For the Love of God

All this talk about baking cakes for gay weddings has me so sad and angry. Both sides, the gay side and the Christian side are making me wonder if anyone in this country ever listens to one another or if we have just given up on listening and have become perpetual 2 yr olds who yell at one another.

If people in this world have forgotten what marriage is, it is because Christians stopped living the Sacrament a long time ago. A lot of people who I know gave up on love in the “traditional” sense and found it some other way because of that. If we want to point the finger at someone for the fact that the institution of marriage is crumbling, then let us look in the mirror as a Church. We failed and until we admit that fact and change it from within, it won’t get any better. And I have no illusions of that happening.

I was one of those people once. I was in a really screwed up relationship with a woman for a short time. It was crazy, dysfunctional and not something that I ever thought I would find myself doing. Even in the middle of it, I refused to admit that it was what it was. But what I found in her was a reflection of myself: a woman scorned by man after man. I get how some people can come to that place in life.

I also was involved in the swinger lifestyle for a while. The same thing happened. My now husband and I were of the same mind that we had tried to do it “the right way” and it had blown up in our face. This lifestyle was something that we both had in common and that brought us closer to each other. It was not about the sex, it was about the fact that nobody had ever modeled the Sacrament of marriage to us. It seemed like it was about the sex. Up until a few days ago, I didn’t realize that it was less about that and more about the fact that we did it to have something that brought us closer.

My mother raised me alone. The only man she ever had a relationship with raped and molested me as a small child. When I finally told people about it when I was a delinquent 14-year-old runaway, she had to choose: me or him. She chose me, but she also chose to never give another man a chance to enter into her life. She has been alone ever since. She’s not the happiest person. She is lonely and I can only imagine what goes through her head when she is all alone at night in her apartment. I refused to be her, even if it meant doing things that I knew in my heart to be wrong to please a man, it was worth it to not become my mom.

My husband’s parents were divorced when he was little and he doesn’t really remember much about it, but he never had a shining example of a marriage. One that was filled with love, anger, forgiveness and fighting to the end.

Both of us in our own way sought love. We both did things that were terribly wrong in that search and both of us realize now why they were wrong. But at the time, we were trying to get a little relief from the hurt that our brokenness caused.

I don’t assume that all gay people are traumatized and that is why they are gay. I try not to assume anything about anybody. People are who they are. They have a right to be who they are, to make their choices and we owe them respect, even respecting their freedom to choose things we know are objectively wrong. We don’t have the right to think that somehow our tendency to commit mortal sins is somehow different from others tendency to commit moral sins.

Love isn’t based on whether or not one repents. Jesus loves us even when we don’t repent that is why even after years of saying I would NEVER EVER become Catholic and live under some Pope’s rules on how and when I have sex, I am now Catholic and found healing in those rules that aren’t the Pope’s but God’s. Because even when I refused to repent, Jesus loved me and sought me out until I finally let Him save me. Had He given up on me, I would not be here today. I don’t know where I would be, but it would not be writing this blog, living this life, married to this man or being the person that I am today.

Had Jesus said “Well, you obviously are refusing to do things MY way, so I’m giving up on you, until you see how right I am”, I would never have become Catholic. If God, Himself, does not impose Himself on others, then who the hell do we think we are to do so?

You know what Jesus does? He sits at a well, in mid-afternoon and talks to a woman who is an outcast and a hoe and tells her that He knows she is a hoe. THEN He asks her for some water. Do you realize how scandalizing that was for Him to do? You think the debate about wedding cakes for gay weddings is bad, I can only imagine the commotion that little talk created. And Jesus didn’t care. His only goal was to tell her “I know who you are, I know how you are living, I know that you are broken-hearted and I love you more than you think I do. Let me make things better.”

So when people ask “Would Jesus bake the cake” my thought is of that day at the well and I think that maybe He would, but maybe He wouldn’t. Whatever His decision would be He would use it to say “I know who you are and I love you”. As His disciples, we are commanded, not asked, but commanded to respond the same way to everyone. And I mean everyone, gay people, people who disagree with us, people who kind of agree and kind of disagree, people who have different thoughts on the issue, people who have questions and people who don’t even know what is happening. Regardless of what laws pass or get vetoed, we are called to love one another.

For the Love of God and everything Holy can we all please just take a breather and remember that?