Rally for Marriage Equality, Rhode Island

Comments at the Rally for Marriage Equality At the Rhode Island State House

12 February 2009

James Ishmael Ford

Minister
First Unitarian Church of Providence

Over the years there have been too many stories of women and men denied access to their dying partners, of surviving partners denied access to insurance or even their homes. and of children being taken away from a loving parent: all because the adults involved were of the same gender.

There is so much hurt in this world: hunger, loss, war. Human tears could fill an ocean. There is somewhere within our human hearts a knowing that what has been done to one can be done to another. Out of this there births a universal call spoken by all the prophets of all the world’s faiths to some deep equity, to a call of reconciliation and justice.

Today we stand together, people of many faiths and people of no particular faith, but all called by that spirit of reconciliation and justice written on our hearts, to stand before our sisters and brothers, and to bear witness.

Among the last prejudices enshrined in law and by custom are those that would drive lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people into the shadows. For too many years, people who have loved people of the same sex have been tormented, reviled and persecuted.

I come here as minister of the First Unitarian Church of Providence. We were gathered by the inspiration of God among people in this community in 1720. We covenanted to stand with each other through bad times and good. And as a people of faith we have witnessed revolution and civil war. We have passed through panics and recessions and depressions. And we have kept faith with each other, growing over time, learning and broadening our perspectives. What fed this, is what has fed our American republic: a fierce dedication to constantly searching our own hearts to seeking the deepest places and to act always, as best we can from a spirit of fellowship and love.

We have failed many times. Of course we have. Challenging our prejudices is hard. Change is hard. But this is the good news of our human condition. If we open our hearts, it we search our minds, if we look to each other and to that greater which binds us to each other, then, hard as it may be; we can change. Yes we can.

Prejudice can dissolve. Hatred can turn. And justice can, once again, roll down, like waters.

My prayer today is that we look into the faces of the women and men among us, and see within their bodies our own hearts beating. My prayer is that we see love where it happens, and that we cherish it, and that we strive to protect and foster it. Out of that seeing ourselves in each other, I pray we repent of any ill will toward one another, and strive to work for that world of equity and justice for which our parents longed, and sometimes, died.

Let us turn from prejudice to justice.

Let us allow those who love to marry.

Amen.