Mixed Bag of News for LGBTQIA2S+ Community and Our Faith Communities: The Supreme Court and the Respect for Marriage Act.

The LGBQIA2S+ community and faith communities have been in the news this week, with some fantastic news alongside news that is meant to challenge our meant to the core of our very being. While I started to want to report on one story one day, the next day there would be another story that was attention grabbing, too. And then there was another.

On the one hand, there is the story from the Supreme Court of the US (SCOTUS). It involved the case of Colorado-native Lorie Smith, a humble website designer, who said that, because of her Christian faith, she could not and would not design a wedding website for a same sex couple. The problem was that in the state of Colorado, as a business, you cannot refuse to discriminate against anyone in a business transaction or "public accommodations," like on the basis of sexual orientation. What was even more interesting and bizarre is that Lorie Smith has never been asked to design such a website. She just doesn't want to do it in case she is asked. And she isn't even compelled by the state to make a wedding website for a same sex couple. In other words, this is all based on hypotheticals that haven't actually happened. But the conservatives in the state of CO, and the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a conservative law practice, went hunting for a case just to make a point of refusing services to LGBTQIA2S+ people. But many of the conservatives on SCOTUS were seeming to side with Ms. Smith. At the end of the day, I'm not sure who or what Jesus Ms. Smith worships as Jesus never did say anything about the LGBTQIA2S+ community. And while Paul pointed at certain slave practices in his letter to the churches in Rome and Corinth, there was no mention of LBTQIA2S+ people, only men. And there is no mention of marriage in either the Hebrew Scriptures or the Christian Scriptures. 

Here's a link to that story: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/12/303-creative-gay-rights-free-speech-supreme-court.html

On the other hand, good news! Today, Dec. 8, 2022, the House of Representatives voted to pass the Respect for Marriage Act, which had passed the US Senate last week. Even though the bill began in the House, the House had to tweak certain portions of the bill because of the changes made on the Senate side before it passed. Thirty-nine Republican House members voted for the bill, which was less than the first time it passed the House. Now it is going to go to the President in order for him to sign it and make it the law of the land. Granted, this bill/law does not do the same thing that Obergefell v. Hodges did, in terms of making marriage equality the law of the land. But in case the SCOTUS overturns "precedence," again, this law protects the marriages of those already married in same-sex or interracial marriages, and our marriages must be recognized as valid, even if certain states outlaw our marriages. Of course, religious communities are not forced to marry anyone. End of discussion.

Here's a link to that story: https://www.advocate.com/news/2022/12/08/respect-marriage-act-heads-bidens-desk-after-house-vote

The last bit of news is that basketball WNBA superstar and out lesbian Brittney Griner is free from the Russian penal she was assigned to, and anti-LGBTQIA2S+ US Senate candidate from Georgia, Herschel Walker, is not going to be going to Washington, DC.

Thanks be to God.

So, in the course of events this week, from the perspective of this gay pastor, it has been a remarkable week of ups and downs, "good feelings," and irritation of the cheap tricks that some pull out in trying to bring those of us who are LGBQIA2S+ down. 

Yet in the end, love wins.

May it be so.


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