Law professor Dale Carpenter, an IGF contributing author, answered questions from USA Today readers about what might happen next in light of the Massachusetts marriage ruling, and the transcript can be read online.
Also, IGF co-managing editor Jon Rauch takes part in an online debate over the ruling, hosted on The New Republic's website.
First published Nov. 20, 2003, in The Dartmouth.
Anniversaries do not always neatly coincide with history, but invocations of the past often have much to say about the realities of the present.
These thoughts came to mind as I was reading David Levering Lewis's biography of W.E.B. DuBois. In 1906, DuBois, author of The Souls of Black Folks and founder of the NAACP, met with others in Harper's Ferry, West Virginia, for the second annual meeting of the Niagara Movement. The choice of location was symbolic: they were commemorating the 100th anniversary of John Brown's birth.
Brown, a white abolitionist who led a raid on the federal armory in Harper's Ferry in hopes of starting a black uprising, was born in 1800, so those who met in Niagara were six years late in their remembrance. And here I am, almost three years early in remembering and invoking the 1906 Niagara meeting. Two centenary remembrances in spirit only. But just as the events of 1906 caused DuBois and others to think of Brown then, so do the events of 2003 cause me to recall Niagara now.
The connections I see between then and now revolve around civil rights for gay Americans. For those who object to comparing black civil rights with gay civil rights, let me, a black gay man, cite Mel Boozer, another black gay man of a generation ago. "I know what it means to be called a nigger. I know what it means to be called a faggot. And I can sum up the difference in one word: none." To dismiss the black gay experience as unimportant to a discussion on gay civil rights is akin to dismissing the Harvard-trained DuBois as unrepresentative of blacks and thus unqualified to speak about black civil rights.
He was qualified, and for the Niagara conference, he authored an Address to the Country. "In the past year," DuBois wrote, "the work of the Negro-hater has flourished in the land." That work consisted of disenfranchising black voters, discriminating against blacks in travel and public accommodations, and undermining the education of black children. Nothing close to this type of systemic assault has yet affected gay Americans. But we are seeing the stirrings of this type of majority opposition to the gay minority.
The work of the gay-hater has flourished in the land this past year. In the wake of positive court rulings on behalf of gay Americans, some Americans are demanding that lawmakers bring the "gay scourge" under control, by state law at a minimum, by federal constitutional amendment if necessary. It reminds me of calls in the early twentieth century to repeal the Fifteenth Amendment, which gave blacks the right to vote, or calls mid-century, in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education, to restrict the federal government in race relations or to make busing for integration illegal.
DuBois wrote that "against this [systemic discrimination] the Niagara Movement eternally protests ... We claim for ourselves every single right that belongs to a freeborn American, political, civil and social; and until we get these rights we will never cease to protest and assail the ears of America." DuBois upset many, but he was right. Blacks were equal in fact and thus must be made equal in law.
The fundamental reason why gay Americans are not yet equal in law - why gays cannot legally protect their relationships and families to the extent that straight people can, cannot serve in the military, and in some places cannot adopt - is because most Americans refuse to accept gay people as equal in fact. The majority of Americans presume that gays are inferior, just as a majority of white Americans (especially in the South) presumed in 1906 that blacks were inferior. And just as whites then were unapologetic about their beliefs, so many straights today are unembarrassed to confess that, to them, gay people are sub-human or, more perniciously, simply need to act straight - have to "pass" - in order to eliminate the "gay problem." But gays will no longer participate in self-oppression; we don't need to pass.
DuBois listed five demands: the right to vote; the elimination of separate accommodations (which he called "un-American, undemocratic, and silly"); the freedom to associate; equity in law enforcement; and proper education. The outer two claims have no immediate parallel to the gay experience, but the inner three certainly do, as laws segregating and singling out gays persist.
DuBois provocatively asked: "Cannot the nation that has absorbed 10 million foreigners into its political life without catastrophe absorb 10 million Negro Americans into that same political life at less cost than their unjust and illegal exclusion will involve?" Again, in echo: cannot America make an equal number of gays fully enfranchised American citizens?
