Marybeth: Family breaking apart over gay marriage, intolerance (but it’s not what you think)
T
his is a story about my dear friend, “Erma.” [Finger quotations to protect my friend’s privacy. I don’t actually know anyone named Erma.]
Erma called me several weeks ago with a dilemma. She had received an invitation to attend the wedding of her gay cousin and his partner in New York State, where gay marriage has been legalized. Let’s call her cousin Dave and his partner Sean. [Again with the finger quotations.]
Erma has a lovely, loving relationship with Dave and a warm friendship with Sean, who has been a virtual family member for years. They see each other at annual Thanksgiving celebrations, a holiday tradition the extended family has observed since 1977. Since the death of Erma’s parents a few years ago, this ritual has carried special meaning to her because it keeps her connected to her mother’s family.
Erma and her husband are Evangelical Christians. The rest of the extended family reflect various other religious affiliations, but not particularly devout. But they know that Erma is a believer, and that her Christian faith is central to her life.
Dave’s branch of the family – including his mom, whom we’ll call Aunt Sue [fingers] – all seem to fully accept the idea of gay marriage, perhaps because they love Dave and have grown to love and accept Sean. Erma loves Dave and Sean too, but simply can’t reconcile herself with the concept of gay couples marrying.
Erma’s dilemma: Having already decided she could not attend the wedding ceremony because it’s contrary to everything her faith teaches about marriage and sexuality, should she send a gift? Her gut told her no, that recognizing the marriage in any way would be inconsistent.
I agreed, not that she really needed my opinion. Erma is one of the most principled people I know. She always does the right thing.
To be clear, Erma never took a stand with members of her family about the wedding. She simply declined the invitation to the marriage ceremony and didn’t acknowledge it with a present.
Fast forward: The wedding takes place, weeks pass, and Erma figures life has moved on. She looks forward to Thanksgiving because she loves and misses her family.
But last week, Aunt Sue called to drop this heartbreaking bomb: Erma and her husband and children are uninvited to Thanksgiving because Erma refused to attend Dave’s wedding. No discussion. No tolerance for Erma’s religiously-based decision. No understanding. In fact, when Erma attempted to explain herself, Aunt Sue hung up on her.
Did I mention this is a 35-year family holiday tradition? And that Erma’s parents are gone, leaving only this extended family to connect her to them? I thought so.
Suffice to say, Erma is devastated.
Some readers might be thinking, Erma is probably one of those typical judgmental Christians who would flame out a relationship just to take a stand on gay marriage. But thinking this goes to show you how quickly people jump to the wrong conclusions.
Grief-stricken to imagine that she has lost her extended family, Erma called her 24-year-old son, “Scott.”
Scott is gay.
This is the conversation she shared with me…
“Scott, you know that I love you unconditionally, right?”
“Yep,” he says reassuringly.
“You know that I love Dave, but I could not attend a wedding ceremony or recognize a marriage in which he stood before God and married another man, right?”
“Yep,” he says understandingly.
“And you know that if you choose to marry another man, I can’t attend that ceremony either, right?”
“Yep,” he says compassionately. “Mom, what’s the matter?”
When she tells Scott why the family has been excluded from Thanksgiving, he reassures her that Aunt Sue is way out of line. And she’s a bully.
Scott knows that his mother is completely capable of loving him and Dave and Sean – and anyone – unconditionally, but at the same time, of remaining true to her convictions. Rejecting the idea of gay marriage is not the same as rejecting those she loves.
But now, Erma’s aunt is bullying her because of the beliefs and principles that define Erma’s character and inform her behavior.
This tragic family story reflects a twisted notion in our American culture: the idea that love always means total acceptance of another person’s life choices. This is emotional immaturity on a socially grand scale.
As Erma points out, she is capable of loving her gay family members but rejecting gay marriage, in the same way she is capable of loving her heterosexual daughter but would reject her decision to live with a boyfriend, and wouldn’t celebrate a cohabiting housewarming party or allow the unmarried couple to sleep together in her home.
Living authentically according to our principles means using those principles as a guide for behavior, while at the SAME TIME, loving and accepting unconditionally the people God puts in our lives.
