OPEN WEDDING HOMILY

given at a rally for support of same-sex unions
on the steps of the State Capitol Building
Madison, Wisconsin, sometime in 1996

The Rev. Ruth Gibson
First Unitarian Society
Denver, Colorado

My name is Ruth Gibson. I'm one of the ministers at the First Unitarian Society. I 'm an openly practicing heterosexual, and have been married for about 28 years to a person of the opposite sex. I can't tell you why I chose that particular lifestyle I don't know if I was born with heterosexual inclinations, or if I was just seduced into it by other heterosexual people who may have flaunted their lifestyle before me during my impressionable early years.

Life is hard sometimes. Because life is hard sometimes, I believe that we are called, by all that is holy, to love one another. I hope each of you loves, and is loved by somebody. I don't know how I'd get through my life without the people who love me, and my life hasn't been all that hard.

Love is universally considered an attribute of God. In the words of an Islamic hymn, God is the lover, and also the beloved, for God is love. Christians, Jews, Hindus and Pagans all recognize love as one of God's greatest blessings. And atheists of diverse persuasions have affirmed that love is also humanity's highest achievements.

Love is a blessing, and in some cultures lovers pledge, in the presence of supportive witnesses, to share their lives in love and trust, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health as long as they both live. Sometimes such commitments are considered sacred; some people of faith would say that the closest understanding we can have of God's love for us is this experience of trusting love shared between two human beings. In some cultures, marriage is more of a business proposition, or a property exchange.

However, the institution of marriage, particularly monogamous marriage between two heterosexual individuals, is not universally practiced in every culture. It is not instinctive, nor is it part of any cosmic plan for the universe. Contrary to what some people want to have us believe, it does not even reflect the will of God for us as given in holy scripture. The family values of early Bible times encourage men to have as many wives as they can pay for, as long as the wives are willing, and permit the wives to force their slaves to sleep with their husbands, in order to bear children for the wife, as surrogates. As the example of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar clearly shows, the father has no obligation to provide for his child if the wife chooses to send a slave-born child and its mother into exile.

Marriage is a relatively recent social experiment, something started a little while after we began trying to be civilized, maybe 8 or 10 thousand years ago, after millions of years of experiencing other lifestyles. And just as we are not yet very good at being civilized, so we also find marriage to be difficult. We haven't got a very good system for it yet. Heterosexuals especially have a hard time of it. Our track record for marriage shows this--about 50% of our marriages fail, even though the state supports us with financial and social privileges, even though our religious institutions have added their blessings. (That too, is a recent practice, only about a thousand years old--and there is some evidence that the first vows of loving union blessed in a Christian community celebrated the relationship between two monks.)

Heterosexuals aren't very good at marriage. And yet we seem to have a dysfunctional compulsion to promote a narrow practice of love and marriage. We flaunt our sexual orientation with outrageous public displays of affection, of lasciviousness. We celebrate our sexual relationships with lavish and expensive public spectacles. Perhaps this is because we have a neurotic fear of others of the same gender, a fear deeply rooted in a perverse lack of self-esteem. Perhaps our the lack of balance in role models available in our formative years leads us to adopt rigid sex-role stereotypes as a basis for our identity and relationships. So why do we think we have the authority to decide what the rules for marriage ought to be, when we have such a bad track record?

Why should anyone be encouraged, or even permitted, to marry? Marriage is an unnatural state of affairs; it's difficult, half the time it leads to a level of animosity that can only be resolved through litigation. But there is some evidence that for a slowly maturing species such as ours, the establishment of marriage is the best support for the work of bearing and raising children. It takes at least two adults--sometimes more--to conceive a child, and to assure care for the mother while pregnant. While it's not impossible for a parent to raise a child alone, it is very difficult--and most of us, given the choice, would rather have an adult partner's love and help. But this doesn't explain why marriages are permitted between people who are too old to have children, who are infertile, or who just plain don't like kids and don't want any. And why should such marriages be allowed? Why are such marriages supported by our laws and blessed by our churches and synagogues?

There is a good reason to sanctify and support the estate of marriage. It is because life, even with all its blessings, is difficult sometimes. And the love and support which two people in a committed relationship can provide to each other, helps. Having a spouse contributes significantly to our mental and physical health, to our prosperity, to our wisdom, happiness and well-being. And it is a good thing, for a community and for a state, if its citizens are healthy and prosperous, if they are wise and happy, and generally well off.

Why should our religious institutions bless and encourage people who love each other to marry? Because life, even with all its blessings, is difficult sometimes. But people of faith believe God is with us in our difficulties. We believe that God is love, and that where love is there is God, also, and that those who have been joined together in love, no one may put asunder. Those who are joined in love are together in the eyes of God, in whose image we are all created. And no one, and no state, has the right to deprive another of the fullness of God's grace, experienced through human love.

Blessed be.

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