In his biography of John Brown, DuBois wrote that "the cost of liberty is less than the price of repression." And with the price tag of gay repression mounting - in special conclaves lambasting gay clergy, in conservative campaigns denouncing same-sex marriage, in taxpayer dollars fueling attempts to enact laws and amendments that would make gay Americans permanent second-class citizens - we would better use our fiscal and moral capital by giving gays freedom under the law.
John Brown's body may lie a-moldering in the grave, but the undying truth he stood for - freedom cannot be denied - marches on. DuBois knew and invoked that truth in his day. Let us fall into step with this truth now.
The AP reports: "Massachusetts' highest court ruled Tuesday that same-sex couples are legally entitled to wed under the state constitution, but stopped short of allowing marriage licenses to be issued to the couples who challenged the law." (The entire opinion, including the dissent, is available online.)
Meanwhile, the AP continues, "The Massachusetts question will now return to the Legislature, which already is considering a constitutional amendment that would legally define a marriage as a union between one man and one woman." The state's powerful Speaker of the House, Democrat Tom Finneran of Boston, has endorsed the proposal. And so has GOP Governor Mitt Romney.
The worst outcome: Massachusetts amends its state
constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage, and the ruling gives a
huge push to efforts to pass the Federal Marriage Amendment now in
Congress, which would amend the U.S. Constitution in the same
permanently restrictive manner.
[Update: Given that it can take up to two years to
amend the Bay State's constitution, expect opponents to put their effforts
into amending the federal Constitution.]
The best outcome: Massachusetts passes a civil unions bill along the lines of Vermont's, granting same-sex couples all the state-granted benefits of marriage, and this passes muster with the Massachusetts courts.
Do I want gays to have the right to marry in the fullest sense. Yes! Do I think that, given the current political climate, court-decreed same-sex marriage will be overturned by elected legislatures and create a groundswell of reaction? Yes again. To paraphrase, "It's the 'M' word, stupid!"
The big picture. In the great, ongoing battle between conservatism and progressivism (ok, one could even say "dialectic," if you must), both sides hold a part of the truth. Conservatives aren't just reactionary nabobs; the truth they hold is that there are some essentials that, if tampered with, lead to chaos (e.g., the folly of "rational" socialism, which sought to replace age-old markets with central planning, and produced tyranny and poverty). Progressives, on the other hand, hew to the truth that times change and if society doesn't evolve to provide human beings with greater liberty and dignity, it will become corrupt and atrophy.
The American revolution was progressivism at its best; the French (Russian, Chinese, etc.) revolutions were progressivism at its worst, and showed the value in the conservatives' worldview ("go slow, don't alter the fundamentals, or at least be exceedingly wary about doing so").
Here we have two "truths," at war with each other. Right now, despite the rulings of some liberal justices, the nation is clearly not yet convinced that same-sex marriage wouldn't destroy an essential bedrock and lead to social breakdown. The best way to demonstrate that, on the contrary, it would be the sort of "good" progress that advances humanity is to let people get used to civil unions on a state by state level, starting where support for gay rights is already high.
Will liberal activists use the courts to overreach and produce a backlash that will set back gay marriage for a generation or more? Or am I being overly cautious and not giving enough credit to the cultural changes that have already taken root in this country? We'll soon see.
Wrong About Everything?
There were two declarations this past week from the nation's
Roman Catholic bishops, as summarized in the following
headlines:
Guess which declaration is going to be given major play by
conservatives (hint: it's not the one that might interfere with
their personal lives!).
More Recent Postings
If nothing else, the pressure to hold up the promotion of Maj. Gen. Robert T. Clark to lieutenant general and commander of the Fifth Army, over charges that he ignored persistent anti-gay harassment on a base where a fatal gay bashing occurred in 1999, sends a strong message to the military. As the Washington Blade reports:
Gay groups have said Clark's inattention to anti-gay harassment at the base contributed to an atmosphere that led to the gay-bashing death of Pfc. Barry Winchell, 21. -- [The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network] has pointed to witnesses who testified"that Winchell had been subjected to anti-gay taunts and threats on the base for several months prior to the attack that led to his death. The witnesses testified that officers in charge of Winchell's unit failed to take steps to stop the harassment and that Clark should have intervened to address the harassment problem.
