhetorical questions. What would Jesus ride? What would Jesus wear? Who would Jesus intimidate? What kind of weapon would Jesus carry?

I think this all makes the point that even Christian people are not clear on the concept. There are still a lot of goody-good Christians out there, who are staid, conservative, boring, and digging in their heels against every social change.  Then there are liberal Christians who embrace every social change, buy into the latest fads, and have nearly forgotten that the Scriptures call us to self-discipline and self-denial, and expect Christians to take up the cross and follow Jesus. And there are Christians whose worship services are indistinguishable from a rock concert, and the decibels would deafen anybody over 30.  And there are Christians who still try to retreat from the world, chant ancient-sounding music in monotones, and keep their hands clean from all the grime of this crazy world.

Who are we, and what is our one, single, clear message?  Gay and lesbian people aren’t the only ones who think the Christians are not clear on the concept.  There are millions of estranged people out there who are glad to get away from ours and every other religion because our spiritual teaching is so muddled, or so unspiritual, or so worthless in the real world today with its huge and pressing problems, as to be part of the problem, not part of the solutions.

It takes enormous courage to remain open and loving, liberal and steadfast in what we believe.  It takes more than slippery-slope thinking to be able to affirm same-gender marriage, read the Bible seriously but not literally, give one’s heart and time and resources to total strangers, and try to follow Jesus.  To walk the walk, not just talk the talk.

After all, it’s about Christ, not about us.  Not our prejudices, our politics, our outfits, our bikes, our tats, or our tastes and distastes.  To be a Christian today is going to require all of us to unload our past views and rethink our approach to living faithfully in our times.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Bible & Interpretation, Fundamentalism, Public Affairs, Spirituality | Print | No Comments »

August 7, 2008 by PD.

Lutherans and Catholics remain far apart on many religious issues, and the reality of same-sex marriage in California is proving to be yet another one of those issues.

On August 1, the Catholic Bishops in California endorsed Proposition 8 — the proposed constitutional amendment that would take away civil rights form gay and lesbian people which the Supreme Court has established.  it was not enough for the Catholic Bishops to oppose same-sex marriage on theological principle — according to their medieval theology which includes the teaching that marriage is a sacrament — but no, they had to actually endorse the right-wing efforts to deny civil rights and roll them back.

So the Catholic Church in California contributes to the muddle which has been created by other “Religious Reich” folks — ripping into the wall of separation between church and state.  The Catholic leaders in California are trying to tear this wall down, by imposing fundamentalist, medieval Roman Catholic views of marriage on all citizens of this state.

Lutherans have so far avoided such bad politics and bad theology.  The three ELCA Lutheran Bishops in California have issued advisory letters to their pastors which discuss and wrestle with the issue of same-sex marriage, but they remained silent about Proposition 8.  In addition, the Lutheran Office of Public Policy has decided to take no position on Proposition 8, even after a face-to-face discussion with one of the Lutheran bishops.

While the national ELCA Bishops in 1996 said that marriage is between a man and a woman, it was indeed only that, when the statement was drafted.  Such a statement is of course no longer accurate, because “gay marriage” does indeed exist, whether Christians like it or not.

Interestingly, the most conservative of California’s three Lutheran bishops, the Rev. Murray Fink in Orange County, took the trouble to cited Martin Luther’s views of marriage, in his advisory letter.  Finck, who was present at the LOPP Policy Council meeting on July 26, said in his letter,

From the time of the Reformation, Lutherans have regarded marriage primarily as a civil matter. Martin Luther said, “Marriage is outside the church, is a civil matter, and therefore should belong to the government” (Table Talk No. 4716, Luther’s Works, Volume 54 [Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1967]).

So Lutherans divide with Catholics on marriage precisely where they did in the Reformation era 500 years ago.  Although Luther supported the Christian family, and was himself proably what we would classify as “homophobic” today (he repeatedly condemned the “vile practices” which were going on in monasteries at the time without explaining them), he believed that ultimately civil marriage was irrelevant to the church and its Gospel.  He believed priests should be able to get married — which at the time was against the law. 

