© Rev. Susan Karlson
February 13, 2011
Valentine’s Day used to be my least favorite holiday—I felt lonely and sad each Valentine’s Day when I didn’t have a loving relationship. I know the greeting card extravaganza and the hype about this holiday of love has that impact on many people just like Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Thanksgiving and every other holiday. My message this morning is about standing on the side of love.
Alan and I will celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary this year. I remember when he proposed to me during Joys and Sorrows, what we call Milestones here. He prearranged with the musician to get the whole congregation to join in singing, “Susan, Susan, give me your answer do”, changing the name in the song, Bicycle Built For Two. And I tell you that the congregation sang more enthusiastically and joyfully during that proposal song than I’d ever heard them sing before. It was a true celebration of the love that wafts through a community and how much people love to see people in loving relationships.
Alan and I planned two wedding ceremonies—the first that allowed me, a self employed social worker with some pre-existing medical conditions, to start receiving the medical health insurance of his employer. That first wedding was small, just our mothers, my daughter, my maid of honor and a beloved Unitarian Universalist minister and mentor, and his wife.
Our second wedding ceremony was the church wedding that many members of our home church attended. Alan wanted us to dance down the aisle at the end of the ceremony. I told him I’d much rather preach before a thousand people. I love to dance but the idea of waltzing down the aisle made me jittery. In an uncharacteristic plea, he pointed out that he had been open to my ideas and I should at least consider his wishes. We took ballroom dancing lessons soon after that and did indeed dance down the aisle to the tune of “May I have this dance for the rest of our lives?”
So I love weddings. I love romance and expressions of love and affection. Love receives top billing in my scheme of life. Love is the adhesive that affixes people through the exhilarating highs, the broken, shattered moments of their family lives and all the times in-between.
Each time I met with a couple or a family when I was a therapist, each time I meet with a couple planning to marry and hear something about their families and their experiences I glimpse that spark of commitment, that mysterious presence of something we acknowledge when it comes to us but that we can’t make appear. Love is pure grace—it just happens. When I meet with couples and ask how they picked this person to marry out of all the people in the world, they usually get very quiet—tears well up in their eyes. You can see them entering some vast reservoir, an ocean of love that has changed them. They seem to enter some deep meditative place and sort out what the person sitting next to them means in the totality of their lives. Each person says something different but their reflections are always revealing of the power of love and commitment. I consider it one of the greatest privileges of being a minister to witness these cycles of life and love in the human heart.
Practically, marriage also helped Alan and I financially--my ability to get on his health plan is a benefit same sex couples in most states cannot receive. That is one of the 1324 benefits of New York state laws which protect and sanction married couples but which are denied to same-sex couples.
I became an ardent straight ally at the time of my first called ministry in Wilmington, North Carolina. I was invited to participate in a television panel discussing the election of Episcopalian Bishop Eugene Robinson, who was openly gay. Next, I learned about two New York Unitarian Universalist clergy charged with performing illegal marriages for same sex couples. A member of my congregation asked if I thought we should do something about it. Together the Unitarian Universalist congregation launched a grassroots community coalition for marriage equality.
I joined the state Religious Coalition for Marriage Equality where I met a brave Methodist minister who was unable to retain his fellowship as a minister because he married same sex couples. I also met clergy from Pullen Memorial Baptist church, a church that had done a research into the Bible verses that are often used against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Their published findings did not back up the biblical prejudice and condemnation of LGBT people.
My best friend in Wilmington was the first person outside the church I met—Russell Heiland, a minister at Unity Church. He and his husband, Anthony Izzell, often invited Alan and I to watch the sun go down over the Cape Fear River waterfront. Sometimes, we got together to see rather unorthodox plays for ministers like Rocky Horror Picture Show.
When Russ became the senior minister at Unity, he paid me the greatest compliment—he asked me to preach at his ordination. Both of these men became our closest couple friends. To say that I love Russell and Anthony is an understatement. Russell was the minister at my mother’s memorial service. We are close colleagues and the best of friends.
I understand that change takes time. I know people often think we should just have civil unions so the laws will pass more quickly. Referring to someone as a partner is not the same as calling them a spouse, husband or wife. Besides denying people the portability of marriage from state to state and all the rights and privileges of marriage, it also creates a differentiation in how we sanction marriage and how we view commitments between same sex partners. The old “separate but equal” idea never worked for African Americans in the Civil Rights era and it doesn’t work with marriage equality either. Russell and Anthony have been together for about twenty years. They share a love and commitment to weather the same storms of life heterosexual couples face; their love is as real and deep as any I have known. Knowing these two fine men how can I act with integrity and not commit to do whatever I can to speak up for marriage equality?
I had learned some years before when the New York Unitarian Universalist clergy were charged that some Unitarian Universalist ministers refused to sign marriage certificates for heterosexual couples until all couples willing to make the commitment, could marry. I struggled with my conscience for 3 ½ years. I told a bit of this story during the Martin Luther King service last month—about when I couldn’t sleep and awoke in the middle of the night, wrestling with the decision whether I would continue to act as an agent of the state and sign marriage certificates when my faith and my ministry affirms love between two men and two women as equally sacred and binding. In the early hours of the morning, I read Martin Luther King’s Letter from the Birmingham Jail. Something clicked for me, reading how colleagues wanted King to slow down and take it easy. I realized I couldn’t do that any longer. I had this cloud of witnesses surrounding me and their love was reaching into my own heart.
A few years back, Alan’s oldest daughter, Jessica, met her beloved, Jen, at college. Their relationship has deepened and they recently moved to the West Coast so that Jessica can pursue graduate studies. Jessica and Jen plan to marry and they want me to officiate at their wedding. What an honor. But Jessica and Jen live in a state that doesn’t allow same sex couples to marry as do I and all our families. By officiating at their ceremony I can commend them to love and cherish one another, to stand beside one another no matter what life brings but nothing I can do or say or sign can confer on them the same rights and privileges that Jessica’s father and I enjoy. There is a little piece of my heart that breaks with that awareness.
And so, you see, I am wed to working for marriage equality. Same sex couples in this church cannot marry legally in this wonderful state. My call to minister with the good people of this church and to officiate during wedding ceremonies did not include treating same sex couples and their desire to commit and care for one another differently. How is their love any less than anyone else’s? I know it takes time for people to understand what is at stake. I know that marriage equality will be a reality—it’s a matter of time. But how many couples are unable to stand by the bedside of their beloved in the hospital as they lay dying, or have medical personnel refuse to allow parents to accompany their child who is having trouble breathing? How many times will same sex couples have to pay tax on their health insurance benefits from their partner or have to pay estate taxes when their spouse dies, taxes that no married heterosexual couple has to pay?
This two-tier system of marriage has to end and I will sincerely work to end it this year. Three of us from this church went to the Marriage Equality Advocacy Day this past Tuesday to visit our State Senators Savino and Lanza. We met with their staff people as well as Representative Nicole Malliotakis. All of them asked to know the laws that create a difference in the civil rights afforded to gay and lesbian couples. I have here the large bundle of 1324 statutes that impact the everyday lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
This past year there have been successes for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people—the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy was repealed, GENDA legislation impacting employment discrimination and protection for transgender people was favored. Yet MARRIAGE INEQUALITY remains.
Let’s stand on the side of love and justice by making valentines urging Sen. Lanza and Rep. Malliotakis to support Marriage Equality and thanking Rep. Titone and Sen. Savino for all they have done to bring marriage equality closer.
Each of you in this Sanctuary knows a committed LGBT couple or you are in a LGBT relationship yourself. Those couples need vocal straight allies. Let us add our voices to the call for unbounded Love for everyone.
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