The liturgy of an early morning school day in my home is not different from similar celebrations of life in families across the state, at least those who are raising a son who has just crossed the wavering threshold into sixth grade. There is the familiar ritual of call and response:
Sasha, don't dawdle in the bathroom please, you're going to be late for school!
Pop, where are my sneakers?
Look under the sofa by the Nintendo!
Then there is the parallel ritual of recollection and repentance between parents:
Hon, don't forget to pick up a quart of milk on your way home from work!
I just remembered, I have a meeting over at church after supper, can you do homework duty tonight?
Okay, but you need to take Sasha to the orthodontist tomorrow morning I have an early meeting. Sorry.
After a flurry of pet hugging and finding a mislaid math book, my son and I are in the car en route to the Quaker elementary school he attends. It is then that I am painfully reminded that my family is not a "typical" family, and that if many of my fellow citizens of the state have their will, we shall never have the security of taking our status as a couple or a family for granted. My need to listen to the news today trumps top 30 and so this morning it is WBUR and not KISS108. Bad mistake. We listen in silence to stories of hundreds of civic and religious leaders mobilizing to turn back the decision of the Supreme Judicial Court that the Commonwealth needs to extend the protections, benefits, obligations, and responsibilities of civil marriage to its gay and lesbian citizens. In a tone of hurt puzzlement my son says, "I just don't understand, Papa. You and Dad are married as far as I am concerned. What is going on?" Is that a quaver of fear or of anger I hear in his voice? I switch the channel back to KISS108.
I breathe a silent prayer that today I do not have to define the words "bestiality," "polygamy," and "pedophilia" or any of the hurtful terms that some religious and civic leaders have used in warning against the terrible things might happen if gays were allowed civic marriage. It would be harder still to explain that for over the 25 years of my life with my partner, or the seven years since my son was adopted from an orphanage in Russia we have lived with a legal, social, and financial vulnerability that none of the heterosexual parents of his classmates face. I am glad that he does not know for the moment that if his dad should be taken to the hospital in an emergency I do not have the unquestioned legal right to be there with him; that if I should die my partner has no right to my pension or social security benefits to help support the family. I have never told him the horrifying stories of long-term couples we have known who were devastated when one party passed away and the only legally recognized "family" - a resentful parent or sibling - descended on the remaining partner and threw them out of their own home.
There are indeed more than 1,000 rights, benefits, privileges and responsibilities which from the time Governor William Bradford established civil marriage as the norm in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts have been progressively created to "foster the formation and stability of family, promote the well being of children, and insure the rights of individuals when families are torn apart by death, divorce or serious illness " - point the Rev. Peter Gomes made eloquently in the Feb. 8 Boston Globe. It was this redress of inequality that the Supreme Judicial Court was addressing in deciding for the plaintiff's in the Goodridge decision. The court also rightly recognized that "separate is rarely equal" and that as a matter of fact Vermont-style civil unions fall significantly short of the full range of protections and obligations entailed by civil marriage.
The distinction between civil and religious marriage is a difficult one for many persons to grasp in a country where - unlike many European nations - ministers, priests and rabbis routinely function as agents of the state in solemnizing marriage contracts. Yet it is a crucial distinction. Religious communities have the moral obligation to decide whose covenants they shall bless or not, and nothing in the court's decision touches that. For instance, Roman Catholic priests may not marry divorced Catholic Christians whose prior marriages have not been annulled - and they have the full right to make that judgment. Religious communities will continue to discern what the sacramental meanings and significance of marriage shall be for their followers - meanings which historically have been as dynamic and evolving as the multiple evolving forms of civil marriage.
That said, I would hold that churches have as much to say about the impact of civil marriage as they do about any matters that bear upon the common good - from tax reform to foreign policy. The problem is that in this case, by my lights, they are saying the wrong things. The institution of marriage is in a state of crisis in a country where half of all marriages currently end in divorce and fewer and fewer heterosexual couples are choosing to marry at all. Only 56 percent of all adults are married, compared with 75% 30 years ago. I share the concern to strengthen and support the relationships which are the necessary environment for the nurturing of children. The sanctity of marriage is important to me as well - but my family and my relationship is not the enemy. Marriage is more demeaned in the eyes of my son by Britney Spears' one-week Vegas marriage or by "So You Want To Marry a Millionaire" than by the quieter but more worthy witness of thousands of same-sex couples who are actually asking to assume the responsibilities and burdens, and be accorded the dignity and protections of civil marriage. Research shows that families are increasingly at risk from the deteriorating economic conditions and unraveling social supports that strain and pressure relationships. Would we not be wiser to mobilize the gospel message to address this far more dangerous assault upon the family?
All this I would love to be able to talk about honestly and respectfully with my sisters and brothers - preferably not over the din of heated rallies but above the happy chaos of a school day breakfast table. In the end it is this social reality that is the most significant and life-giving context for all such decisions that effect real and not abstract human lives.
John McDargh is an associate professor in the theology department at Boston College.
Be the first to comment on this article!