on gay marriage and NH legislation

statement prepared for a service at the First Unitarian Universalist Society of Exeter (FUUSE):

I grew up at a time when there were supposed to be only a relative handful of gay people in existence, more or less equally divided between Greenwich Village and San Francisco and more or less all fulfilling the demeaning stereotypes of the period. No one was out at my high school, and in college, a much larger place, I was aware only of a few bohemian types whose being gay was rumored. It was many years before I learned that one of my closest high school friends had moved to SF, worked there on the public policy side of AIDS response, and died of AIDS in 1995; it was 2005 before I learned that one of my first cousins is gay. By that time though I had begun to wise up and get involved, through the GSA (Gay-Straight Alliance) at PEA, the Welcoming Congregation Committee at FUUSE, and being on the board of NH Freedom to Marry. I made these commitments not on a philosophical or religious basis but because of individuals I had come to know in the years between. One, Rick Spalding, now chaplain at Williams College, preached at FUUSE a few years ago. In the years between his being my student at the Academy in 1972 and perhaps fifteen years after that, he had became a sort of wisdom figure for me. Another led the GSA, did a Master's degree at Harvard Divinity School, and now teaches at an independent school in Indiana. As an Exeter senior she wrote a poem that she spoke aloud to the entire school. It was a statement of gratitude for having been able to attend high school in a place that accepted her whole self, and it ended: "Nothing between me/ and the way God made me/ ever again." If this were a longer talk I could add many more names to this list of gay persons who are not only not disordered but are everything I can wish a person to be.
But even if they weren't the principled, compassionate, loving, occasionally mischievous people they are, they would still, like everyone else, deserve equal rights.
Earlier this month [Feb. 2009] I attended Judiciary Committee hearings in Concord on one bill that would repeal civil unions, replacing them with a return to discrimination, and on another bill that would open the law to civil marriage for same-sex couples. The testimony from those who continue to see gay identity as a violation of divine order has changed a little over the years. This time there were no cries of 'pedophilia' or 'bestiality.' Now the opponents of gay equality speak of "sexual complementarity" (if they are Catholic) or raise the specter of a slippery slope that leads straight to polygamy and marriage between brothers or sisters (if the arguer is fundamentalist). One asked the Committee if its members realized that to pass an equal marriage bill was to guarantee judgment and punishment from God.
At this point I had to choose between rolling my eyes and being a good UU. My visceral self wanted to stand up in the hearing room and say, "Where does your authoritative relationship with God come from? Christian doctrine has defended slavery; it has defended apartheid; it was the faith of many agents of the Third Reich. Now there are many Christians who read the same Bible you do and conclude that the Gospel doctrines of love and compassion take precedence over whatever verses record their time's recoil from same-sex relationships." When the opposing witness is secular (very few were), my anger says, Is the history of heterosexuality so glorious that it justifies us in demeaning another sexuality, even when it is monogamous, stable, respectful, and loving?
But if I am to keep my UUism with me on these occasions, I need to do better than that. I need to defeat the temptation to generalize about evangelical Christians; I need to extend to the opponents of same-sex marriage the same respect that we seek to preserve for all human beings. I need to remember my own failings (that shouldn't be difficult) and to ground my advocacy in affirmation, not anger. I will work at this, and I will do it better for being a member here. But the advocacy itself will continue until the law, at least, if not the entire culture, reaches the enactment of its own professed values. I hope I will see that day, and I wish it had not been so long delayed for Rick and my teacher friend and millions of others.