5002 Theme 1: Letting Our Light Shine
Skinner Sermon Award Winner 2004
"Until All Are Equal: Refusing to Sign Marriage Licenses"
The Rev. Joshua Mason Pawelek
Delivered at the Unitarian Universalist Society: East
Manchester, CT - November 23rd, 2003
Complete text of the sermon:
When I began planning my sermon on my decision to stop signing
marriage licenses, I never imagined it would be the same week the
Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court would hand down its decision
in Goodridge vs. Department of Public Health on whether or not the
state's ban on issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples is
consistent with its constitution's various commitments to equality.
So I said then, and I'll say it now, thanks a lot to the Mass. Supreme
Judicial Court for stealing my thunder. It almost felt inconsequential
to speak about not signing marriage licenses in Connecticut when
such a momentous event had taken place just to our north.
It was momentous. That Tuesday morning at 10:00 I was walking past
a TV monitor at a bank branch in a supermarket in my town, and there
it was on CNN: "Massachusetts High Court Overturns Ban on Gay
Marriage." Wait, what? I had to read it twice to make sure
I was reading correctly. You don't often see those words in that
order. In fact, no one had ever seen those exact words in that exact
order. As Chief Justice Marshall put it, "We are mindful that
our decision marks a change in the history of our marriage law."
This, for me, and for so many others who've worked tirelessly-and
who will continue to work tirelessly-for full civil rights for gays
and lesbians, was a sweet and precious moment in history, a moment
of justice. "Yes!" I said out loud. Make no mistake: I
broadcast a very distinct bias and much emotional investment when
it comes to gay and lesbian civil rights. The tellers and their
customers all turned to look at me. Some of them turned to look
at the monitor. None of them joined in my excitement. Longing for
someone to share this moment with, I looked at my son, Mason, in
the shopping cart, put my arms in the air, and said "Yaaaaayyyy!"
Poor kid. Mason, oblivious to everything except my excitement, put
his arms in the air and screamed Yaayyyyy!
My thoughts went to the plaintiffs in the Goodridge case. They'd
been wrapped up in this for so long. They experienced the agony
of losing the case in the first round, but were able to appeal to
the Supreme Court. They were first told that the decision would
be handed down the previous July. They'd been waiting, on pins and
needles I'm sure, for five months, their lives on hold, with no
idea how the decision would go. That Tuesday's news was an immense
relief for them. I had had the great honor of sitting on a panel
at the Boston General Assembly the previous June with the lead plaintiff,
Hillary Goodridge. We were each speaking about the status of the
gay marriage movement in our various states. I remember she had
to leave the panel early because she was having her picture taken
for Newsweek. She is funny and warm and humble, and not the
person whose name and life you'd expect to find at the center of
a national legal and cultural struggle. But there she is. "Yaaaaayyyy!"
The court's November decision did not mean that same-sex marriages
could begin taking place in Massachusetts. The court could've gone
that far, but it didn't. Similar to Vermont, the court told the
legislature to take care of it, and gave them 180 days in which
to do so. This decision was more radical than the Vermont court's
decision because the Massachusetts court did not give the legislature
the option to create a civil union law. The Mass. legislature was
directed to amend the marriage laws. On May 17th we would witness
full gay marriage, no second class citizenship. It is still possible
that a constitutional amendment will succeed in establishing marriage
as only between a man and a woman, but this will take a couple of
years, and I believe it will be much harder to take equality away
now that it has been established.
We don't have marriage equality in Connecticut — at least
not yet — and thus I have decided to stop signing marriage
licenses as a form of protest. I want to tell you about this decision
because it impacts our congregation's life and its public reputation.
About a year ago I heard the Rev. Fred Small talk about his decision
to stop signing marriage licenses. I think highly of Rev. Small,
but I confess I was unimpressed with his decision. I was even a
bit arrogant about it. "What good will that do?" I asked.