In 1519 three priests decided to take Luther’s views seriously, and informed him they were about to be married (to women).  He struggled at first with whether or not to participate by preaching for the nuptial mass.  Only several years later Luther himself decided to marry, still in defiance of Roman Catholic canon law but protected from civil penalties only by the power of local German princes who believed Luther was right and the Catholic church was wrong.

Our own bishop here in Los Angeles, Rev. Dean Nelson, has asked his clergy to inform him and discuss the pastoral conditions in their parishes before performing any same-gender weddings.  While this is a far cry from banning the pastoral participation in such marriages, Nelson’s careful and conservative word to his clergy may be having a chilling effect on some pastors in his jurisdiction.  Personally, I am not in his jurisdiction or under his authority.  His office considers my pulpit to be “vacant” and did not even send me his letter of cautious guidance until it was requested.

I have, of course, performed numerous “blessings” or “holy unions” (without the knowledge or the permission of the ELCA), over the last 20 years.  I have done so with absolute confidence in God’s blessing of these relationships.  But now that same-sex marriage is a reality in California (and Massachusetts, Canada and other European countries), I find it kind of fun that the first actual wedding of two lesbians I conducted, on June 17 in West Hollywood, was of two Roman Catholic women who are very much in love.  They are now happily married in the sight of God and in the records of the State of California.

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Doctrine, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Ecumenical Issues, Ministry, ELCA, Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »

July 21, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

This morning’s Los Angeles Times has a cover story that attempts to explain where the opponents to same-sex marriage in California get their energy. [”Gay Marriage opponents got a surprise boost“.]

Specifically, the Protect Marriage coalition, according to staff writer Jessica Garrison, were highly energized after San Diego’s Mayor Jerry Sanders “switched sides” on the gay marriage debate.

Sanders ran for office in 2005 and made it clear he opposed same-sex marriage. Coming after the marriage blitz in 2004 started by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, Sanders made it clear he opposed such stuff. At the time, it was a remote possibility that the Supreme Court would eventually rule against the voter-approved Proposition 22. But when the San Diego City Council actually approved a symbolic measure endorsing same-sex marriage in September 2007, Sanders did not veto it as expected. Instead gave an emotional 5-minute speech in a press conference in which he explained that he could not do such a thing to one of his own daughters, who, he revealed, is lesbian.

Sanders did what millions of Americans have done: he enlarged his understanding, and changed his personal convictions, based on his own personal and family experience.

The Rev. Dr. Paul Egertson, who is Bishop-Emeritus of the Southwest California Synod of the Lutheran church, had a similar change of heart. Raised in a conservative Norwegian synod, the son of a respected pastor, Paul Egertson is steeped in Lutheran love for God (and I might add, family values). Paul and Shirley (a former Baptist) parented six fine sons. But when their eldest came out as a gay man, the Egertsons worked through the typical modes of self-examination and critical evaluation. Was it something we did wrong? They concluded, well, no. We have six fine sons. Was it something wrong with our eldest? No, he is the most honest and honorable son one could desire to have. What is wrong then?

The “wrong,” they concluded, is neither in nurture or nature but in social and religious values which are prejudicial, fearful and, yes, hateful.

For goodness’ sake, even Vice President Dick Cheney has a lesbian daughter—partnered for 17 years with Heather Poe, and raising a child—of whom he has said that he is proud. Countless Americans have changed their prejudicial views when they realized that they were just that. They have allowed their family experience to enlarge their values and change their social and political opinions.

What is the Protect Marriage coalition trying to protect, then? Certainly not family values, since family values have prompted so many people to change their views.

But not all. According to Garrison, one of the voices behind the coalition known as Protect Marriage is Gail Knight, the widow of Peter Knight, the state senator who wrote and pushed Proposition 22. What irony, since the Knight’s son is a gay man with whom his father refused to reconcile.

