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<\/a>Not long ago I was sitting in a local Providence coffee shop with a ministerial colleague discussing strategy in support of marriage equality. Rhode Island is the last New England state to not allow same gender marriage and I am part of a group of progressive clergy committed to changing that. <\/p>\n
My colleague, a liberal Protestant minister, alluded to how as late as the early nineteen seventies in American law a man and a woman who married were a \u201csingle person:\u201d the husband. The simple truth is that \u201ctraditional marriage,\u201d at least what marriage was understood to be here in North America for most of our history was for the most part no bed of roses for women. Beating a wife was sometimes just necessary. Marital rape was assumed as a husband\u2019s prerogative<\/span>. And property rights? Well, it all depended\u2026<\/p>\n It took the rise of an aggressive feminism and a decade and more of activism, all in the mid twentieth century, before our culture shifted and accepted the legal equality of women and men in marriage.<\/p>\n His point, in that conversation, was that this recent shift of attitude that has radically redefined the rights of women and with it marriage in our culture; will lead to the rights of BLGT people, as well. And perhaps the most significant symbol of that will include the enshrining of same gender marriage in law.<\/p>\n Of course what drives these reflections is religion, spirituality. And with that in mind there\u2019s another point to recall. This \u201crecent\u201d is merely a contemporary expression of a very old insight about who and what we are as human beings. There are currents running through pretty much all traditions that always at the very least have whispered deep truths about human dignity and human equality. But, for most of human history these have been whispers.<\/p>\n Today this truth must be shouted from rooftops.<\/p>\n And here I find myself thinking about the place of religion in this conversation, the whispering and the shouting.<\/p>\n Religions have multiple purposes, although they primarily turn on the deep currents of the human heart. Each religion speaks to the mysteries of life and death. Some seeing, I believe, a bit more clearly. But all, without exception, looking through the glass darkly, sometimes emphasizing irrelevant matters, or ignoring critical issues. It\u2019s always a mixed bag when human beings get into the deal. No religion has a monopoly on the truths of the human heart, and all are confused on one matter or another.<\/p>\n So, of course, of course the messages religions preach are always somewhat compromised.<\/p>\n