Midlife Meditation

Candidate for ordination Ginny Mikita at the wedding of her friends, Rev. Benjamin and Monty Hutchison, in July. Despite all the smiles in the picture, it was a bittersweet occasion. United Methodist minister Benjamin Hutchison had resigned from his pastorate in order to marry his partner, Monty. I do not know the details of his exit from the ministry, but I expect they went like this: Ben was tired of playing the shell game of having his Staff Parish Committee, district superintendent, and bishop pretend not to know his housemate was also his life partner, parsing his language so as not to say the fatal words which would end his career: I'm gay. This is my lover. We're getting married. At some point, he told the wrong person the truth, and that person, rather than continue to skirt the Book of Discipline, told Ben he had two choices: resign or go on trial. He chose the first option, left his pastorate, and scheduled a wedding. The Hutchisons wanted a Methodist wedding, ...

"We are a better people than what these laws represent, and it is time to discard them into the ash heap of history." --Judge John E. Jones III, in his opinion striking down Pennsylvania's version of the Defense of Marriage Act I started my last post with this quote, but didn't really address it. The occasion of its writing was a cause for great celebration, as marriage equality is now the law of the land in nineteen states. Of the remaining 31, discriminatory marriage legislation has been challenged in court in all but one, and given the perfect victory record of every previous challenge, it is just a matter of time--months, perhaps--until gay and lesbian couples can enter into civilly recognized marriage contracts throughout the United States. (It might take a little longer in North Dakota, the only state without such a lawsuit in progress.) This is, as I just said, cause for celebration. It's been a long time coming, and now it's happening so quickly!...

 I don't remember his name, but for reasons which will soon become apparent, I'll call him Adam. It was twenty years ago next month that I stepped off a plane in Washington, DC, and took the Metro to George Washington University, there to attend the National Convocation of Reconciling Congregations. I was pastor of one of those congregations, the Estacada United Methodist Church. Estacada is a small former logging town in rural Clackamas county, an unlikely place for a church to proclaim itself Reconciling, the word Methodists use to mean gay-friendly. But the small size of the church made it much easier to reach the decision. All it took was remembering that Marvin, who had grown up in the church, was openly gay. Knowing and caring for a gay man broke through all the barriers of ignorance and bigotry that kept most Christians in that time, and many even now, from opening their hearts to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered persons. The vote went through in no time, ...