Sadly, from time to time we hear of other such anti-family family values, in which parents write off or disown their own children to build an ideological wall to protect their own philosophical views.

What is that about? It is about ego. It is the certainty that my views are correct (read: I am absolutely right; and since others differ with me, therefore others are wrong) and my child is not correct. Psychologically, it comes out of disavowing one’s own parenting—ashamed to have a gay or lesbian child, the parent does not want to consider the issue of nurture or nature but instead rejects natural love of one’s own children. Or, and I fear this is too true, it is the mind of a parent who fears s/he has failed to bring up the child right, and is now trying to continue parenting the child publicly. Since it isn’t easy or effective to spank one’s little girl or boy in public, launching a statewide drive to spank one’s son for being homosexual is the ultimate retaliation for a child’s imagined disobedience.

At the core of this is shame. To scold and shame, or even reject, one’s own child privately is one thing. To reject one’s own flesh and blood publicly is an effort to shame her or him by bringing together thousands of others to shame him.

Interestingly, the Protect Marriage group and its friends are not too proud of themselves. The “About Us” page on its web site, for example, does not identify one person behind it by name. A “Who Is” search reveals that the site is registered to the “Prop 22 Legal Defense Fund,” but no address is given.  (It’s also interesting that they don’t keep their site up to date!  The About Us page was posted before the California Supreme Court In re: Marriage decision in mid-May!)

Its resource page identifies the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, Liberty Legal Institute and Alliance Defense Fund.

Most of these seem to be run by cadres of corporate men and their attorneys. Perhaps they are all “family men.” But I can’t help wondering if the best way to protect one’s family is to not to fight the imagined demons of the liberal world out there, but to protect one’s family. Men, do you want to protect marriage? Then buy your wife flowers—often—and tell her you love her. And actually listen to her when she talks.

So I’m still having trouble understanding family values which means—in general— “hurray for families”—but in particular, “hurray for my family, but you don’t deserve to have a family.” Where does such hatred come from?

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Lesbian/Gay Marriage, LGBT Rights, Public Affairs | Print | No Comments »

July 11, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

This week I am back from “Hearts on Fire” in San Francisco, and I am charged up about the truth of the Gospel. (Bush Co. would say “truthiness” I think.) But at the same time weighed down by the almost-daily news of some fundamentalist or other ranting about gay and lesbian people going to hell. They keep doing this, more or less successfully among their own constituency, because they insist that gay people are possessed by lust, not love, that we choose to be evil, that we corrupt little children, that we can’t be monogamous, and that the cure for homosexuality is to accept Jesus as our “personal” Lord and Savior. None of their rant, of course, is supported by what the Bible says. But the epistle to the Ephesians that we are saved by grace through faith and not by anything of our own efforts.

Posted in Bible & Interpretation, LGBT Christian, Spirituality | Print | No Comments »

June 26, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

Catholic Church Denounces Move By Cuba To Support LGBT Rights
by The Associated Press

Posted: June 25, 2008 - 8:00 am ET

(Havana) Cuba’s Roman Catholic Church is protesting the communist government’s growing support of gay rights, including a daylong event raising awareness against homophobia and a law allowing sex-change operations.

“Respect for the homosexual person, yes,” said an editorial Tuesday in Palabra Nueva, the monthly magazine of the Archdiocese of Havana. “Promotion of homosexuality, no.”

The editorial signed by magazine director Orlando Marquez referred to activities held May 17 by Cuba’s Sex Education Center, which is directed by Mariela Castro, daughter of President Raul Castro.

The headline for this story from Associated Press caught my eye and freaked me out.

Apparently the Roman Catholic Church —anywhere in the world— is determined to be the last surviving entity which is rabidly anti-homosexual, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that it cannot understand human life, will not grow or change when the Holy Spirit is clearly calling to it, and does not model itself on the compassion and understanding of Jesus.

