Protest, Pride, Pew, and Presidential Pen
Remembering that quiet revolutionaries matter greatly
December 13 was a good day for civil rights as President Biden signed an act enshrining marriage equality in federal law. As the president said, “A day that America takes a vital step toward equality, toward liberty, justice — not just for some, but for everyone.”
What role did religion play in yesterday’s events? I ruminate on how the quest for LGBTQ rights — especially the right to marry — unfolded in America’s quietest churches below. Check out The Cottage December Special and then scroll to the post under the picture of Trinity church.
DECEMBER SPECIAL
Don’t miss the DECEMBER SPECIAL at The Cottage. New and upgraded subscriptions are 10% off the regular rate until Christmas. Click the button below for information.
You can give The Cottage as a gift for the same special rate by clicking the “Give a Gift Subscription” button.
To celebrate the holidays, all paid subscribers will be entered in a gift giveaway drawing. On December 30, I’ll be gifting three pairs of “Life is Better at the Cottage” wineglasses (value: $30); two audio versions of my book Grounded (value: $40), and one set of signed books (value: $175) to SIX lucky paid subscribers.
On Tuesday, December 13, President Joe Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act at a ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House. The new law creates federal protections for both same-sex and interracial marriages, effectively guarding these rights against the possibility of the Supreme Court overturning the rulings that previously granted them.
President Biden addressed the thousands of ceremony guests saying, “The road to this moment has been long, but those who believe in equality and justice, you never gave up. So many of you put your relationships on the line, your jobs on the line, your lives on the line, to fight for the law I’m about to sign. For me and the entire nation: thank you, thank you, thank you.”
One reporter covering the event remarked that “everyone” who had made this bill happen — activists, lobbyists, celebrities, authors, politicians, and leaders of the LGBTQ community — was there. Each one of those guests rightly deserves credit and grateful praise for bringing the nation to this moment.
Although not highlighted in any interview, I’m confident that there were many Christian clergy and faith leaders in that audience. Those Christians would be primarily (but not exclusively) from mainline Protestant denominations — UCC, Episcopal, Presbyterian, Lutheran, and Methodist. For the last several decades, these churches have been on a long theological, biblical, and spiritual journey to understand human sexuality and the callings of gay and lesbian people to Christian ministry and faithful marriage.
American Protestants began wrestling with these concerns in the 1960s. Although not technically a mainline communion, Quakers arrived early to the questions. In 1972, the United Church of Christ (UCC) became the first mainline denomination to ordain gay and lesbian clergy. In 1976, the Episcopal Church issued its first resolution on LGBTQ equality: "it is the sense of this General Convention that homosexual persons are children of God who have a full and equal claim with all other persons upon the love, acceptance, and pastoral concern and care of the Church." Fights over ordination would follow in the all the mainline churches — as well as arguments over marriage.
Through the last decades of the twentieth century, local congregations increasingly welcomed gay and lesbian members, often offering ceremonies to bless their unions or marry them — in the eyes of God even when the state would not. Denominational prohibitions against this remained in the books, but some churches radically broke with policy, making congregations part of the vanguard of social change regarding marriage.
In 1996, I was a member of Trinity Episcopal Church in Santa Barbara, California. I was also engaged. Richard, my fiancé, and I envisioned a simple wedding. We wanted to get married in church on a Sunday morning during the worship service and host the coffee hour as our reception. Trinity was the kind of church that would appreciate this sort of unconventional ceremony. It was a rule-bending sort of place. Indeed, our priest, Mark, was the first out-gay clergyman in the Diocese of Los Angeles.
Mark listened to our request. But then he surprised us. He didn’t want to marry a straight couple in Sunday worship unless the congregation would be willing to do the same for a gay or lesbian couple. Despite the fact that Trinity’s priest was gay, the church had no guidelines on gay blessings or marriage. He wondered if we’d be willing to wait for the community to work through the issues and come to a consensus about how to move ahead on same-sex unions and marriage.
Patience wasn’t really our strong suit, and we were anxious for the altar. So, Richard and I opted for a Saturday wedding instead. But our request initiated a months-long, church-wide process studying the theology and history of Christian marriage. Some members were opposed to same-sex blessings; some approved of blessing gay couples but not marrying them; and others insisted on full marriage equality. After many difficult discussions, Trinity’s leadership opted to break both California law and Episcopal Church policy to offer gay and lesbian couples the sacrament of marriage. Three or four congregants were so angry that they left the church. But scores joyfully celebrated shortly thereafter when a gay couple became the first men married at Trinity’s altar.
I’ve often wondered how many times and in how many places stories like Trinity’s unfolded in mainline congregations across the country.
A few years later, in 2003, Massachusetts became the first state to legalize same-sex marriage. At that time, only 36% of white mainline Protestants approved of the practice — making Trinity a bit of an outlier. By 2015, that number had risen to 62% among white mainline Protestants. In 2021, that support registered at 76%. This twenty year shift on marriage equality among mainline Protestants is one of the fastest — and largest — social changes ever registered in religion opinion surveys. Both the numbers and speed astonished even the most experienced and cynical researchers.
As I watched the bill signing, I thought of Trinity — and the myriad of churchgoers and clergy who helped change attitudes to make marriage equality possible. Many Americans think of Christians as the bad guys in the story for LGBTQ rights. And, of course, they’d be right. In far too many cases, the church has been one of the worst actors in the tale.
