The New Leprosy: Marriage!

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

This entry was posted on June 15, 2008 at 21:35 and is filed under Bible & Interpretation, HIV and AIDS, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Fundamentalism, LGBT Christian, Coming Out, Public Affairs, LGBT Rights, Ministry. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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