Isn’t it enough that the Roman Catholic Church in this country has stonewalled virtually every effort to root out clerical abuses, especially child molestation (of both girls and boys), has spent the contents of its offering plates to pay attorneys to defend an indefensible cover-up of corrupt clergy?  Isn’t it enough that Pope Benedict XVI has tld all other Christians in the world that they simply aren’t the church (and by implication cannot be saved) because they are not under his personal authority?  Isn’t it enough that the American Catholic Church —one of the more open-minded pockets in the Roman Cahtolic Church worldwide— has put its energy and money into fighting even the most rudimentary protections for LGBT people under the law?

In another overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country, the Czech Republic, the right wing is still trying to block or harass all efforts to hold a gay pride parade.  According to 365Gay.Com (read it here) yesterday the government banned anti-gay rallies that ultra-right wing groups were trying to hold simultaneously with a pride march in Brno, Moravia.  While the Czech Republic, release from the iron grip of socialism has gotten quite liberal about gay people, it is safe to say the underlying Catholic culture is trying to mobilize against gay rights.  Sadly, hwoever, the churches in Prague are just about as empty as everywhere else in Europe, illustrating how totally out of touch the church is with the 21st century.

What is really appalling/amusing (can those things be said in the same breath?)  is that the Castro regime is itself so backward that it is already fundamentally homophobic.  For years it has only compounded the inherent homophobia/hypocrisy found throughout Latin America.  Yet when it finally decides that it needs to address public policy issues concerning homosexuality in a more honest and just manner, here the Roman Catholic Archdiocese is essentially protesting such justice and in effect calling for continued repression.

In 1981 we sponsored four Cuban refugees in this country, three of them gay men.  I learned first-hand of Castro’s anti-gay policies.  And I learned first-hand that Cuban men typically deny being gay as long as they are the so-called “active” sex partner rather than “passive.”  

At the worst of the Marxist repression, Cuban gay men could be imprisoned merely for being effeminate.  One of the four was extremely effeminate and had been in prison before eing released by Fidel and kicked out of the country directly into an American refugee camp.  His boyfriend, who pleased with us to get him out of the refugee camp, considered himself not to be homosexual because, he said, he was always on top.

No issue, apparently, is too big to prevent denial, hypocrisy or just plain bull!  Alas, the church proves again that it will never willingly step over the line against the surrounding culture.  If Latin America is homophobic, the then church somehow believes it must defend and protect that cultural bigotry. 

Faked picture labeled “Gay Fidel” from this site

 But when society has moved on —and I think this gesture on the part of Raul Castro’s regime indicates that even Cuban society is moving on—why does the church have to drag its feet even more?

— Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Ecumenical Issues, Health, Public Affairs | Print | No Comments »

June 23, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

On the western edge of the vast Los Angeles sprawl is the “colony” of Malibu. A separate city, it is famous for the wealthy people who have houses there, especially high on the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It is equally famous for being overtaken by annual brush fires, or in the rainy season, sitting helplessly as mud- and rock-slides erode its scenic cliffs into the Pacific Ocean below.

This is my “Malibu Metaphor”: Fundamentalist piety is like a rocky promontory overlooking the sea. Those who claim and stand upon the promontory feel superior. They have all the answers. They have enshrined and set the Bible itself in concrete up there. They will go to any lengths to shore up their bluff (pun intended), and they look down on anything below which laps at their stony, hard, solid certainties.

But down below the waves are relentless. These waves represent a greater reality than even a rocky outcropping or high bluff. Because at the base of every promontory the sand collects—formed from rocks which over time broke and fell and were pounded into smaller and small pieces.

It is easy, from the top of a promontory, to suppose that everything at the bottom is “fallen,” like Adam and Eve in the Garden falling into sin. It is easy to suppose that everything “down there” is inferior or worthless—flotsam and jetsam, driftwood and entangling seaweed, oil slicks and shipwrecks. So fundamentalist piety looks down upon everything else, including all other expressions of the Christian faith—all other religions, humanism, doubt, agnosticism— and all those who do not share the stony hilltop with them.

