more thoughts on same-sex marriage

let me say up front that i have presided at the celebration of same-sex "unions," and i do not regret that. at the same time i should say that i have always used the united methodist rite for such events, and the methodists don't really look upon marriage as a sacrament.

but i need also to say that i scandalized some of my younger friends about a year ago by mentioning at a pre-nuptial dinner that i did not really think that same-sex unions were "sacramental christian marriage." they are young and hip and accepted such a thing as an "of course." i'm old and a fogey and think too much, so my hangup was on the vocabulary and the nature of sacraments.

the argument is often made that the church blesses battleships and the queen's carriages, so why not two people living together in a committed relationship. of course the church can bless such people, but just as the blessing of the queen's carriage is not a sacrament, i have wondered whether such a relationship is a marriage as a sacrament. in one of the most important books on the subject of same-sex marriage in the church, the late yale scholar john boswell took some length to discuss how marriage and the church's attitude towards it had changed over the years.

in most discussions of sacraments, at least in the west, we've more or less agreed with augustine that a sacrament is an "outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace." in the west the "celebrants" of the "sacrament of marriage" have been the couple themselves, and the "outward and visible sign" has been what we have euphemistically called "consumation." the east has taken a somewhat different view of marriage. indeed in the eastern church has not felt the necessity to list and number the sacraments as has the western, and "sacraments" and "sacramentals" have been viewed in a somewhat wider context of possibilities. and marriage in the eastern church has not been so often about sex. marriage as a spiritual path to union with god has been given much more attention. in the west the tendency has been more to focus on the union within a marriage as a sign of the union of god with the church: it is a pointer towards something rather than a road towards something.

now, if find myself somewhat hoist by my own petard. when i officiate at weddings, i usually talk about the "matter" of the "sacrament" as being the taking of each other's hands. this is a "sign" that has a multiplicity of significations. but i have usually thought about "operation" of marriage as the union of opposites: a man and a woman. therefore the union the union of people who are not opposites has not seemed quite marriage. but i'm seeing that this poses problems for one who thinks too much. men and women are not opposites, but complements. nor are god and mankind opposites. very different, but not opposites. if i see marriage as a spiritual path in which two people join hands to walk together, then they do not need to be opposites; they need only to be helps meet for each other.

now, i know that this could bring up all of the "not adam and steve" or "traditional family" objections. but the description of the creation of adam and eve is about its revealing the image of the holy one, not about suburban denver families. and if we look to the "judeo-christian tradition" for our family values, then the closet is full of all sorts of oddities. should we all arrange to kill the husband of the next desirable sex-object we see in order to marry her and make the offspring of that union our heir? are we to think that would be all right if of course we said psalm 51 afterwards?

it seems to me that the description of same-sex marriage from "the right" has been almost entirely hateful, and therefore not useful to a real discussion. i watched, with a group of gay friends, the free video jerry falwell sent us about the gay agenda. we were horrified to realize that we had never known about such an agenda at all, and were of course thankful to mr. falwell for his gay 101 course.

but it seems to me that much of the discussion of same-sex marriage from "the left" has been almost entirely informed by the level of thinking explored by people magazine, and therefore not very useful to a theological discussion.

this little essay is already becoming something of a rant. i suspect it might be one on which i will have some response, which i welcome. and it is one i will follow up on as i prepare to facilitate a discussion of "homosexuality and the church" in a parish.