Gay Marriage--A Sign of Christ's Love

Submitted by Sara Miles on February 13, 2007 - 12:04am.

This Valentine’s Day marks the 3rd anniversary of San Francisco’s great civic act of affirmative civil disobedience, when Mayor Gavin Newsom offered to marriage to all. Over the next few days, thousands showed up; my wife Martha and I were among the couples married there.
Our marriage -–annulled by a court order---nonetheless profoundly changed the way I understood the religious meaning of the rite. Today, despite a debate over gay marriage that’s only become sillier, sadder, and more bitter, that experience continues to resonate.

I didn’t really believe in marriage three years ago: never in my life had my relationships with men or women been blessed by church or state. Martha and I, who’d been together for eleven years, hadn’t sought a public ceremony of any kind. Officially, my family wasn’t legal: our teenage daughter Katie was a bastard, and Martha no relative of ours at all. In many churches, our family was an “abomination.”

Even liberal churches colluded with the state by having their clergy perform legal marriages for some citizens while offering separate-but-equal “blessings” to others. In my church, gay couples were accepted matter-of-factly, but “the blessing of a gay union” was nonetheless an event requiring special permission from the bishop, in order to avoid setting off a firestorm of reaction that could split the Episcopal Church. Meanwhile, conservative churches had thrown themselves into the political fight to “protect marriage” against deviants like us.

So I had a bad attitude. And I didn’t really understand why matrimony was called “holy,” or why marriage rites were, like communion, an essential part of Christianity.

On Valentine’s Day 2004, when San Francisco announced that it would offer civil marriages to all, Katie became insistent. She had a strong sense of justice, and something about the idea of a real wedding was powerful to her. “I really, really want you to do this,” she said, looking longingly out the car window as we drove past the lines of excited, weeping couples waiting to enter City Hall. “Please, let’s do this.”

We arrived at City Hall first thing the next morning, three hours before it opened. It was raining a bit, and the line of people waiting to be married was already extending around the front of the domed, ornately gilded building.

There were people of every race and age, young gay dads with babies, old women holding hands, people in wheelchairs, men pushing strollers, women wearing wedding gowns carrying flowers. Parents were crying and hugging their brides; two elegant guys in pinstriped suits were fumbling with their rings, complete strangers were embracing each other. I thought of the psalm: those who sowed in tears are reaping, singing and laughing. They are coming back in joy.

Hundreds of city workers had volunteered to help: they circulated in the crowd, explaining the process, helping with forms, easing the wait. It was busy and still at the same time. There was a consciousness of history, of people moving together in something huge and collective and unstoppable.

Then all of a sudden we were swept inside. We filled out forms, jammed up against more jubilant, excited people, and stood in the hallways. “On behalf of the sheriff’s office,” said a teary white man in uniform, “we welcome you to City Hall.”

Katie was grinning uncontrollably. We moved into the huge, marble-floored rotunda, where two dozen different city aides, deputized for the occasion, were conducting separate, simultaneous ceremonies. Our marriage commissioner was a portly, dark-haired Irish guy. He took our papers, greeted us, and pulled Katie, our witness, over.
“Okay,” he said. “Put down your coats and bags.”
We stopped, and everything stopped. “OK,” said the marriage commissioner, “OK, take a deep breath. This is real. Look at each other. “
Martha and I looked at each other and started to cry. We said the vows, exchanged rings, kissed Katie, hugged everyone within reach, signed the papers, kissed some more.

As we stumbled down the stairs to the thronged streets outside, a crowd gathered in front of the building burst into applause. A stranger thrust a bunch of red carnations into Martha’s arms. People cheered, and a little girl, maybe six years old, dashed up and handed me a folded-up piece of paper. It was a card she'd made. It had pink hearts all over it, and it said, in crayon and magic marker, "Congratulations on your marriage."

My mother was so happy she almost wept when I called her with the news. My sister yelped with joy. My brother’s voice cracked. “Oh Sara,” he said. Then, “I guess we’re gonna have to buy you a kitchen appliance, now that you’re legal.”

The next Sunday, our family went to church together, with three other gay couples who’d joined in the historic event. One of the members had prepared an enormous whipped-cream cake, and someone else had brought Champagne. After communion, before the cake was cut, our rector called the couples forward. “We’re going to bless these marriages,” he said, motioning the other priests in the room to lay their hands on the eight of us. “Everyone, put your hand on somebody’s shoulder, so that we’re all touching the newlyweds.” A circle of bodies surrounded us. I gripped Martha’s hand and bent my head. The priest began to chant a prayer. Light and tulips and a cloud of faces filled the room.

The marriage of a couple, I understood then, was more than personal: it was a rite binding people into community, and beyond that pointing to the union of all humanity with God.
A marriage like ours prophesized the politically inconvenient but spiritually resonant truth that the unlikely and outcast were part of God’s creation, in all ways. It was like communion: when some people were shut out of the rite, the picture couldn’t be complete.

Months later, a court would annul all four thousand of the San Francisco marriages, and the bitter political disputes would grind on. Right-wing Christians would continue to rail against the blasphemous scandal; lawyers would debate the Constitution and the tax code.

But what had happened to us in the blessing of our marriage was outside both the law and the Law. Our marriages had happened on God’s time, in God’s space. The irregular rites became an icon, a metaphor for the difficult and vital imperative to love others. And they belonged not just to individual couples, but to the community —to everyone reaching out a hand for blessing.

I cried as I read over the prayer from the marriage rite in the Book of Common Prayer. It had new meaning for me.

“Make their life together a sign of Christ’s love to this sinful and broken world,” the prayer said, “that unity may overcome estrangement, forgiveness heal guilt, and joy conquer despair.”

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