I have some brilliant friends and when they email me something wonderful I am going to post it here in my blog. I will always give credit where credit is due - good and bad.
My longtime friend Pam emailed me her take on Prop 8 and the "church."
She is one of my brilliant friends. Here it is:
I don't understand why Yes On 8 people think that the traditional definition of marriage has to be protected. When asked to define "traditional", they turn to a religious framework. I say, my church (Unitarian) has been performing union ceremonies for gay couples for decades. Why can't MY church provide the "traditional" definition? Whyzzit gotta be YOUR church? :-)
There's already obviously a difference between civil marriage and marriage sanctified by a church.
I'm a woman who married a man in 1988. (George Nazar was in charge of the champagne at the reception. He made sure my glass NEVER EMPTIED. I nearly got smashed because George did his job so well. But I digress.) A judge officiated the ceremony. We wrote our own vows and included no mention of God. I'd say this was the very model of a civil marriage, and not a religious one.
Now, if I walked into a Mormon temple and asked to visit the secret inner sanctum because I am a married woman, they'd refuse me. I am *legally* married, but as far as the tenets of their religion are concerned, I'm not the right kind of married.
That's their prerogative, of course, and it's irrelevant. The issue is equal rights under the law, not the church - two different things.
No comments:
Post a Comment