Sadly, by bullying and judging Erma, old Aunt Sue is hypocritically demonstrating the very intolerance she claims to abhor.
Not to mention, she’s spoiling a beautiful tradition of love and Thanksgiving for her entire family.
Very well stated.
I thought your article was very well written, and well meaning. I have lived that scenario from the gay side. I disagree with the sentiment that Erma’s behavior should be tolerated. It should not. My marriage is worth more than her prejudices. Walk my side, and you will understand. Appreciated your article.
“Rejecting the idea of gay marriage is not the same as rejecting those she loves.” basically sums it up. I’ve been saying it is a hypocritical thing to accuse someone who is against gay marriage intolerant/prejudice/etc. By denying someone’s right to oppose something (without violence) is intolerant/prejudice/etc. This sad situation nailed the issue on the head.
Marybeth, I would please urge you to consider the next time you write something like this that many of us in the body of Christ spent a long, hard time thinking about where we stand on this issue. I wanted to actually write this to you, and thought quite a long time about how best to articulate what I wanted to say, so please read it if you have the time.
Fist, a little background: I’m a Christian and believe that Jesus Christ was the son of God. I’m happily married. I was fortunate enough to grow up in a loving household where the Bible was not just a book to sit on a shelf, but something that we had to read cover to cover. My parents enrolled my siblings and me in a private Christian school where our knowledge of scripture was considered as important as an understanding of mathematics or science. I’m also relatively young.
Now, my (serious) question that I hope you will consider: What makes being gay different from other prohibitions in the Bible that we now disregard?
In recent decades, the question has been dodged by those who make a false, non-Biblically supported claim to artificially separate “moral law” and “ceremonial law”, but ignore most of the moral laws that they find unpleasant.
There is absolutely no Biblical basis for ignoring the prohibition against the abomination of eating any leftover food that is older than three days (Leviticus 11:41). None. Yet, we ignore it because Thomas Edison brought electricity into our homes and his business, General Electric, sold us the refrigerator that we now know inhibits microscopic organism growth that could cause sickness. The Bible was incomplete on the matter.
We have better information today, and so we, rightfully, ignore it, just as the development of the washing machine allows us to ignore the abomination of being near a woman who is on her period for several days before and after she begins her menstrual cycle. A woman wearing pants is also considered an abomination (Deuteronomy 22:5), yet we now ignore this prohibition because it is irrational. It hurts no one. There is no harm. This is not ceremonial law – it had nothing to do with the Levitical priesthood, but instead was an attempt at hygiene based on knowledge available at the time that is no longer relevant.
The Bible fully supports a version of slavery (Leviticus 25:44). There was tremendous harm. No man has the right to own another man, yet we ignore the allowance for this evil because we now recognize that all men are created in the image of God, and that the ancient Israelites got it wrong. There is nothing “ceremonial” about this – it is a law, handed down by God, in black and white, crystal clear. Yet, we ignore it.
We no longer seriously believe that a child born out of wedlock, as well as his or her children and grandchildren for 10 generations, should be forbidden from entering the assembly of God. Yet, it is right there in scripture, abundantly clear. (Deuteronomy 23:2). Nothing was said by Christ to cancel it; in fact, he stated emphatically in Matthew 5:18 that, “For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, nor the least stroke of a pen, will be any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.” Last I checked, heaven and earth were still here and we haven’t yet seen the end of the world. Even his “permit the children to come to me” was not an exception – he was talking to his disciplines, who were physically restraining kids from coming to see him during a sermon, and had nothing to do with the prohibition on girls and boys born out of wedlock written into the law of God.
Over the centuries, the Church has updated itself to reflect a better understanding of the world, science, and the creation in which we live except on this area. We now ignore the ridiculous notion that pigeons blood (Leviticus 14) is a viable option for leprosy, and instead hand out a nice little vaccine developed by Swiss manufacturer Novartis because, once again, the ancient goat herders living in the desert didn’t know about microbiology or genetic structure so they got it wrong.
Yet, suddenly we get to gay people. And the rules are somehow different.