In the physical world off the coast of Malibu, both the rocky cliffs and the sandy shore and waves are all part of the reality. But how people understand the reality will affect where they take their position.

I believe fundamentalism stands on this promontory, clutching a Bible it believes to be inerrant, invincible, a solid rock. But just as surely, it will certainly be eaten away by the waves crashing and splattering at its base. The religious right rejects and despises LGBT people with our “relentless” agenda. They fear that everything we do and are will undercut their bluff, even as they pretend nothing can hurt them.

But the greater reality is the ocean of humanity, in all of its salty, briny diversity —bearing every form of life with the constant change of tides.

The tide has risen. Now the tide is in. The ocean-rich swell of life itself is breaking down the bluff.

For those of us in the LGBT/Christian movement, we know we are in the same soup as all the rest of humanity—those who are doubters, ex-Christians, skeptics, cynics, godless pagans, atheists. It doesn’t bother us, because we stay afloat by grace alone. But all of us, those faithful and those who know no religion have the same relentless force against the lifeless, inert cliffs from which our stony opponents look down on us.

Where do they suppose Jesus would be in this scenario? On the top of the bluff, admiring the sunset of a solid religious establishment? Or in the soup, the mix, the tide of life that is gradually making a sandy shoreline out of the bluff above? The Jesus I see in the Gospels mixed with people who were sinners, tax collectors, Samaritans and foreigners — outsiders, non-practicing Jews, people with debilitating illnesses, the poor and those without hope and without resources. None of them were smug. None were high-placed. And those who started to pick up stones in order to bring down a woman caught in sin were themselves cut down by his withering judgment.

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Fundamentalism, LGBT Christian | Print | No Comments »

June 21, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

Today a friend called back to say that she and her partner had just signed a contract for their wedding and reception site: a beautiful hotel ballroom with a view of the ocean, the Long Beach skyline, and the Queen Mary in the harbor. It sounds fantastic. Her voice practically bubbled right out of the phone.

I am really looking forward to presiding at their wedding. And right away I started writing some language that may wind up as part of the “meditation” or personal remarks I can squeeze into the ceremony. But I am also mindful that her partner’s poor health and recent emergency room visit is what prompted these women to move their wedding date forward.

If only the “religious reich” could understand the depth of love and commitment between people like them, and between me and my partner of 32 years. Two people, period. The sex or gender of the partners doesn’t make any difference, and what they’re all worked up about is that the government form which used to say “Bride” and “Groom” in the boxes now says “Partner A” and “Partner B.”

I think the fundagelicals are obsessed about sex. As if the sex of the partner is the most important thing about marriage. Or the possibility that the partners in a marriage will have ex after they are married. For such people, it’s not about people. It’s not about love. It’s not about fidelity, commitment, about richer or poor, in sickness or in health. For them, it’s about sex.

They can yammer all they want that sex is all about family (that sex belongs only in a heterosexual marriage where babies are the only permissible conclusion to the sex act), but it isn’t. There are all kinds of wonderful families that came together without anyone having sex with anyone.

And they can yammer about sex is wrong unless it’s pat of a lifelong marital commitment, but they refuse to recognize, let alone respect, our lifelong commitments, so that’s just rubbish.

The truth is that they have invented a theology of sex that says it is a reward for good behavior. If you’re good, you get to have sex. If you’re not, you don’t deserve it. And by “good” they now don’t even mean heterosexually married forever. They just mean heterosexual.

At least they won’t be able to castigate us any longer for having sex outside of marriage. We’ll be married men, or married women, and the opinions of the right wing can just be left hanging to twist in the wind, for all we care. If will only be the lesbians and the gay men, at this rate, who will stand up for the “traditional values” like love and commitment.

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Sex, Fundamentalism | Print | No Comments »

June 18, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

There will be no sudden rash of lesbian weddings or gay weddings in our congregation.

