Channing Memorial Church
Unitarian Universalist
Ellicott City, Maryland
April 3, 2005

The Reverend Susan LaMar, Minister

Equality Marriage

             It has been quite an interesting experience doing some research for this sermon as I have worked through my own position on gay marriage. I was pretty sure I knew what I wanted my position on it to be, but I wasn’t sure exactly why. What I came to realize as I both read and reflected on it was that the problem in our culture right now doesn’t really have that much to do with whether gays should be allowed to marry under the law. No, what seems to be the problem is that we as a culture don’t have the faintest idea what marriage is. Forget gay marriage. We don’t even really know what straight marriage is!

            We think we do, because we use the word all the time. And many of us are married, or have been married, some more than once. But what is it, exactly? As I thought about it I kept remembering my father said many years ago . . . . that marriage is the only contract that you enter into when you get out of it rather than when you get into it. And the Maryland statutes certainly support that view: There are about 11 pages in the section on marriage, and most of them have to do with the fees that must be paid and how to handle the paperwork. By contrast, there are about 225 pages devoted to divorce. As a minister, I work with couples who are planning to get married, as well as with couples who are presently married, so you’d think I’d know what it is . . . and I suppose I do, some days more than others. . . .  It is much easier to know what it is when I’m at the office than when I go home to my own!

            This morning I’m going to review just a little of the history of marriage. . .  the stories are fascinating. I’ll draw on the book What is Marriage For? The Strange social history of our most intimate institution. Which, by the way, I would highly recommend. Marriage has been a lot of different things in different times and places and cultures. But I am not going to dwell there, because the question “What is marriage for?” is a different one from “What is marriage?”

            So I’m going to wade right into the territory of why I think this lack of definition makes the discussion of gay marriage so socially, emotionally and politically charged. I will talk about how I am coming to define marriage, and about the worries among many that changing the rules is a “slippery slope” leading to all kinds of debauchery and the end of society as we know it.

That is a lot of territory to cover, but we will have the opportunity to talk about it after the service.

So what has marriage been, over the ages? Mostly, it’s been about property. Sometimes it has been about women as property of men . . .  marrying women are transferred from their fathers to their husbands. Sometimes it has been about landed families merging . . . marriages were more like business arrangements to consolidate territory. Merging of kingdoms, or monarchies . . .

Marriage has sometimes been about kinship structures . . . . Some cultures are very clannish, and their rules ensure that the clan is fairly insulated from outside blood. Some cultures – particularly in the west and more recently, have just the opposite attitude . . . that it is important to expand the bounds of the clan and create new kin . . . and therefore lead to a common society.

Marriage has sometimes been about sex . . . who gets to have sex with whom. Marriage has sometimes been for the production of children – workers for the family farm or business; sometimes it has been for the protection of children.

Christianity has been through all kinds of definitions of marriage, beginning from the days of Paul when the end of the world was expected to be so imminent that there was no point in it. Then on through its being defined as a sacrament of the Roman Catholic Church by private vows . . . “words made the marriage – not family agreements or contracts” (pp. 196-197) – this was a major change. Then the Protestants came along and said that OK, you are married at the moment when you take your vows, but that is not what makes the marriage. The Protestants partnered up with the newly forming nation-states and “insisted that marriage was . . . a secular status conferred by an outside authority” – the public sphere.

And then of course, love, from time to time has been a factor. It is pretty recently, though, that it has consistently been a primary factor. This is where it seems to have landed for the time being, in our society, although sometimes I think it is more about the provision of health insurance.

I think that this complicated, convoluted history is coming to a head right now. I think that it is playing out around the issue of whether gays and lesbians may marry under the law, but I think that what is really happening is that changes are occurring in the social fabric. Law always follows social change, not the other way around. Here we have this strange institution called marriage, and people who have had it all along are opting out of it . . . either through divorce or not entering it in the first place. And now some other people who were barely ever noticed before are stepping forward and wanting it.

But what exactly is the “it” that people who do want to get married, whether gay or straight, want? Since there really is no good definition, many folks are latching on to what for them seems obvious and self-explanatory . . . it is between a man and a woman and it is for the production of children . . . of course in the old-fashioned way. Or . . . it is for the provision of certain social benefits . . . like right of survivorship (there’s that property issue again!)

The discussion is playing out around at least three equally volatile points where conflicting values in our society intersect. It is uncomfortable be inside this volatility, but I believe that it is in these intersections and conflict where God reside. All three of these volatile intersections have to do with threads in our social fabric . . . with how individuals, and various kinds of relationships, weave into a common society. The three points I will talk about are the intersection of public and private in relationships; the intersection of love and law; and the intersection of church and state.

            First, is marriage a public relationship or a private relationship?

Well, its intimate details are of course private. But as an institution it is registered with and regulated by the state . . .So it is, of course both. There are many public benefits that accrue to those who are married (ways of owning property, for example). . . and there are private benefits that accrue to those who are married (private, employer-sponsored health insurance, for example.) When I marry people, we talk about how the ceremony itself integrates the public with the private: the couple has invited family and friends to witness, so we begin with words like “we are gathered here today . . . .”  Then the ceremony turns toward the couple, and they privately make their vows to each other – private covenant -- and then they are presented back out to the public, as something new. A new couple, a new family. . . . A new unit within the social fabric. And then we all sign the marriage license and it gets registered with the state.

            Second, marriage right now resides at the intersection of love and law. Government has chosen to regulate it through law . . . often through laws that hark back to property regulation. Yet our society has evolved in the direction of individual, free decision-making, freedom to fall in love and make a marriage . . . a new unit within the social fabric . . . based on love. A mingling of spirits.

            Third, marriage resides exactly at the point where church and state meet. When it comes to marriage, there is no separation. Or, more accurately, there is not necessarily any separation. You can get married by the state – in Maryland, by a judge. – or you can get married by a minister.

