Gay and Lesbian Weddings

A. Unabashed Pacifist:

Peace is not an option; it’s THE option.

B. Unabashed Christian:

Holy One,

Where you are, there I feel I belong. With you, how can I ever feel lost? Corollary: if I feel lost, I am not with you. With you, what was lost becomes found, the loss of bearings just temporary. You make me feel welcome in unfamiliar places. I suppose this is another way of saying, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want” etc. I like the green pastures where you’ve placed me.
Amen

C. Un-quoting Jesus:

“Talk is cheap, Satan. Can you deliver?”

[Answer: no. Did He say it? No again.]

D. Blog: Five Blessing Ceremonies and A Wedding

I’ve officiated at a couple of weddings, attended many more in the course of my wife’s ministry, plus those of family and friends. So, in a way, they have become rather routine to me. Not so the wedding about a year ago of a gay couple. Just having that ceremony in a church showed a sort of courage that does not need to appear in heterosexual couples.

Yesterday, the wedding and union ceremonies involved six couples, all women. It was very moving, in ways I’m still processing. But, again, courage struck me, along with the desire to have their unions blessed by the community of faith. To declare their love publicly, and to do so within the sanctuary of a church, when churches are too often the source of shaming them and denying their full humanity as God’s children. To claim their belief that God does not repudiate the love they have for each other, that God honors their commitment to each other. Well, I think, of course!

No religion has the right to deny or invalidate respectful love and commitment between any two people.

When two people love each other in the spirit of Paul’s famous love chapter (used in almost every wedding I’ve ever attended), to disrespect or debase that love is a form of disobeying that passage, disobeying God, and limiting the work of God in forming a loving and peaceful community. The declaration "what God has joined together, let no one tear asunder" applies to humans and to religion.

Finally, something is seriously wrong when such weddings become the targets of hate-filled individuals, when a church feels it must take measures for security when it holds such a worship ceremony.