Clark will most likely get his promotion, but the months-long delay should put other military commanders on notice: tolerating attacks against gay servicemembers can be a bad career move.
[Update: On Nov. 18 the Seante approved Gen. Clark's promotion, but the vote represented (in the words of the Washington Blade) "a break from a longstanding Senate tradition of approving promotions for military officers by unanimous consent, without debate." Said an SLDN spokesperson, "Despite the disappointing vote, it's reassuring that we had an historic debate holding Gen. Clark accountable for his actions."]
Meanwhile, the rabidly anti-gay Traditional Values Coalition is
running this delightful little piece on its website, Exposed: The Truth
About Pfc. Barry Winchell. Could the culture wars get any
uglier?
First published Nov. 12, 2003, in the Chicago Free Press. This version has been slightly revised.
One of the Bible verses most frequently cited by conservative, anti-gay Christians occurs in the Letter to the Romans, generally attributed - except for its final verses - to the Apostle Paul, Romans 1:26-27:
(26) "For this reason, God gave them up to dishonorable passions. Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural," (27) "and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error." (Revised Standard Version)
First of all, it is important to notice that although Paul clearly refers to sexual acts between males, it is not clear at all that he is referring to lesbian behavior. Not only does Paul distinguish women from men, but just where the parallelism of the two verses would lead us to expect it he specifically avoids saying anything like "woman committing shameless acts with women." It is only in the case of men that Paul specifies homosexual sex as the "unnatural" behavior he objects to. So Paul may be thinking of some other behavior by women.
Be that as it may, the usual gay Christian interpretation of this passage is that Paul had little concept of a life-long homosexual orientation and so regarded homosexual acts as a deviation from a natural heterosexuality by people who were unusually lustful or wanton or rebellious. In that case Paul's argument would not apply homosexuality as we understand it today.
That may well be true. But, even if so, exactly what theological point Paul was trying to make about homosexual behavior is far from clear and, on closer examination, seems far different from what both gay and anti-gay Christians assume. But that point emerges only when the verses are seen in context of the whole section (or "pericope") where they appear: Romans 1:18-32.
In this insistent and repetitious passage dense with "therefores" and "becauses" that obscure a lack of real argument, Paul asserts that his God's eternal power and deity (singularity, omnipotence) were once perceptible through the "eye of reason" by all men in the things God created.
But despite this evidence for an invisible, transcendent God, people refused to honor and worship him and being "vain in their reasoning" invented pagan gods - "created things," "images resembling mortal man, or birds, or animals or reptiles." (Notice, in passing, the glancing allusion to deified emperors.)
In other words, Paul claims that knowledge of his God had been available and that people who refused to acknowledge him were led astray by their own thinking "and their misguided minds are plunged into darkness." Referring to the ancient Greek and Roman poets, priests and intellectuals, Paul says, "They boast of their wisdom, but they have made fools of themselves."
And because they fail to acknowledge Paul's invisible God, nothing keeps them from depraved reason and wrong conduct. Here is Paul: "God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves BECAUSE they have bartered away the true God for a false one ..." (Romans 1:24-25, emphasis added).
The word "because" is key. Paul is offering his explanation for homosexual desire and behavior - as well as a generic explanation for other things he regards as improper - including people who are "gossips, slanderers, insolent, haughty, haters of God, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless," etc. (Romans 1:28-31)
So Paul's argument refers to cultures that rejected an earlier natural knowledge of God available by the eye of reason and turned to worship other, visible, pagan gods. And it is the worship of pagan gods that leads them to engage in these various types of conduct Paul deplores.
Put the other way around, Paul's claim is that homosexual desire and behavior are (are only?) the result of belief in pagan gods. And belief in pagan gods comes about when people reject the light of reason and place more confidence in their own theological imaginings.
But if that is so, then Paul's claim about the origin and significance of homosexual desire and conduct can hardly apply to people who did not reject an earlier belief in God and turn to pagan gods. Specifically, it hardly applies to homosexuals who are Christians or Christians who come to realize their homosexuality. Paul amateur theologico-psychologizing has no explanation for such a thing.
