Gay Marriage is Now Marriage: The Briefest of Meditations on Cultural Shifts

Gay Marriage is Now Marriage: The Briefest of Meditations on Cultural Shifts June 26, 2015

supreme court

 

 

I’ve now lived through three amazing cultural shifts here in the United States.

The first the American Civil Rights movement, the second Equal Rights for women, and now Marriage Equality as the signature issue of Gay Rights, marked today as the Supreme Court declared there is no gay or straight marriage, there is only marriage.

I’m so proud that Jan & I were a small part of this later process. When I was serving as minister of the First Unitarian Church in Providence it became the leading religious voice in support of marriage equality when it was being debated in Rhode Island’s legislature. A debate that led to that state joining the other states in New England’s stand in favor of marriage. And that part of the weight of cultural shift, that no doubt was a current in the tide that led to today’s supreme court decision.

The times, they really are changing.

I expect to see the first woman elected president of our country in this next cycle. And even if that doesn’t happen, the secretary’s bid stands as a marker of how much things have changed since my childhood, when my mother said that she thought women shouldn’t be newscasters on television because their voices didn’t convey authority.

But. And.

Women still suffer many small and large insults to full equality. As a significant marker, neither of the two largest religious denominations in this country (the Southern Baptist Church and the Roman Catholic Church, since you asked) even think women should be allowed to be ministers. The struggle is not over.

Perhaps the advances and failures of our American Civil Rights movement might best stand as an example of the complexity of great cultural shifts. There has indeed been a major shift in our culture around the advancement of civil rights for Americans of African descent. Lynching is no longer an accepted part of our cultural background. Jim Crow is history. We have even elected our first black president.

But. And.

Americans of African descent continue to be the poorest, the most imprisoned, and most likely to die in an encounter with police.

So, at this momentous occasion, a small reminder. The revolutions of the heart that change culture are complex, and never are all at once.

We cannot forget there are so many others who continue to stand in shadows and have reasons to not see much justice going on, even on a day like this. Other racial minorities, native Americans in particular, but also immigrants, and the physically challenged, all come to mind.

The litany of continuing injustice in our culture is long.

So, something amazing happened today.

Love won.

For once.

Let’s celebrate.

And the struggle continues. For African Americans, for Native Americans, for GLBT with some emphasis on the “T” in that, for all people of color, for the immigrant, legally or otherwise, for the poor who are getting poorer in a culture that has on the one hand allowed greater access to health care than ever before but where income for the majority is beginning to decline, and insecurity for all has become normalized, and where our romance with violence is enshrined as inviolable gun rights.

Here’s my take away this morning.

Most of us are grown ups.

We can celebrate and see the need for continuing to struggle.

Sort of like that saying attributed to the immigrant Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki.

You are perfect as you are.

And, you could use some improvement.

We can, and should celebrate the moment.

And, tomorrow, there’s work to do…

As our president once observed, taking the words of Theodore Parker, made current by Martin Luther King, Jr., paraphrased. The arc of history is long, and it bends to justice, but only because people put their hands on that arc and bend it in that direction…

(photo of Supreme Court by Jenna Pope)


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