That’s not because the leadership or membership are opposed to same-sex weddings. The Council voted, before I was even considered as their pastor, to permit the use of the Sanctuary for same-sex ceremonies. So the commitment of the church is there to see this as a real ministry.

And it would not be because we have no lesbian or gay members. The percentage of the membership has been steadily growing for years, because lesbian and gay people see this church as open, welcoming, supportive and genuine in our commitment to try to follow Jesus.

It would be because there are very few couples—five at last count, another one or two of whom one member of the couple belongs to the church. Largely, our lesbian/gay membership are singles.

Some are happy being single, and aren’t particularly interested in explaining further. Others will make casual comments that the right man or the right woman has not come along. Either they have been unlucky in love, or are perpetually shopping.

I cannot help but wonder, not about these as individuals, but about lesbian and gay people as a group, that we are still so submerged by social rejection, a.k.a. homophobia, that we cannot fall in love or make commitments—or if we’ve made them, are emotionally and spiritually unequipped to care for and feed those relationships to keep them healthy.

Internalized homophobia was a big subject twenty years ago. It has been used to explain everything from male promiscuity to broken relationships to low self-esteem, to the evasive way in which even permanent partners would refer to one another obliquely, to conceal the nature of the relationship. Internalized homophobia and being closeted were cloaked with the same dark covering, stained with the same black ink. Things deeply buried, we theorized, kept us from recognizing our true self-worth, and our entitlement (yes, entitlement) to breathe the same air, inhabit the same planet and pursue happiness the same as everybody else who is living.

Nowadays, there is nothing fresh to be said about internalized homophobia. While the larger society is still wringing its hands about the causes and the effects of sexual orientation (as recently as this past Monday’s Los Angeles Times Health Section), the lesbian and gay community have essentially stopped thinking about. We believed that we had somehow gotten over it, taken care of it, put it aside as a relic of our past along with shag carpeting, oversized playpen sofas and Princess telephones.

What does gay look like?, Los Angeles Times, June 16, by Regina Nuzzo

But the dearth or absence or paucity of love is palpable. At last count there was something nearing 100,000 domestic partnerships registered in the state of California. Domestic partnership more or less resemble marriage (not enough to suffice for the Supreme Court), bestowing a lot of rights and responsibilities on same-gender couples. But only 100,000? California has a population of 30 million, of which we can safely assume 3–10% are gay or lesbian. That would suggest there should be a million domestic partnerships, if we really want to secure our rights and protect our family through legally-recognized relationships.

Where is everybody? Alas, I suspect that 90% of everybody feel unloved or are still looking for love in all the wrong places, or like the long-term unemployed have simply given up looking.

I can only hope that the legal permissibility of marriage will encourage those who are unsure of themselves. It moved me deeply to see the majority opinion of the Supreme Court repeatedly reference the respect of the community as a necessary part of equal recognition for same-sex couples. Maybe the language of respect and honor will begin to undo what deeply-buried internalized homophobia has done to us — at least in the younger generation. We can hope.

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Lesbian/Gay Marriage, LGBT Christian, Public Affairs, Ministry | Print | No Comments »

June 17, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

I just returned from six hours in West Hollywood on the first official day of same-sex marriage. The news has been full of it, and will be even more this evening and tomorrow, but I need to think and react as an individual to what I have seen and heard and done.

I came late to the party, so to speak, since marriage-hopefuls began lining up last night as early as 6:00 p.m. in order to be at the front of the line. (Fortunately, because I promised to bring hand-bells to ring, Councilman Duran’s office got me preferred parking a few steps away.)

The newly-printed marriage licenses were being issued in the large community auditorium in West Hollywood Park, near the intersection where four years ago we reacted with anger when the Supreme Court voided our San Francisco weddings, and where so many other historic moments in our movement have been observed. These new forms now say Partner A and Partner B, rather than Bride and Groom.