Furthermore, it is not clear in any case how a supposed primordial belief in or "perception" of a unitary, transcendent god could have provided anyone with a particular ethical code, much less any specific commands about sexual behavior. Paul was clearly aware of that difficulty because he struggled to fill the gap later by postulating that some pagans have the law "by nature," "written on their hearts" (Romans 2:14-15). But he is unable to explain - nor does he try to explain - how this happens or why some peoples do and others do not have it "by nature."
Could there be a better example of the tightrope the Bush administration is walking in the culture wars than the president's letter congratulating the predominantly gay Metropolitan Community Church on its 35th anniversary -- the same week that he placated the religious right with his support for their "Marriage Protection Week" (while, in another demonstration of political maneuvering, remaining silent on the right's anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment -- the ostensible point of Marriage Protection Week)?
The Right to Dissent.
Andrew Sullivan spells out why the politically correct thought police are bad for gays.
Bad Publicity.
The Harvey Milk
High students crime spree story got lots of media attention in
NYC last week, and rightwing groups are already making use of it.
This New York Post editorial
calls for eliminating the school altogether, claiming that it
fosters gay/straight segregation. Unanswered is whether these
students were just a few bad apples, or whether lax administrators
have let things get totally out of hand.
The following quip has popped up all over the Internet, with
various attributions, and has also been published in several
newspapers as a letter to the editor:
"The actions taken by the New Hampshire Episcopalians are an affront to Christians everywhere. I am just thankful that the church's founder, Henry VIII and his wife Catherine of Aragon, his wife Anne Boleyn, his wife Jane Seymour, his wife Anne of Cleves, his wife Katherine Howard, and his wife Catherine Parr are no longer here to suffer through this assault on traditional Christian marriage."
Quip Debate:A newly posted letter to the editor from Jeff McQuary takes exception. He writes, in part, "Henry is not the spiritual founder of Anglicanism. He was merely the political accident that made the (inevitable) spread of the Protestant Reformation to England happen at the particular moment it did."
A New Generation of Voices.
Eric Eagan, a young gay writer, explains his yearning for kids and normalcy in this Yale Daily News column. In the same paper, Jessamyn Blau explains why, in her view, being gay should not be equated with specific political views. Good to see that some Ivy Leaguers can think for themselves rather than just mouthing those same, old, tired PC platitudes!
Civil Rights, or Civil Liberties?
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) has hired Massachusetts Democratic
State Senator Cheryl Jacques as its new executive director. It
would be good if she considers the advice provided by Andrew Rapp,
the editor-in-chief of Boston's Bay Windows gay newspaper, last
July 7 in an editorial headlined "How Now HRC" (no longer available
online). Rapp wrote that the group has ineffectively pursued a
traditional "civil rights" strategy focused primarily on passing a
federal nondiscrimination-in-the-workplace law. But:
The recent victories of our movement illustrate that a more fruitful approach is one that emphasizes civil liberties. In the Lawrence decision, we won a meaningful "equal protection" argument that recognizes gay people as a class, but the much more sweeping win was the finding that all people are entitled to the liberty to have consensual sex in the privacy of their home. The Canadian courts"found that we are entitled to the liberty to choose our partners, regardless of sex.
We are best described as a group of people with a particular stake in expanding civil liberties, rather than a class of people seeking protections under the law. Now we are seeing that civil liberties approach is also more fruitful.
But can an organization as beset with inertia as HRC recognize
its failures and retool its strategies?
"The Reagans" and
More Recent Postings
CBS's decision to exile its controversial miniseries on Ronald and Nancy Reagan to cable's "Showtime" has liberals crying "censorship." Of course, that charge more appropriately describes actions by government, not decisions by a private company responding, in its own best interests, to fears of bad publicity or boycott threats against its advertisers.
Liberal gay activists should know this, since they've use these tactics to perfection themselves. My message to liberals: live by the sword, die by the sword. I remember back in 1992 (I think) participating in a protest by the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation against the movie "Basic Instinct," which hadn't yet been released and which none of us had seen -- but we were told it was full of hateful depictions of "killer lesbians" (a bit of an exaggeration, as it turned out). More recently, activists targeted "Dr. Laura" Schlessinger's syndicated TV talk show before its launch (see stopdrlaura.com) and Michael Savage's CNBC talk show, alleging that both of these "talents" had prior histories of anti-gay comments in other media. Following low ratings and advertiser flight, both TV programs were soon canceled.
