Congratulations, Shelley and Melissa!

April 27, 2009 by Pastor Dan.

The month of April is wrapping up with the same excitement with which it began. The first same-sex marriage licenses were issued a couple of hours ago in Iowa (see: An early Spring, April 4).

The first to marry were Shelley Wolfe and Melissa Keeton, who got their license in Des Moines at the Polk County Courthouse and exchanged vows right outside.

But Wolfe and Keeton were not the first legal same-sex marriage in Iowa. A male couple, Tim McQuillan and Sean Fritz, had pulled that off several years ago before a lower court put a stay on things to allow the Iowa high court to rule.

I am one who is impatient with all those technicalities (although I try to digest them mentally and even read the briefs and decisions when possible). But today I just rejoice, and admit my amazement that in the great conservative corn belt of the nation, where many “decent people” still go to church, etc. etc., the native conservatism actually seems to have opened the door for same sex marriage. Of course, it depends on how you define “conservative.”

The Iowa state constitution is conservative. It doesn’t allow for quick knee-jerk amendments. The process is deliberately cumbersome, which is probably why no reactionary right-wing groups had forced through a “protection of marriage” amendment, as many other states. This left the opening for the Supreme Court to rule conservatively that there is no compelling state interest to forbid same gender couples from having the same civil marriage rights as anybody else.

Iowa is not an “anything goes” state. They haven’t elected actors, bodybuilders or wrestlers as governor. The Iowa state motto isn’t “Whatever!” Iowa is also not the epicenter of disasters, such as California’s constant brush fires, mudslides, earthquakes and mismanaged/imbalanced budgets, that leave us open to the argument that two women or two men who love one another enough to accept responsibility for one another will be The Next Big Disaster!

Iowans have probably shucked enough corn to see scare tactics as nonsense, and have plucked enough chickens to see that Chicken Little (”the sky is falling!) does not represent the whole flock.

Some conservative church voices are trying not to overreact. Dr. Gerald B. Kieschnick, president of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod, in a Statement issued April 6, wrings his hands ever-so-conservatively: 

While members of the LCMS respect all people, we believe it is against the will of God and contrary to the moral fiber of our country to redefine marriage. Furthermore, society needs heterosexual marriages between men and women to thrive and succeed, as such unions remain the cornerstone in God’s design for the procreation and raising of children.It is not acceptable to experiment with this generation of children by trying to muster up weak alternatives to biological mothers and fathers.

Unfortunately, Kieschnick’s view is so conservative that he didn’t bother to give much original thought to the issue, but echoed the mentally-deficient views of reactionary groups. Gerald (may I address you by your baptismal name?): no one is saying that society doesn’t benefit from heterosexual marriages which “thrive and succeed.” To bring that up implies that having same-gender marriages somehow shuts down or impedes the ability of heterosexual couples to marry. 

And you wring your hands about “experimenting” with a generation of children.  Every generations of kids are an experiment, Gerald. And this isn’t the first generation when two people of the same gender have raised kids; it’s just that up to now those loving parents had no legal protections from the prejudices and interference of moralizers and hand-wringers.

And who says that every lesbian couple that marries are going to “experiment” with the lives of kids? When Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon married in San Francisco, reactionary Chicken Littles started running to “protect the children,” even though Del and Phyllis were in their 70s-80s. Not every same sex couple is having kids, or adopting kids, or even wants kids. And not every heterosexual couple who have kids bring them up well. And not every heterosexual couple is having kids, or adopting kids or even wants kids. Oh my God, Gerald, what will become of the kids if everyone isn’t heterosexual and cranking out kids?

And what exactly does a “biological” mother or father have on any loving mother or father? Let me cite a very conservative source for you, Gerald (one that many Iowans and all Christians read from every week!): Let me remind you that Jesus had two dads? Joseph wasn’t his biological father. And Jesus, upon the cross, was attended, not by his kids, but by women he wasn’t related to, and his biological mother, and by the Beloved Disciple, but he said to the two of them: “Behold your son. Behold your mother,” and so commended two biological strangers to one another as family. The Christian Church has never been anti-biological family, but from the first day of its existence has been able to get past the idolatry of biology and reproduction.

Of course, other religious leaders reacted early in April. Iowa’s Catholic Bishops, for example, said that the Supreme Court ruling “threatens families” (like, my family’s existence threatens your family’s existence? Like sweet corn threatens the existence of feed corn or broom corn?), and they called for an Iowa constitutional amendment to stop it.

Each has its place, but it’s all corn.

But, by conservative estimates, it would take until 2012 to amend Iowa’s constitution to stop gay/lesbian marriages. By then, same-gender marriage may have become as passe as last week’s corn husks.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

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