It won't influence a court. It is unlikely to influence a legislator,
unless they come to you to get married. It will only hurt the people
in your congregation who need you to marry them. And let's face
it, it's not like the anti-gay lobby and the anti-gay politicians
will be quaking in their boots when they hear that a UU minister
is refusing to sign marriage licenses! You won't hear any of them
saying, "Wow, I didn't see that coming!" It's not an action
that exerts a lot of political pressure.
Part of the reason I felt this way is because I had been involved
in Love Makes a Family, Connecticut's grassroots coalition working
for marriage equality. I had been watching their leaders and their
lobbyists make strategic decisions about how to exert political
pressure. I had been learning quite a bit from them about how to
build an effective movement, about how to win. They won domestic
partnership benefits for state employees. They won co-parent adoption.
I was very impressed. They weren't pushing the refusal to sign marriage
licenses as an effective strategy to advance the legislative battle
in our state. In fact, they said, it might even turn off some of
the clergy from more conservative denominations who had agreed to
support us at great risk to their careers.
Through the course of the year, my thinking began to change. First,
I became aware of gay and lesbian colleagues who were refusing to
sign licenses, not because they were trying to make a statement
about justice, but because it was too painful and too insulting
to perform weddings for heterosexual couples and sign the licenses
when they themselves couldn't legally be married. Pain and insult
experienced by colleagues and friends — I was hearing something
I suppose I knew was there all along, but I hadn't listened deeply
until this moment.
My position began to change even more when I began reflecting on
this strange United States custom by which states authorize clergy
to sign marriage licenses, and in a quite blatant way blur the lines
between church and state. This is very important: there are two
kinds of marriage, legal and religious. Legal marriage is what enables
a couple to obtain what I call the civil rights of marriage. There
are 588 rights afforded by the state of Connecticut to married heterosexual
couples. Five of the state rights are offered to same-sex couples
in Connecticut if they fill out special paperwork. That, too, was
a battle that Love Makes a Family won during the spring 2002 legislative
session. There are over 1,100 rights afforded by the federal government
to married heterosexual couples. Very few of these rights can be
obtained easily and without great legal expense by same-sex couples,
yet their needs in terms of inheritance, raising children, sharing
property, hospital visits, end of life issues, health benefits,
family discounts, family tax credits, and on and on and on, are
exactly the same.
Why clergy are allowed to sign marriage licenses on behalf of the
state I have no idea. It may have just been a matter of convenience,
or a hold-over from the days of Puritan theocracy in old New England.
It doesn't tend to work that way in most European countries where,
when a couple wants to get married legally, they go to the appropriate
governmental office and obtain a marriage license. Then, if they
want the second kind of marriage, a religious marriage, they go
to the church or the synagogue, or the mosque, and the marriage
rite (R-I-T-E) takes place. Religious marriage seals the union in
the eyes of God or Yahweh or Allah or the Sacred or the Most Holy
or the Spirit of Life. It has nothing to do with the state. It has
nothing to do with the civil right (R-I-G-H-T) of marriage. Because
religious and legal marriage are combined in the US, many people
have difficulty understanding that the same-sex marriage movement
is only about legal marriage. It has no interest in asking any religious
body to change its practices when it comes to religious marriage.
And yet, so many of the arguments against gay marriage that you
hear at the legislature or in testimonies in the courts are religious
in nature. "Because the Bible says so! Because it's an abomination,
see Leviticus, see Paul." When you take the religious argument
away, there is no argument against gay marriage. If you read the
dissenting opinions of the Massachusetts judges, you see them struggling
to say why gay marriage is wrong, but they know they can't base
it on religious grounds, so they make vague statements about not
having enough data, about letting the people decide, about the extent
of the court's authority, about historical norms.
These reflections helped me to see even further that it makes sense
to refuse to sign marriage licenses. Take the clergy out of legal
marriage and let us just focus on religious marriage. I think this
would really help opponents of gay marriage to understand that this
is about equality and civil rights; it is not an attack on religion.
