May 23, 2006

Housekeeping

This story recently came across the wire. Its principals have names, but it works as well with or without — and it gave me an idea.

At a hearing on the proposed Constitutional Amendment to prohibit gay marriage, a professor of law was requested to testify. At the end of his testimony, one of the Republican senators said, “Professor, my Bible says marriage is only between a man and a woman. What do you have to say about that?”

The professor replied, “Senator, when you took your oath of office, you placed your hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. You did not place your hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible.”

In our peculiar Anglican experiment, we don’t treat the Bible as the last word on everything. Slavery. Usury. Property ownership. Ironically, even on divorce. So why marriage? “To marry” is a neuter verb used for the joining of all sorts of things — ideas, metals, whatever. Indeed, our source of authority as we understand it, is an intimate marriage of Scripture, tradition, and reason, a sort of ménage a trois. [Steady, there, it literally means a household for three.]

So a couple of folk come along and say they will love, comfort, and honor each other to the end of their days. And not just when they feel like it or it is otherwise convenient, but for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health when they don’t feel like it at all, and it’s pain in the neck. And that they’d like to have their agreement, their covenant, blessed and documented. What could possibly be more extravagant? Here’s my freedom, partner, and don’t forget my burdens, too.

So what’s in it for me?

Each other, that’s what. Assuming they have any success at all in keeping these rash, quixotic, outlandish promises, they’ll never have to face the world quite alone again. Somebody for show and tell, for talk and listen, tolerate and test, confess and forgive, a place to practice kindness, loyalty, and love so that when you get it into better shape, you can give it away. Somebody to get through it with, side by side. An anchor for the neighborhood, a benchmark where to measure things.

Even God had friends. And then what is that strange notion of the Trinity all about, anyway. More trois, for heaven’s sake. And then, when Jesus turned the water into wine at Cana, what was that all about, perhaps it was a way saying more or less the same thing. Sounds like a pretty good way to run a railroad and, as some say, to keep life between the curbs and one off the streets.

And we want to limit that possibility to have more families like that to enrich our society only to a man and a woman? What about those “self-evident” truths about equality and Godly endowment with certain unalienable rights like Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, that’s why we have a government — and a Constitution to run it with and make it so. Who needs to start limiting that?

Well, I’ll swear.

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