Marriage Fatigue

When I first heard that a local church will not sign any more state marriage licenses until gay unions are legal in Ohio, more than anything else, I was annoyed.

I have long supported gay marriage, but this is no ordinary church. It is Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ, where my husband and I were married five years ago. I bristled at the notion that our marriage would not have been legal at the end of that moving service.

I grumbled, too, about how inconvenient it would be to force a do-over with a justice of the peace.

I also worried that the church's decision, however well-meaning, would fuel the ridiculous argument that gays want to undermine traditional marriage.

Pilgrim's new senior pastor, John Tamilio III, quickly set me straight.

"I'm about as heterosexual as you can get," he said, "but this is personal to me as a civil rights issue. I feel called as a pastor to do this."

Besides, he says, a church should not be doing the government's business.

"When a pastor signs a marriage license, he's acting as an agent of the state. The First Amendment makes it clear that there is a separation of church and state. In our church, marriage is an ecclesiastical term. We feel the state should provide a civil union, and then each church can decide whether to bless that civil union as a marriage."

He is also clear on what Jesus said about homosexuality: nothing.

"I can't sit idly by and watch a group of people denied their rights based on an irresponsible reading of Scripture," Tamilio said.

Jesus did, by the way, have a lot to say about divorce.

"And a lot of it isn't pretty," Tamilio said. "But most fundamentalists wouldn't bat an eye if I were divorced and wanted to join their church. Their pastors tend to preach against homosexuality and abortion because, in most cases, they are heterosexual males. These issues don't touch their own lives. They can say, 'I don't have to do anything about this, but you do.' They can point the finger and tell everyone else they have to change."

Last week, a colleague respectfully suggested that, for me in particular, gay marriage is a worn-out issue.

A part of me shares his weariness. I've lost count of how many times I've written about this, and there are plenty of other issues calling for my attention.

I always return, though, to how it would feel if I were deeply in love with an adult who loved me back but forbidden by law to share the rights that come with such a commitment. I think of how daily life would feel if my government told me I loved the wrong kind of person and was therefore unworthy of full citizenship, no matter how much in taxes I paid.

And then I remember my own wedding in Pilgrim Church. Every anniversary, my husband and I listen to a recording of the pastoral message, which was delivered by our dear friend the Rev. Kate Matthews Huey. Kate drew on Christ's Sermon on the Mount to remind us that the politics of Jesus are politics of compassion and urged us to cleave to each other through the toss and tumble of our own activism.

"From this day forward," she said, "whether you are up on the mountain or down by the river, may your hearts continue to brim over with joy in each other and in your loved ones and in your life together. May you find yourselves planning each day bursting with ideas and energy, compassion and joy, laughter and the tears that come, too, when we live life fully."

We were so bolstered to be sent out into the world married by Pastor Kate, recognized by church and state, our love sanctified and codified in one beautiful service. But my joy from that day is tempered by a bitter caveat. While Kate could legalize our union, Ohio law forbids her from marrying her own beloved and longtime partner, Jackie. Even in Pilgrim Church, their marriage would be mist and vapors in the eyes of the law.

Pilgrim's congregation has decided it no longer will support this injustice.

And I support Pilgrim.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and the author of two books from Random House: "Life Happens" and "… and His Lovely Wife." To find out more about Connie Schultz (cschultz@plaind.com) and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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