But the story isn’t just of churches resisting change, of narrow-minded religious people hating gays. All along this road to greater justice, there have been many Trinitys. There were Christians who struggled with ancient texts, preached controversial sermons, argued with their fellow parishioners, came out to their church friends, battled during congregational meetings, broke denominational policies, protested state laws, and fought to change their larger church bodies. There were clergy who got fired, seminary professors who didn’t get tenure, artists and authors and preachers who stood up, and Christian activists who risked their own jobs and friendships on behalf of justice and equality. Regular church people and not-famous pastors acted heroically because they wanted a better, fairer, safer world for their friends and family members — and for all people.
I want to recognize them around this historical event. The shift in American Protestant pews didn’t happen by magic, by some passive evolution of opinion, or through some thoughtless acceptance of cultural trends. Those poll numbers represent the hard work of many people wrestling with their traditions, folks who went to great lengths and experienced great losses on behalf of love and justice. Social movements have great days that seem almost easy when they finally arrive — but, in reality, they come at a cost to a great many people.
During the same two decades in which mainline Protestants did this hard work, they suffered public ridicule and insult about how their churches were declining and how irrelevant they’d become. There are few American religious groups so ignored and so easily dismissed. Certainly, these churches aren’t perfect. They’ve got to figure out how to thrive in an age of religious dissatisfaction and generational change. And Lord knows they have a mountain of work to do on racism.
Whatever their shortcomings, however, they were the spiritual backbone of this social transformation for millions of white middle class people regarding marriage equality. What a generation of mostly-unnamed mainline churchgoers did really mattered to LGBTQ rights. Every Bible study, every church quarrel, every angry adult forum, every dull denominational task force, every slow conversion to a different point of view, every congregation that hired a gay or lesbian clergy person, every altar guild that decorated a sanctuary honoring a gay couple’s wedding, every baby with two moms or two dads baptized, every LGBTQ Christian who fearlessly joined and faithfully served a congregation — it all mattered. You questioned, you argued, you welcomed, and you changed. It has been a revolution of and for love.
Future historians will note that these mainline Protestants contributed, perhaps more significantly than even they knew, to a transfiguration of American attitudes toward marriage.
Protest, pride, pew, and presidential pen all played a part in the signing of this new law.
As the famous and invited guests continue to celebrate, please remember the countless churchgoers who made a difference. They weren’t typically loud, and weren’t activists as we generally think of activism. They did their work mostly in old buildings, hidden from the media gaze. Indeed, they didn’t actually like it when their fights made the news.
But history isn’t always made with noise. History is the stuff of good people risking to do what is right, willing to be changed and to change things, inspired to love their neighbors by a God of love — because love is love is love.
Quiet revolutionaries aren’t often thanked on the White House lawn. But I can do it here: Thank you, thank you, thank you.
My post celebrates the contribution of mainline Protestants to yesterday’s marriage bill. They are not, of course, the only American religious community to have lent their support to LGBTQ civil rights. Among others, Quakers, Unitarian Universalists, social justice Catholics, and Jews have worked — and continue to work — tirelessly to ensure gay, lesbian, and trans people are fully included in faith communities and fully protected by the law. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
INSPIRATION
When then is hope to be found among people? Where the sufferings have been greatest . . . look to those who have been excluded and placed on the margins . . . The place for creative hope that arises out of suffering is most likely now to be found among blacks, women, and homosexuals. These outcasts may well be the custodians of those thin places . . . watchers at the frontiers between what is and what is to be.
—Peter Gomes
God calls all of his children to the table. We can disagree and even say a lot of hateful things, but what we can't do in good conscience is leave the table. Or demand that someone else not be at the table.
— Bishop Gene Robinson
When all Americans are treated as equal, no matter who they are or whom they love, we are all more free.
— Barack Obama
The poor have a mission to the rich, the blacks have a mission to the whites, the handicapped have a mission to the 'normal,' the gay people have a mission to the straight, the dying have a mission to the living. Those whom the world has made victims God has chosen to be bearers of good news.
— Henri J. M. Nouwen
No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.
— Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, June 26, 2015
“And as for people shunning us because of our known association with homosexuals”— here she wiggled her eyebrows, because she sounded ridiculously like Joseph McCarthy —“I say we don’t want new members who would think like that. We want people who will admire us for taking a stand and who will say, ‘Yes, that’s Christianity; that’s how I want to live it and that’s the church I want to belong to.”
― The Rev. Clare Fergusson
In “A Fountain Filled with Blood,” by Julia Spencer-Fleming
The union of my late wife and I was blessed during a Sunday morning worship service, January 6, 2013, at St Gregory's Episcopal Church in Athens, GA. Our reception was immediately after the service during coffee hour. It was a glorious day and our church was packed, overflow seating in the narthex, to celebrate with us.
Thank you so much for this. I was a child of a conservative church. When I came out to my mother when I was 16, her response was, "you will feel better when you have a boyfriend." I don't resent her but I came to understand that I had no option other than "to have a boyfriend" and then, a husband. So, I did. And he was abusive. It was a painful 27 years. I came out more publicly 5 years ago. I'm about to turn 65. My whole body relaxed when I finally decided I could be open. I have vacilated between wanting to be a part of church and also not. In 2020 I became active in a United Methodist open and affirming congregation. The pastor was suspended in 2015 for one month after she married a lesbian couple. I found a spiritual home there, and have come to understand further the fight that many Christians have been engaged in for the LGBTQ community. Today I am a seminary student of Theopoetics and Writing. I am deeply grateful for all those who have gone before, preparing a place at the table.