The gay angle. Concerning the CBS miniseries, topic "g"
played a big role: Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, executive producers
of "The Reagans," are (according the Washington
Post):
"well known in TV circles for their gay advocacy TV projects and remakes of old Broadway musicals. Those advocacy projects include the NBC film "Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story," which is based on the true story of an Army officer's legal challenge to her involuntary discharge after revealing she was gay, and the Lifetime movie "What Makes a Family," about a lesbian's fight to retain custody of the baby her late partner bore.
Zadan and Meron worked on those projects with Hollywood heavyweight Barbra Streisand, whose husband, James Brolin, was cast to play the president in "The Reagans." Streisand, an outspoken liberal, was not involved in the CBS miniseries but weighed in yesterday with a lengthy statement on her Web site titled "A Sad Day for Artistic Freedom."
One of the more controversial scenes was one in which the president was shown saying to his wife, "They that live in sin shall die in sin" when addressing the AIDS crisis. The quote, the filmmakers conceded, was fictitious, according the New York Times.
The strangest gay angle. A story at newsmax.com is headlined "CBS Nixed 'Reagans' Following Letter From Rock Hudson's Ex-Lover." Yes, it claims that "CBS's decision to pull the plug on its miniseries "The Reagans" came on the heels of a letter to the network from Rock Hudson's ex-lover [Marc Christian], who complained that the film's portrayal of the 40th president as a virulent homophobe was false." The letter was made public by Christian's friend, conservative and openly lesbian commentator Tammy Bruce.
Now back to the 'censorship' issue. The fights taking
place on college campuses over speach codes and the like have some
bearing here. A USA Today story, "On
campus: Free speech for you but not for me?" reports
that:
On campuses large and small, public and private, students describe a culture in which freshmen are encouraged, if not required, to attend diversity programs that portray white males as oppressors. It's a culture in which students can be punished if their choice of words offends a classmate, and campus groups must promise they won't discriminate on the basis of religion or sexual orientation -- even if theirs is a Christian club that doesn't condone homosexuality.
The Seattle Times reports, for example, how a peaceful protest against racial preferences was shut down. Other, similar accounts of hostility toward free speech -- from both the left and the right -- abound in the new book "You Can't Say That!: The Growing Threat to Civil Liberties from Antidiscirmination Laws" by David Bernstein. The book deals briefly with how attempts by gay activists to suppress the speech of their opponents can subsequently be used by anti-gay activists to suppress what they find to be offensive gay materials.
What's it all mean? Liberals and conservatives, gays
and anti-gays, should be fully free to criticize each other's
views, books, movies and miniseries. That's democracy. But if
either side is going to turn to advertiser boycotts, or try to
preemptively block the publication or viewing of materials they
find either "hateful" or "offensive," they should be aware that
such tactics are only legitimized to be used against them in the
next battle. That's not censorship, but it's how the culture
wargames are now being played.
Update: GLAAD, having perfected the advertiser-boycott-threat strategy against ideologically suspect programming, now joins the liberal chorus denouncing CBS's decision to pull "The Reagans." Couldn't you guess?
The Next Generation.
A new
Gallup poll of 18- to 29-year-olds has some good
news:
Young Americans are substantially more likely than older Americans to support marriages between homosexual couples -- 53% vs. 32%, respectively. This greater acceptance of gay and lesbian rights among young Americans has been a consistent finding in Gallup Polls for a number of years.
But this generation is not more "liberal," politically speaking.
Nearly half (45%) say they are politically independent, with the
remainder more likely to identify themselves as Republicans (30%)
than as Democrats (24%). Also, "By a margin of 82% to 58%, young
Americans are much more inclined than older Americans to support a
proposal that would allow people to put a portion of their Social
Security payroll taxes into personal retirement accounts that would
be invested in private stocks and bonds." Yes, the future may well
be ours! (thanks to
andrewsullivan.com for the original link)
First published on Nov. 5, 2003, in the Chicago Free Press.