The media literally swarmed Star Trek actor George Takei and his partner Brad Altman as they got their application, walked across the large hall to pay their $70.00 and get their license, and proceed to the park itself where they could be married.

The City of West Hollywood had gone all out, with several information and volunteer tents—one for officiants, one for the media, with plenty of food and beverages on this hot summer morning—one for www.marriageequality.org, and six stylish pavilions covered in white gauze with chandeliers, be-flowered and decorated arches and flowing draperies where individual ceremonies were being held.

The park was not being mobbed, apparently, because many of the excited applicants pulled their marriage licenses and then left, apparently planning to have ceremonies elsewhere or on another day. I fully understand, since my partner and I intend to be married in the fall in a church ceremony.

To add to the festive atmosphere, a pastoral colleague and I rang English handbells repeatedly, under the trees, as couples came through the lines, and exchanged their promises before deputized officiants, including West Hollywood officials. The day was peaceful, almost mundane, with neighborhood children play on the swing sets in the park only a few feet beyond this festival of love and commitment.

I suppose as a result of the attention we received by being dressed in clerical garb and ringing the bells in repeated peals, I was interviewed, I think about eight times: by CBS, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Human Rights Campaign, Lambda Legal, some others I don’t remember or didn’t ask, and by an independent lesbian film maker. Even my hands were videotaped as I rang the bells! I realized it made good visuals and interesting sounds for TV and radio.

Repeatedly I was asked why I was there and what the day meant for me. “Two things,” I repeatedly explained. This is a historic day for the community, and for the legal progress that has been made in securing legal rights and public respect for lesbian and gay people, who want nothing more from society than the chance to accept responsibility for one another and to live their lives with dignity. “But secondly,” I said, “My partner of 32 years and I fully intend to be married also.” No one looked particularly shocked by that, even though I appeared to be your typical neighborhood Roman Catholic priest.

A few reporters were interested enough to ask more of my personal background, which is not particularly unusual. We have been a part of this movement, I said, for decades. We have marched and demonstrated. We fought the Briggs initiative, and then the Knight initiative. We had a private religious ceremony in our living room many years ago, then filed papers for the California Domestic Partnership registry in 2002. Two years later, we were part of that lesbian/gay wave of humanity that rolled into San Francisco to be married in February 2004 in City Hall’s grand rotunda. This is a historic day in California, but it is also a deeply personal historic day in our own lives.

More than a year after the California Supreme Court nullified our San Francisco marriage certificates, we were able to get an autograph on ours by Mayor Gavin Newsom himself during Outfest in Los Angeles.

Kerry Chaplin, the talented and eligible young interfaith organizer for California Faith for Equality, had all manner of talking points available for speaking to the media, and by the end of the day I realized that I had never had a chance to read through them in advance. As it turns out, I think, every single lesbian or gay couple who forms a legal marriage becomes a “talking point” against the pernicious proposed amendment headed for the November ballot which would end this summer of love.

Many of the couples participating were long-time couples, seeking to protect their families and their legal rights. But at the end of the day, I was approached by two young women, together as a couple only one year. They were both raised Catholic, they said, but wanted to have at least a Christian minister preside over their ceremony. I was delighted to be asked, and touched by their depth and their excitement about this new day dawning.

If the excitement of it all, and concern for the legal maneuvers of the religious right, made me nervous, in the end it was the genuineness of these young women and their optimism about their new life together, which gave me a sense of deep peace. God bless them. God bless all of them!!

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Lesbian/Gay Marriage, LGBT Christian, LGBT Rights, Public Affairs | Print | No Comments »

June 15, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

These twelve [disciples] Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. . . . Whatever town or village you enter, find out who in it is worthy, and stay there until you leave. As you enter the house, greet it. If the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it; but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town. Truly I tell you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town. — Matthew 10 

The closer we get to legal gay marriage in California, the more the fundagelicals will rant and rave. They have already written us off as “lost”—damned for sure, going to spend all eternity in the fires of hell. They will continue to look for clever new ways to pronounce shame on people who are now largely impervious to new shame. Meanwhile, we are getting married, and are finding new ways to feel proud.

