by Rev. Kathleen McTigue, Friday, October 17, 2003
In his poem, "Another Time", W.H. Auden wrote:
All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie…
No one exists alone…;
We must love one another or die.
"We must love one another or die." I understand those words most completely not with my intellect, but on a visceral level. I know the truth of those words the way we all know that the real meaning of our lives is found in the measure of our love. It's in the ways we touch and hold each other, the ways we let ourselves be found and known, the ways we trust each other with our anguish and joy and bind our lives together in time.
I also understand Auden's words in light of something Bertrand Russell once said: "To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead." We're here tonight as a testimony against fear. We don't want to be afraid of love, or of life; and we don't want to be bound or diminished by those who are afraid.
Most of you know that President Bush declared this week to be "Marriage Protection Week." It was an effort to ally himself with some of the most conservative branches of Christianity, but what he also did was ally himself with fear. There's a huge amount of fear in our country right now, and most of what we fear seems both enormous and out of our control. President Bush offered people a place to go with their fear. He offered gay marriage as the place for our fears to pool, and he thereby offered up gay men and lesbians as scapegoats.
Homophobia is such an easy thing to exploit -- but the exploitation of our fears is shameful. It is shameful that the President felt so free to name himself a defender of family life by attacking gay marriage, especially in light of all the ways that stable families truly are under siege. Like many of you, I'm in one of those families, and my spouse and I do the daily juggling act of full-time work and full-time children. We know what threatens our family. It isn't the two women who live next door to us, and it isn't their yearning to have their marriage made legal.
We are threatened when our schools are too old and crowded, when we can't get the medical care we need, and when too many of our neighbors and friends have lost their jobs. We are threatened when public money is siphoned away into war, and when more and more of it lands in the pockets of the wealthy. We are threatened by poisons in our food and water and air that we can't see. There is a long list of things from which my family -- and yours --- needs protection. Civil rights for gay men and lesbians are not among them.
"All I have is a voice/To undo the folded lie". It is a powerful act when we use our voices to name and contradict a lie. It is a just and righteous thing when we raise our voices to speak the truth we know, when we name our love and our commitments. That's why we have gathered here tonight. This is a place in which it is not only safe, but honorable, to stand up for equal rights for all people.
I am proud of the Unitarian Society for having built this beautiful new sanctuary in which we gather. It took a huge leap of faith to do it, years of planning and fussing and worrying and fundraising. But I am far prouder of the fact that this congregation has been so deeply committed to equal rights for gay men and lesbians for so many years that it went without saying that this lovely new space would cradle wedding celebrations without distinction.
At a time when other churches are tearing themselves apart in struggle over this issue, we have not had to struggle at all. We know who we are and what we stand for, and despite our many differences we hold some core and unshakable beliefs. One of these is that each life is precious beyond comprehension, each person equally deserving of respect and the basic dignity of civil rights.
Like anyone else, we sometimes need to stretch ourselves a little to see the ways in which we can put our values into action, the ways to lift ourselves out of the realm of pure rhetoric and put some power into what we say we believe. When I went to my Board of Trustees last spring and told them I wanted to withdraw from the bias of the state and stop signing marriage licenses until I could sign them for all the couples I marry, I didn't know what to expect.
This was something new, and something that would impose a burden, however modest, on heterosexual couples in this congregation who wanted me to officiate for their wedding. The Board debated the issue long enough to be sure they knew what I was proposing -- about two minutes I think -- and then gave me a resounding vote of support.
Since then a dozen other ministers from four other faiths have let me know they are joining me in this decision. I'm glad for that company, but again the thing that makes me proudest is the support of this congregation. As a community, what we're saying is that it isn't enough to share with each other our commitment to equality. It isn't enough to create one safe place to name our truth, one safe place a gay couple can enter with their children and know they will be welcomed just like any other family. We need to step outside the circle of our safety in order to make it larger.
Fear is sometimes a useful thing, when it holds us back from unnecessary risk. Fear is sometimes a dangerous thing, because it can lead us to do stupid or destructive things. But fear of love is also a tragic thing, because it poisons our understanding of life and its enormous and diverse gifts. This community at worship tonight is an antidote to the poison of fear.
Here we affirm our belief that love is holy, that it is a saving grace, that it is to be named, honored and cherished equally, whether it arises between a man and a woman, between two men or between two women. We will not be made to fear love. We will not be made to fear life. AMEN.