Married at Last!

Exchange of rings.

Wade Jones and I were married here in Atlanta by the Rev. Dr. Erin Swenson during a private ceremony last week on my 65^th birthday, a few days shy of our 15^th anniversary, a week before his 55^th birthday, and one day after the 10^th anniversary of my ordination in the Metropolitan Community Church.

Wade and I met between my 50^th and his 40^th birthday at a time I was seriously considering moving back to California. He is the reason I stayed in Atlanta.

It was a joyful occasion with family and a few friends surrounded by our parents’ official wedding pictures and photos of our beloved dogs, Calvin and Hobbes.

As Erin invited the fifteen guests to explain how they knew us, we were moved by their stories and absolute love. Then we proceeded with a brief and very traditional wedding ceremony, followed by dinner at a fine neighborhood restaurant.

But I gotta say this: marriage as an institution has never been my priority—Wade Jones is.

I felt much the same way about ordination. Ordination was not my priority, but ministry was and is—and though, like marriage, there are hundreds of benefits to either institution, ordination and marriage achieve their purposes only if they facilitate ministry and commitment.

For most of my life, I have served as a minister and a partner without the formal approval of either church or state.

And I have to admit, the long delay awaiting both ordination and marriage sobered me.

When young, either event might have been intoxicating, but waiting decades kept me mindful that those institutions (indeed, ALL institutions) are not all they are played up to be, that they don’t of themselves confer either spiritual authority or marital faithfulness.

And when my particular Christian tradition, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) finally “accepted” LGBT ordination and same-gender marriage, it did so without requiring such ordination and only changing its wording on marriage to say that it is between two people, “traditionally a man and a woman.” But that allowed a Presbyterian minister and longtime friend, Erin Swenson, to perform our ceremony.

Thank God for MCC, who has ordained and married LGBT people since its founding in 1968. The denomination’s moderator, the Rev. Dr. Nancy Wilson, preached at my ordination and Erin gave the charge in which she colloquially urged me “to dance with the one who brung you.” Ironically, I unintentionally angered a few Presbyterians for my “disloyalty” to the cause, losing work and missing opportunities, though MCC polity permits dual affiliation.

I know I may sound like the Grinch who stole marriage, but ordination and marriage are joyous and to be celebrated, not because of recognition by church or state, but because of their implicit and sacred spirit of love, service, mutuality, commitment, and community. I’ve always enjoyed that.

One of the tables of revellers, a selfie by Dee. 

Thanks to Marc Bearden and Dee de Padua for their photos.

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Copyright © 2015 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

When Your Religious Liberty Touches the End of My Nose

Since this appeared on The Huffington Post last Thursday, there have been nearly 600 “likes,” 200 “shares” and “tweets,” and 240 comments!

Do you know that the Kentucky county clerk refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-gender couples has been married four times and allegedly gave birth to twins fathered by another man five months after her first divorce? At best, this is irony, at worst, hypocrisy.

In my book, As My Own Soul: The Blessing of Same-Gender Marriage, I pointed out that a thrice-married Georgia congressman introduced the Defense of Marriage Act and it was signed into law by a philandering president. Irony or hypocrisy?

We live in a representative democracy, not a theocracy. This is neither the Vatican nor an Islamic nation. Nor should we be like Israel, dominated by one religious tradition.

It’s bad enough that our representative democracy, controlled largely by English-only-speaking, privileged, nominally-Christian, straight white males historically and presently has institutionalized many religious regulations and traditions in our legal codes and practices, despite our alleged separation of church and state. (Thank God for the colonial Baptists, who persuaded our federal-government-in-formation to include that principle. Many current Baptists apparently disavow that sentiment.)

What’s next? Civil servants refusing to issue marriage licenses to atheists? To interfaith couples? To interracial couples—oh wait, they tried to do that already, also on religious grounds!

If there is one religious principle I would legislate, if there was one commandment I would like to see engraved over the entrance of every public building, it would be:

DO UNTO OTHERS WHAT YOU WOULD HAVE THEM DO UNTO YOU.

That might stay the hands of those who work on Wall Street and in corporate offices, as well as legislators and judges and presidents and other public servants.

That might also prompt restraint among religious leaders and communities, as well as their zealots and extremists.

It might change attitudes toward immigrants seeking a better life, toward the rights of women—including their reproductive choices, toward better integration of those with disabilities, toward all minorities’ hopes of representation (including D.C. residents!), toward the poor and disadvantaged, toward those who are incarcerated.

It might even change our approach to international relations.

This should become our new “gold standard.”

Related post: Religious Liberty

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Copyright © 2015 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

Steadfast Love

I look  forward to seeing you in Winston-Salem, NC, at Wake Forest Divinity School at 5 p.m. Thurs. Oct. 17, at Green St. UMC for “Coming Out of the Wilderness: A Celebration of LGBT Spirituality” (for straight people too!) Oct. 18-19, and preaching on “Wrestling with God” at MCC Winston-Salem Oct. 20.

“I’m going to love you till I don’t love you no more…” So sang a song from the speakers in The Sports Connection, my gym when I lived in West Hollywood. I found the words funny, but when I laughed about them with a fellow weightlifter, he thought he was joining in the joke when he said matter-of-factly, “Yes, isn’t it ludicrous that people think they can promise love into the future?” And this came from someone schooled in the human psyche as a psychiatrist. The humor for me came rather from what I considered an immature, selfish expression, but I withheld my opinion in the face of his comment.

In ministry and in friendships, I have witnessed many people (including myself) who have been confused by the romantic notion that there is only one person in the world for them. When they meet someone and “fall in love,” they think, “Oh, this is the person I’m meant to be with.” But the truth is, there are many, many people with whom each of us may “fall in love.” That suggests using additional criteria for discerning a partner. And it also means, if already partnered, that a new occasion of falling in love may mistakenly prompt one to think that he or she has chosen “the wrong one” originally.

In a chapter entitled “Making Love” in my book, Come Home! Reclaiming Spirituality and Community as Gay Men and Lesbians, I describe attributes of love lauded in the Bible. This chapter began as a sermon for West Hollywood Presbyterian Church that was a response to the many single gay people and newly-coupled gay or lesbian partners in the late 1970s who kept asking for guidance in establishing and maintaining relationships, now just as relevant as our marriages are being recognized by church and state.

Central to these attributes, in my view, was the repeated theme of God’s steadfast love for us, a love that entails a commitment to expectations, forgiveness, union, and communion. More recently in my book, As My Own Soul: The Blessing of Same-Gender Marriage, I came to the conclusion that marriage is a spiritual discipline or exercise. In the words of Christian ethicist Margaret Farley, “Commitment is our way of trying to give a future to a present love. … Commitment, therefore, is love’s way of being whole when it is not yet whole, love’s way of offering its incapacities as well as its power.” (Personal Commitments, p 40 and 134; see also her latest book, Just Love.) I went on to write, “The marriage commitment is not determined by Genesis, gender, or genitals. The Lord looks on the heart…Christians might lift their gaze and do the same” (As My Own Soul, p 118-119).

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Copyright © 2013 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. Check out past posts in the right rail on the blogsite. Consider using a post or quotes in personal reflection, worship, newsletters, and classes, referencing the blog address when possible: http://chrisglaser.blogspot.com.