It is a striking fact that people who are anti-Semitic are so often homophobic and many who are homophobic are anti-Semitic as well.
At the end of October, Malaysia's prime minister - dictator, actually - Mahathir Mohamad retired after ruling for 22 years. Shortly before, in mid-October, Mahathir gave a widely publicized speech to a gathering of leaders of Islamic countries in which he charged that "Jews rule the world by proxy" and "get others to fight and die for them. " Further, "They invented socialism, communism, human rights and democracy so that persecuting them would appear to be wrong, so they can enjoy equal rights with others. "
If we took such charges seriously enough to rebut them, we could point to Jews serving in the American and other western militaries as well as the fact that military service is mandatory in Israel, where Jews have fought and died since 1948 repelling repeated invasions from surrounding countries who oppose Israel's mere existence.
We could point out that democracy was invented not by Jews but by ancient Greeks. Natural human rights were first conceived by the English philosophers Hobbes and Locke. Socialism was invented by early 19th century French writers. And Communism was invented by Plato, another Greek, as an ironic construct - as the Soviet Union so painfully discovered - of the politically impossible.
But clearly such factual corrections would have little impact. The hostility comes first, then "facts" are imagined or rearranged to support the prejudice. Does that sound familiar?
It is now barely recalled that in 1998 Mahathir suddenly turned against his presumptive successor Anwar Ibrahim, accusing him of corruption and sodomy and after a flamboyant show trial had him sentenced to prison for 20 years. The charges were almost surely false, prosecution testimony coerced and perjured, and human rights groups protested the whole affair as politically motivated.
Far from being unique, Mahathir is all too typical. Most Arab countries are both viciously homophobic and obsessively anti-Jewish. Saudi Arabia lashes, imprisons and executes gays and not only prohibits Jewish (and Christian) worship services but has its government-owned newspapers print absurd medieval libels against Jews.
Egyptian police conduct sweeps of gay cruising areas and entrap gays they meet on gay websites. At the same time, Egyptian government television broadcast an interminable mini-series based in part on "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion," a late Czarist forgery about supposed Jewish plans for world domination.
In the West, the Catholic church from its beginnings has been both homophobic and anti-Jewish. The anti-Jewish sentiment was attributed to the supposed responsibility of "the Jews" for the death of Jesus in the gospel legends (John 19:12-15; Matthew 27:25). Given the Catholic view that Jesus sacrificial death was necessary for mankind's redemption, you would think Catholics should be grateful to "the Jews" for helping it happen, but then no one ever claimed Catholic doctrine was logical.
In any case, it was not until the 1960s that the Catholic church formally declared that, oh, by the way, "the Jews" were not responsible for the death of Jesus after all. Small comfort to the generations of Jews excluded, harassed, assaulted and killed in pogroms by pious Christians doing the Lord's work.
It is scarcely necessary to recount the arrest, torture, executions and burning at the stake of "sodomites" when the Catholic church held political power, nor the innumerable hate-inspiring sermons denouncing homosexuality and "sodomites" in both Catholic and evangelical Protestant churches. Even today the Vatican and conservative Protestant churches inveigh against homosexuality and are the strongest supporters of sodomy laws and opponents of gay equality.
The reasons for the frequent appearance of both hostilities in the same person or culture are complex, speculative and deserve a column of their own. But here is a start.
Most people seem to want to think that however they are is the right way to be - that their conduct and beliefs are true and natural for everyone. Both gays and Jews diverge in noticeable ways from the usual, the familiar, so people conclude that gays and Jews must be wrong to be as they are. And since how "we" - the majority - are is "natural" the others are somehow "unnatural" and probably malicious in rejecting the obvious superiority of our practices and beliefs.
Thus Jews are an affront to Christianity because they do not accept the founding Christian myth that Jesus is a savior or messiah - or, in Islam, Mohammed the last and truest prophet. Since the truths of Christianity (or Islam) are so blindingly obvious to their proponents, they think that Jews are being willfully stubborn when they refuse to accept them as true and may well be motivated by evil intent to harm Christians (Muslims) and undo Christianity (Islam).