The final event that changed my mind about this decision happened
over the summer, when Pat Anderson and Deb Walker came to me and
asked me to perform their wedding, which took place at our church
on December 17th. Deb and Pat's was my first wedding as minister
of UUS:E. I was honored. And it dawned on me: If I sign marriage
licenses for straight couples, but not for gay and lesbian couples,
then I really am allowing our congregation to perpetuate second
class membership for gays and lesbians. That is, the minister provides
one package of services for one group, and another package of services
for another group. My conscience could no longer sanction this.
The pain and insult had lodged too deeply in my heart.
It's not that I don't want heterosexual couples to receive the
benefits provided by legal marriage. By all means, I say, go to
a justice of the peace and get your license signed. I will assist
you in doing this. But as you do, please recognize the immense privilege
you receive as a married heterosexual person — or even as a
divorced heterosexual person, since some of those civil rights of
marriage enable a clear and unambiguous legal termination of a relationship.
Recognize the discrimination. Recognize the mis-use and abuse of
power. Recognize the vast denial of civil rights to one segment
of the population. Remember that marriage laws used to turn women
into property, and they were changed by people who cared about justice.
Remember that marriage laws used to prevent interracial marriage,
and they were changed by people who cared about justice. So much
for historical norms. Recognize, remember, and then join in the
struggle in whatever way possible to make sure that all citizens
of every state receive equal treatment by the state.
I told our Policy Board in September that I had decided to no longer
sign marriage licenses. They supported me, but asked that I not
make this statement in public until I had had an opportunity to
preach about it to the congregation first. This I could do. This
felt very much like shared ministry. And now that I have done it,
I say to any heterosexual couple who asks me to perform their wedding,
"Yes, however please understand that I will not sign the license
issued by the state." I will continue to perform religious
weddings for both same-sex and opposite-sex couples. And I will
sign the religious certificate of marriage. But I will not sign
the legal certificate. I will not participate in a form of state-sanctioned
discrimination. I have performed many weddings since then. To date,
no couple that I know of has decided to seek a different minister
after finding out about my position on marriage licenses.
One of the assumptions Unitarian Universalists embrace is the notion
that revelation is not sealed, but open and continuous. Truth is
not sealed, but open and continuous. Because of this we UUs also
tend to understand from a spiritual perspective the way in which
values like freedom and equality are applied historically in limited
ways, and we tend to notice that this limited application breeds
injustices, that there is always room to expand the application,
always room to let more people in, always room to tweak and improve
on democracy, civil rights, civil liberties. In religious traditions
where revelation is sealed-delivered once to a great teacher or
prophet-and written down in unchanging, unerring language, it is
difficult to embrace an expansion of the human family; it is difficult
to imagine a wider application of values such as freedom and equality.
Such traditions always try to fit the world into a box. Anything
or anyone who doesn't fit is deemed other, depraved, flawed, evil,
damned. Unitarian Universalists approach things differently. We
have a box, to be sure, but we are much more willing to fit our
box to the world. In some ways Unitarian Universalist congregations
still struggle with how to welcome, embrace, and empower gay, lesbian,
bisexuals, and transgender people, let alone work for their civil
rights. But the genius of a liberal faith is that it stays open
to new possibilities. It is in a position to hear the moanings,
the rumblings, the protests of those who find themselves outside
the box, outside equality, outside democracy. We can hear because
we believe that revelation and truth are not sealed.
I told my congregation that although this decision to refuse to
sign marriage licenses has been my decision to make as an ordained
minister, it is my fondest hope that we understand it as our collective
protest of injustice; as our collective statement, along with other
Unitarian Universalists and other liberal religious and non-religious
people in Connecticut, that gays and lesbians are full members of
the human family, deserve the same rights and benefits afforded
to heterosexual people, and that this struggle, like all justice
struggles, will be won by those who know that new truths emerge,
new possibilities arise, new messages are available, revelation
and truth are not sealed. Amen. Blessed Be.
View Part 1 of
this event 
View Part 2 of
this event
Photos by Nancy Pierce
|
