It’s been a week now and I’m still bummed about the passage of Amendment One here in North Carolina.
It seems counterintuitive to prohibit two loving adults–regardless of sex–from marrying. Sheesh! Put that energy toward preventing little girls from being promised to old men… toward getting rid of child pornography. We’re among the worst in the nation in the number of children who suffer “food insecurity.” That means they can’t assume they’re going to have food that day. Or the next. Thousands are homeless in our state.
I must tell you, I have never understood the threat of gay marriage and I can speak with some authority. At one time, Dearly Beloved and I lived in a hip, contemporary urban neighborhood where, for a while at least, we were the only married heterosexual couple on the street.
The day after we moved in, we were welcomed with still-warm chocolate chip cookies from the two men who lived diagonally across from us. We liked them immediately. They watered my plants when we were away, Introduced us to their extended families, and invited us to their parties. They are still a couple two decades later.
The two men next door to us moved in about the same time we did and their relationship is still intact today. One confided to me that his mother told him she would never set foot in his house. It was her loss, for they were intelligent, funny, kind, successful guys.
Here is the wording of the NC amendment:
[] For [] Against
Constitutional amendment to provide that marriage between one man and one woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized by this State.
This wording affects common law relationships between a man and a woman as well. Already a local commissioner is at work to take away benefits for the families of any city/county workers, gay or straight, who don’t conform to this definition.
Far wiser people than I have written about homosexuality. I’ll stay out of that and so should Franklin Graham. I can, however, report that during the time we lived in the gayborhood, DB and I never once considered switching teams.
Perhaps our experience may reassure the professor of Christian ethics at Southeastern Baptist Seminary about two concerns he voiced during the pre-election debate. Although I dearly loved my Akita, the late Howard Lee, it never crossed my mind to marry him. Nor was Dearly Beloved inclined to wed the bowl of ice cream he ate every night.
I hope that puts the professor’s mind to rest.
Although I can’t remember the name of the book, a line comes to mind where one of the characters asked the other, “How can you possibly think that??” Her friend answered, “I don’t have to think. I’m Catholic.”
Of course I have thinking Catholic friends. The point is that too many of “the faithful,” whatever the denomination, let someone else tell them what to believe and I’m not talking Jesus.
Despite all the fist-pumping preachers and the ecstatic red-suited middle-aged platinum blondes celebrating on the television news, I can’t picture a jubilant Jesus high-fiving the passage of this legislation.
It feels pretty low here in the land of the moral high ground.