When I marry a couple, I am acting as an agent of the government. The marriage license reads: “You are hereby authorized to join together in Matrimony according to the rules and ceremonies of your church, society, or religious sect AND the laws of this State . . . the following individuals:” So when I perform a marriage ceremony, two totally separate things are happening: I am joining the couple in the eyes of God and humanity, and I am joining the couple in the eyes of the state.

As a Unitarian Universalist minister, I have to decide who I will and will not marry . . .  in the eyes of the law, and in the eyes of God. Unitarian Universalism doesn’t have any rules about this; there is no central authority telling me how to make these decisions. That marriage license authorizes me to marry a couple, it does not require me to marry them. Part of what my training and ordination confers on me is the authority to decide in any given case whether to perform the ceremony.

What that means is that I have to have an ethical code that I can apply. And because I am a minister, not a judge, that code has to come out of my theology.

So let me share with you, this morning, how I am coming to articulate my theology of marriage:

1) Marriage is rooted in love. It begins with the erotic love of a new relationship, and it moves and is sustained through the image of steadfast love of God for God’s people . . . a love that remains ever-creating through life changes. Love is invisible, undefinable.

2) I believe that marriage is rooted in a covenant, a promise, a vow between two people. This promise is expressed by words, but the promise itself is invisible, undefinable.

3) I believe that the covenant, the promise, the vow, is a spiritual practice that requires commitment and conscious attention . . . . each to the other’s well-being . . . over time. I have two absolute, non-negotiable requirements when I marry a couple: The first is that the couple enter the marriage with the intent that it be permanent . . . some language to the effect of “till death do us part.” The second is that that there is an expectation of fidelity . .  . some language to the effect of “forsaking all others.” In addition, if I suspect fraud, or if I see signs of abuse, I raise those things with the couple and I may very well choose not to officiate for them.

4) I believe that each couple must figure out what the promise, the covenant, the vows they will make with one another, will mean for them. As they figure out how to come together – out of their separate constellations of family and friends, what will their covenant look like? This is the essence of the pre-marital work I do with couples that I marry. It is a profound act of the imagination. Imagination is invisible, undefinable.

5) The Universalist tradition teaches me that God is available and accessible to everyone equally. It teaches me that God is love and love is God. But God is invisible, undefinable.

6) Finally, here is where all this leads me. If marriage is that invisible and  undefinable, it belongs in the realm of spirit. For me it is the invisibility . . . the “something that cannot be defined” that makes it spiritual and therefore, for me, a sacrament. Not a sacrament of the capital C Church . . . a sacrament of the couple, perhaps a sacrament of the society. The ceremony, the ritual of a wedding, is the first step that makes the invisible marriage visible.

It becomes more clearly visible to the couple in the private sphere as they proceed forward with their life together, ever becoming more and more married . . . and it becomes more clearly visible in the public sphere as they play out their vow, their covenant, their promise to one another by how they conduct their lives together.

That is what becomes part of the social fabric.

There is nothing in that theology that requires the two parties to be of different sexes.

            Here is the question that is raised regularly: Isn’t it a slippery slope? If we change the rules and allow gays to marry, won’t it invalidate all of those other rules? Those ones about not marrying your mother or brother or sister or grandmother? And what about psychological considerations . . . relationships that might technically be legal but our knowledge of complex human relationships might cause us to prohibit? Most of us cringed a few years ago when Woody Allen married his adopted daughter. Modern psychology tells us that the relationship between a parent and child -- blood, or adopted, or step-  --  is fundamentally different – or ought to be – than the relationship between spouses. We are very clear on it when one party is a minor child. But what about when they are both adults?

            The slope only needs to be as slippery as we let it be. You know, there is a legal concept known as severability . . . . that if one provision of a contract is found to be invalid, it does not invalidate all of the other provisions. I think that our laws about marriage are severable, one from another . . . if we change the law to lift the ban on gay marriage it does not change any other restrictions.

There is another slope that is part of the public conversation on this that makes people nervous – it makes me very nervous. That question is, “why limit it to two?” In fact, I had a conversation with a colleague a few weeks ago. She said that for her the issue was commitment . . . if people are committed to one another, then they should be allowed to get married. When I point blank asked her if she would marry or unite three, or four, she would not answer the question. She simply repeated that for her, commitment is what is important.

            Well, that makes me very uncomfortable. Unitarian Universalism does not give us any guidance on this. The Unitarian Universalist Association has taken a strong position on gay marriage – in favor of it . . . but it has taken no position . . . has consciously remained silent on anything else. That silence, I think, is where the discomfort comes from . . . an unwillingness to put the bar back down in a very clear place. And it is why I do put it down: two, unrelated, truly consensual adults.

Yes, I recognize that throughout history  and across cultures there have been many different models for constructing families and weaving a social fabric. But right now, I live at this point in history, in this culture, and I choose to draw boundaries in this particular way.

And there is a third slope. What if a straight couple wants only a union ceremony, without the state’s recognition of that union as a legal marriage? Would I do that? Especially if it is an elderly couple, maybe even living in a nursing home, whose retirement benefits might be detrimentally affected, but they want some recognition, even a blessing of their special, committed relationship.

Well, my answer is, each case would be evaluated separately. That is what pre-marital and pre-union work is for. My overall answer would be probably not, but I believe that we live in a very flexible social fabric that may need exceptions in certain cases. That is just the nature of being a human community. We cannot possibly think of and legislate every possible contingency. All we can do is set some basic guidelines and then very humanly do the best we can.

That is what it is, ultimately. After all these thousands of years we are still, essentially, a human community trying to set up guidelines for how we will be together. Together as individuals, together as couples, together as families, together in associations.

May love light our way.