Marriage Equality: Settled Law of the Land

The political platform Politico recently reported the banner headline that the GOP have "thrown in the towel" and accepted same sex marriage/marriage equality rights/LGBTQIA+ marriage: 

"GOP leaders still exhibit strong opposition to transgender rights, and oppose the top legislative priorities of the LGBTQ community. But on the most prominent battlefield of the past few decades, same-sex marriage, they’ve all but conceded defeat."

Marriage equality was, as Politico reported, one of the "seminal culture war debates," and that the so-called "evangelicals" (sic) are still fuming over the GOP giving up on this political football.

Read here for more on this story: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/08/16/republicans-gay-marriage-wars-505041.

So, the GOP, the Republican party, the so-called Conservatives in this country, who are currently all following the former President, have thrown in the towel and said that marriage equality is the law of the land. Settled law. 

A Log Cabin representative (Log Cabin being a group of Republican LGBTQIA+ people) said that the real breakthrough "came with the nomination of Donald Trump. Though evangelicals flocked to his candidacy, conservative gay (sic) rights activists also saw an opportunity. A cosmopolitan minded business person, Trump did not prioritize LGBTQ issues during his campaign and, in fact, made overt appeals to gay (sic) voters, though not by pledging support for laws to protect them."

This is awkward. Very awkward.

What is awkward is that, in the US, the majority of those of us in modern society are part of a huge, tectonic plate-like, evolutionary shift in terms of the perception and acceptance of marriage equality, in which most Americans now accept LGBTQIA+ people getting married, while some denominations and churches--like the United Methodists, Southern Baptists, and the Roman Catholic Church, along with many eastern Orthodox churches--do not allow or recognize LGBTQIA+ marriages. 

What is happening now has happened before, again and again. For many white, middle class women, having a job, a career, took off in the 1950s, but it took the Church longer to accept this change. Ordination of women started to take place in the 1950s, and then took off in the 60s and 70s in many churches, though there are some churches in which women still cannot be ordained to ministry. Likewise, the Black civil rights movement. While the Black church was the birthplace and central support of the Black civil rights movement, with civil rights and voting rights acts taking place in 1960s, it has taken the white churches some time to catch up, even though there is pressure from conservatives to strip Black people of voting rights currently.

Likewise, marriage equality. While we who are part of the LGBTQIA+ community can marry legally, it is still taking time for many churches and denominations to play catch-up.

As one of my professors at Princeton Seminary once said, some times the Holy Spirit works outside of the Church, which is slow to make movement towards equality, and chooses instead to go outside of the Church and put pressure on the Church from society. 

The slow but moving acceptance of marriage equality by the GOP seems to be a case in point. Holy Spirit is moving outside some churches and denominations, in public life, showing recalcitrant churches the way.

All I can add is this: move, Holy Spirit, move!

May it be so.

Amen.


 

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