In a similar way, gays are an affront to heterosexuals who cannot imagine that anyone can really have different desires from their own except by virtue of something unnatural about them or else motivated by evil intent to harm heterosexuals or undo heterosexuality. So mere difference is interpreted as opposition and then as a threat.
On Nov. 2, the Episcopal Church consecrated their first gay bishop. This is the highest church rank an openly gay person has achieved in any major Christian church.
Gene V. Robinson, the new bishop of New Hampshire, is extraordinarily brave. People have called on him to step down. A maelstrom of publicity has swirled about him. His consecration ceremony was attended by 4,000 who greeted him with a standing ovation‹but a spokesman for 38 opposing bishops also spoke during the ceremony, saying that Robinson's " 'chosen lifestyle' is incompatible with Scripture and the teachings of this church," according to the Associated Press.
Most commentators on the church expect the result to be a split between the congregations who support Robinson and the more conservative "confessing congregations" who don't.
That's a lot of pressure on one man - the knowledge that he is the catalyst for the church he clearly loves breaking apart.
Yet it has never been clearer that one man is doing the right thing.
No one can predict the future of course, but I say this with certainty: the world will not end as a result of Robinson's consecration. The sky will not fall. The church, yes, will probably split - but churches have split before and survived.
And really, it is not Robinson who is splitting the church. It is the conservatives who are pulling away, who have announced they are unable to commit to working through these issues. They are breaking up this marriage of churches because they are unwilling to see their own faults, unwilling to recognize that on this they may be wrong.
Robinson said, "They must know that if they must leave, they will always be welcomed back."
But they won't come back. They were waiting for the more liberal churches to do something like this; they were eager to take their stand against the gays and lesbians who had previously huddled at the fringes of church life. The conservatives are willing to carve a church to pieces in order to protect the blinders of their own bigotry.
It's ridiculous, really - are gays and lesbians really such a great evil that they cannot be countenanced by the rest of the church? I mean, the Episcopalians once didn't ordain women, either (the Bible commands that women keep silent in the churches, after all) and there was great controversy around that - but gays and lesbians are somehow more sinister.
So there will be a backlash against Robinson. A gigantic, church-shaking earthquake of a backlash.
But the end result will be tranquility.
Why? Because people are adaptable. They are afraid of what they don't know - they are afraid of what might happen. But when the Episcopalians realize that their church is still the same church, that their lives are still the same prayerful lives, then the pressure on Robinson will ease and things will go on.
Soon, even most anti-gay (or uncertain about gays) Episcopalians will realize that Robinson's choice of life partner doesn't affect their own lives of faith at all. Life will continue the way it always has.
That's why it's important that Robinson didn't step down. By not bowing to the pressure - by staying firm in the face of increasing world adversity and in the knowledge that history books would note that he was the cause of perhaps the worst Episcopal split in the history of the church - Robinson has advanced the civil rights of all of us.
But Robinson alone is not enough. One person can always be considered an exception, as in: "I like you, of course, but you?re an exception - you're not like those other gays and lesbians out there."
What Robinson needs is for other gay and lesbian bishops to join him - not just in his church, but in other churches. He needs other gay and lesbian clergy to be open in their sexual orientation, to teach their congregations that leaders are leaders no matter whom they fall in love with. He needs gays and lesbian clergy around the world to stand beside him - and beside their gay and lesbian members - despite the negative publicity, and despite the chance that they could lose their livelihoods and be thrown out of their own churches. He needs all of us to pressure our own denominations to accept and elevate gay clergy to higher offices.
There are, of course, many brave gay and lesbian clergy who are already doing all these things. They marry same-sex couples against the wishes of their denominations. They introduce their partners into the regular give and take of church life. They rail against bigotry. They may be unsung on the national stage (or they might be demonized, depending how prominent they are) but they are all gay and lesbian heroes. They are changing the churches one strong example at a time.
And changing the churches is important, because it hits people at the core of their belief system. Because of this, Robinson is not just incidentally important. He's not just a footnote to a controversy. He is the key that will help change thousands of hearts.
All we need is for other clergy - and other congregations - to join him in pushing through the door.