It always amuses and annoys me that people who are losing influence talk more and more stridently about the “dire consequences” if the world does not listen to them. The panicked, angry voices of hateful Christians has been too loud for too long in America—and they will continue to insist that we are sick or “of the devil.”

As we get closer to Tuesday’s new marital opportunity, even lesbian and gay people are having some misgivings. The media have been picking up on this more and more, since they’ve run out of steam about queer euphoria. Some same-sex couples have determined to sit this one out at least until the November ballot is over. Others are dusting off retro-thoughts from the 1970s that “marriage is an institution—who wants to live in an institution?”

We ourselves still live with some of the internalized homophobia of the early gay rights movement a half-century ago, fearful that we are somehow sick or lost or pathetic, or don’t deserve to be free and happy and gay. We wonder out loud if we are really fit for marriage, or that the (especially male) gay character is inherently commitment-phobic—that we are tramps to the core. “All men are pigs.”

Well, no, really. Thousands of us can’t wait to pay our $70 for a license to accept responsibility for one another for the rest of our lives.

For those right wing folks (who still pretend they don’t know any of us personally), we will remain society’s lepers. They insist we are not only unworthy of enjoying the rights, privileges and respect of the mainstream, but suited only for living in our pathetic ghettoes (creative neighborhoods and designer-perfect abodes filled with high-end consumer products).

It was easier for prejudice before our sense of pride emerged. We were dangerous social lepers when we skulked around truck stops, tea rooms (now reserved for Republican senators) or elementary schools. We were lepers in our pathetic promiscuity.

We were lepers when HIV and AIDS killed off our young, bright and beautiful. The right-wing fundagelicals enjoyed trying, and were highly successful for a long time, in shaming us with such terms as “sodomites” and “homosexuals.” They could describe us with words of seeming precision to elicit immediate understanding and financial support within their donor base.

And the whole reason that straight, right-end Christians portray us in such terms is their desire to keep us isolated by our shame, because of their fear of contamination (by our good taste? our open-mindedness? our sculpted abs?).

But it will be harder and harder to isolate and condemn us when we are highly visible as out couples, husbands, and wives, and when it becomes clear that California is not being incinerated under God’s wrath or falling into the ocean.

In Matthew 10, Jesus says that on the day of judgment God will look with greater tolerance upon Sodom and Gomorrah that upon other places that do not receive Jesus’ word or turn away Jesus’ offer of peace, who refuse hospitality to those who come in his name. The contrast between the self-righteous Christian and the compassionate Christ couldn’t be more stark. Today we are finding that lesbian and gay people are open to Jesus’ word of compassion, and to our offer of peace in his name. It is the right wing which rants and warns of damnation.

In this same chapter Jesus recognizes that ministry will almost certainly trigger controversy. The wolves out there may try to tear us apart, and we should be prepared.

It will not be any different for those of us in the Christian church who welcome couples who want to marry and to revel in the sense of God’s blessing.

Less than 48 hours from now, it will be legal for two women or two men to tie the knot in California. “Gay marriage” will become the new leprosy to the Religious Right. They are expected to spend at least 10 million dollars by November to fight the Supreme Court’s decision. This will be a summer of great controversy because the religious right is seeding it into our society.

In our congregation, there have been, and there will be many more wedding ceremonies for women and men who love one another against all odds. Our hospitality to the lesbian and gay community will never be more thoroughly tested than it will with the legalizing of marriage. But our doors will remain open to lesbian and gay couples simply because Jesus sends us his disciples to serve the outcasts, the lepers and those rejected or harassed by others, and to offer a word of peace, not dire warning.

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Bible & Interpretation, HIV and AIDS, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Fundamentalism, LGBT Christian, Coming Out, Public Affairs, LGBT Rights, Ministry | Print | No Comments »