Like the 81 out of every 100 people in my generation (the approximate 18-29 age bracket), I posit that, like slavery, the ancient Israelites were wrong on this (gays). What possible moral good could come of a gay man being forced to marry a woman? I wouldn’t want my daughter, or my sister, to marry a man who couldn’t love them passionately, and physically, as God intended. What possible good could come of asking a gay person to remain alone, starved for comfort, companionship, and intimacy? It’s easy to tell others that they are called to a life of celibacy when very few of us could ever suffer such a burden. God knows I couldn’t do it, nor could many of the people I know. Just open the newspaper to see wedding announcements of senior citizens who want to find someone with whom to share the remaining, albeit short, days remaining int their lives.
Less than 150 years ago, a vast majority of the people of the United States believed – quite correctly as per scripture – that slavery was justified and permissible. It’s not. No decent human being could suggest otherwise. It doesn’t take away anything from God, but rather means that man is fallible.
To tie this into your post, as I said, my family is deeply religious, and conservative in almost every regard. Yet, if one of our relatives were to refuse to support a gay family member by not attending the ceremony, it would be as offensive as if they had called one of my interracial nieces or nephews a “n****r”. (You’d be surprised how often the “good Christian” people have done just that.) The older generations don’t seem to understand this and seem shocked that somehow there are consequences for behavior that they believe, with all of their heart, to be reasonable. Just as the right they have to follow their conscience, so do the rest of us have the right to not associate with those who we believe are behaving in a non-Christ-like manner. You are free to speak, and believe, whatever you want. That doesn’t mean the rest of us are okay with it, or will sit by as our friends, family, neighbors, and loved ones are attacked.
Reading your writings, I don’t sense any animus at all. There seems to be no hatred, nor malice. If anything, there seems to be a deep love and concern for most people. What bothers me is that there is an underlying tone – either an arrogance or an ignorance, I’m not sure – that seems to be oblivious to the fact that other people, of good intentions, can read the scriptures, be intimately familiar with them, and come to a different understanding than you.
Personally, for example, I don’t drink. The Bible doesn’t prohibit it – it prohibits getting drunk. Yet, I don’t think there is anything edifying about alcohol; it leads to nothing good. So I avoid it. I don’t expect everyone else to agree, nor do I write long missives about the dangers of fermented wines or distilled spirits. I’ve never been drunk in my life, nor suffered from a temptation to drink. I don’t expect everyone to agree with me. I’m not presumptuous enough to imply that those who don’t agree with me are not, in fact, Christian. I’m following the dictates of my conscious.
The lack of grace, and sudden refusal to face relevant facts when new information is available, is one of the reasons that Christianity has been on a downward spiral with the percentage of the population identifying as atheist climbing ever-higher. The truth remains that for as long as health professionals have looked into it, even before we as a society had a word called “gay”, approximately 1 out of every 33 people engage exclusively, romantically and physically, with members of the same gender. The best possible outcome for these people is monogamous, stable relationships. Therefore it is because I am a Christian – and can look at facts that weren’t available to the ancient Israelites – that I support marriage equality for gay people, just as I would now support taking the Novartis vaccine for leprosy instead of sprinkling the sufferer with pigeon’s blood, as prescribed in scripture.
The bottom line: Erma’s family was no more wrong for excluding themselves from her company based on their own convictions than she was for not attending the ceremony. Each of us must live with what we think God wants of us, and accept the consequences. Were it my family, I wouldn’t have Erma around anymore, though it would pain me to exclude her. It’s the only thing that would let me sleep at night.
Editor’s note: I’m posting comment this because the writer obviously took his time to express his point of view. But it would take me a month to respond to the many erroneous statements contained in it. Suffice to say, the Catholic church’s teaching about marriage does not preclude the notion of loving (non-sexual) relationships for same-sex attracted persons. Intimacy and sex are not the same thing. Intimacy is meant for all people. Sex is meant for marriage. See more here: http://www.marriageuniqueforareason.org
As for the idea that the bible is meant to morph with the times, that’s a lovely way to justify moral relativism, which does not make relativism right. There’s such a thing as natural law, which was created by God. I believe He intends it to guide our behavior.
God bless, friends.
Mb