"Oh God, our maker, we gladly proclaim to the world that Jeanne and Ellie are loving partners together for life. Amen."
By saying those words to bless the relationship of two women, Reverend Don Fado and 94 other United Methodist pastors (as well as 71 other clergy members who lent their names in absentia) could lose their clerical jobs. Fado acknowledged this at the holy union ceremony they all jointly presided over on January 16. "If anybody wants to file charges against us, this is what the charges are for; for praying this prayer."
The ministers did not marry Jeanne Barnett, 68 and her partner of 15 years, Ellie Charlton, 63. They simply proclaimed, as a body, that Jeanne and Ellie have committed themselves to one another for life. More important, it seems, they "gladly" did so. If they had scornfully done so, or had done so filled with bitterness, hostility, grievance or alarm, well, that might have been all right.
There are many issues at work in this ceremony: questions about morality and love, religion and politics, equality and "special rights." But one fact may say more about this event than any other?it took place in Sacramento.
Historically in this country, the movement for gay rights has come from big cities like Los Angeles and New York -- and, of course, San Francisco, not a big city in numbers, but the cosmopolitan equal of any city in the world. The concentration of gay men living in such cities helped drive the movement for gay equality. There was a certain spirit, if not necessarily safety, in numbers. This fact, however, often put cities at odds with more rural areas, as gay rights laws were introduced in state capitals.
But now the questions about justice and fairness first raised in the cities are coming up everywhere. Lesbians and gay men in Bakersfield and Victorville may have had more to risk by coming out than their counterparts in West Hollywood and the Castro, but the compromises of the closet are tedious no matter where you live. It's something like a full-time job to keep track of all the fabrications and half-truths, and that's wearying, whether you work on a stock exchange or a dairy farm.
So it should be less surprising than some might expect to know that the holy union ceremony did not come from the organized gay rights establishment in San Francisco or Los Angeles. In fact, it did not originate with anyone who is actually homosexual. In St. Mark's church in Sacramento, Rev. Fado heard his church leadership's command that no Methodist minister could bless a same-sex relationship. The patent unfairness was too obvious for him to ignore. How could he have permission to bless a house, a car, a pet, but not the relationships of some of his own parishioners, children of God who had made a lifetime commitment based in love and faith?
It was only when Rev. Fado asked his congregation if any same-sex couple would step forward that Jeanne and Ellie came into the public eye. Neither woman views herself as a gay rights activist. When asked the question, both laughed timidly. The best they could say, Ellie confessed, was that they identify themselves as "quiet advocates for change."
It is those quiet advocates who demonstrate how profoundly the successes of the gay rights movement have changed the movement. Anti-gay leaders like Gary Bauer and James Dobson may rail against homosexual "extremists" and "radicals," but they have little to say about homosexual moderates and conservatives. People like Jeanne and Ellie wanted only to live their lives decently and honestly, and endured furious and unwanted publicity to demonstrate how hard it is for a same-sex couple to achieve the modest respectability every married heterosexual couple takes for granted.
They are not alone. Across the nation, millions of same-sex couples, every day, quietly negotiate the preposterous half-rules and unspoken protocols they are expected to live by. And they are joined by millions of heterosexuals like Rev. Fado, who are finding it harder and harder to maintain a separate set of rules for lesbians and gay men.
That is why the scene for these new gay rights battles will increasingly be places like Sacramento, or Laramie, Wyoming, or Hawaii or Vermont. A decade ago, author Neil Miller published In Search of Gay America, and found people across the country willing to talk about being gay in every corner of the country, and in every walk of life. Those people are still there, and by the simple example of their lives, their friends and co-workers, relatives and ministers may be more ready than ever to support them.
In other words, the gay rights movement isn't just for activists any more. No one was ever excluded from the movement, but in the early days a lot of people passed. Political activism isn't in everyone's blood.
But justice is. That's what drove Rev. Fado to issue his challenge, and it's what drove Jeanne and Ellie to accept. But it's also what made buses and carloads of people come from Modesto and Fresno, Yreka and Oregon to show their support. The hundreds of people who surrounded the Convention Center in a "Circle of Love," as well as the thousand or so who attended the ceremony, probably couldn't name a gay radical. But by just being present in Sacramento, their quiet advocacy was moving the mountains radicals have been talking about for decades.