Portia and Prop 8

The hollow case for Proposition 8 won a hollow victory today in California - one that I find positively Shakespearean the more I reflect on it. Remember Merchant of Venice? Set aside the rank anti-Semitism of the play with me for just a minute and recall Portia's clever solution to Shylock's sadistic collateral from the merchant Antonio for his failure to pay a debt:

PORTIA
A pound of that same merchant's flesh is thine:
The court awards it, and the law doth give it.

SHYLOCK
Most rightful judge!

PORTIA
And you must cut this flesh from off his breast:
The law allows it, and the court awards it.

SHYLOCK
Most learned judge! A sentence! Come, prepare!

PORTIA
Tarry a little; there is something else.
This bond doth give thee here no jot of blood;
The words expressly are 'a pound of flesh:'
Take then thy bond, take thou thy pound of flesh;
But, in the cutting it, if thou dost shed
One drop of Christian blood, thy lands and goods
Are, by the laws of Venice, confiscate
Unto the state of Venice.

The Supreme Court of California, in a subtle but brilliant decision, ducked the veiled threat of recall by Prop 8 supporters and avoided taking the blood of tangible rights and privileges from same-sex couples. And I mean that covenanted blood protected - if not by marriage for those fortunate in timing, then by domestic partnership laws already offering equal protection.

There's more than a bit of divine humor in the Portia-like decision. Prop 8 supporters knew a direct attack on rights and privileges of couples would never fly in the polls -- even less so in the courtroom. So they settled for the idol of the term "marriage," but without real substance save perhaps social recognition.

That is now the true moral disappointment for couples seeking equal protection, at least it seems to me: the loss of the social recognition of the term "marriage." But time, the arc of justice, and possibly even the divine sense of humor are on their side. Separate but equal is a legal foundation of shifting sand. Legal "marriage" will be theirs again in the long run.

Prop 8 supporters may cheer over their "pound of flesh" and the slowly separating pottage they have unwittingly wrought with no fewer than three legal classes of protected couples in California: those "straight" and married, same-sex couples married between the last court decision and the passage of Prop 8, and those receiving rights and privileges under domestic partnership laws.

But the cheers ring hollow, because the "pound of flesh" is less substantive and more a mere ghost of definition under law. It has no tangible substance in California except a social projection without distinction of rights and privileges. . . a dumb idol, legally speaking, and perhaps morally and spiritually, too.

The hollow case has become the hollow definition.

Don’t look now, but Prop 8 supporters, for all of their money and efforts, have secured a Pyrrhic victory – one that has eviscerated their cause as they are shepherded into a cold, narrow definition of their own legalism just as Shylock was.

Thankfully, God's grace is more generous than Shakespeare. But I have to chuckle while standing in solidarity with my LGBT sisters and brothers.

Portia would be proud...

Updates:

Bishop Marc Andrus responds
Zoe Cole offers more legal perspective on the decision
Will Scott offers moving personal witness

Does it Really Matter?

This morning over at Episcopal Café, Jim Naughton writes:

About halfway through weighing some of the issues that I’ve written about here before, I had a sudden realization: reflecting on Rowan Williams’ letter wasn’t a worthwhile use of my time; writing it was not a worthwhile use of his. The issues at stake have become so trivial—We are not debating right and wrong, we are debating whether there should be trifling penalties for giving offense to other members of the Communion.—that to engage them at all compromises our moral standing and diminishes our ability to speak credibly on issues of real importance.

This isn’t to say that we don’t have to make a decision about whether to accede to the archbishop’s proposal—and I suppose I think that we shouldn’t because it would only encourage him to make other such requests—just that whether we accede or not make very little difference to the world, to the Communion, to our ecumenical partners, to our church, or even to a Communion news junky like me.

I think Jim is correct. The fact that The Archbishop of Canterbury has very limited authority to act is not a problem, but a blessing. The Communion, after all, is not the domain of prelates, as some would have it, but a fellowship of churches made up of millions of people in real, embodied relationships around common mission. And that common mission is not fundamentally about who's ordaining whom, but about who's fed, healed, and nurtured in the grace of God. This is what we have to offer a world in need, and what our leadership is called to nurture.

The rest is largely window dressing.

Nothing New

So some hubbub  is circulating about the announcement of a "new Anglican Province" by a small group of our more disgruntled brothers and sisters.  The Episcopal Café provides some additional food for thought. (Meanwhile, almost as if on cue, the Roman Catholic Church has now named an apparent new threat to the Vatican's sense of order -- a call by the UN for an end to the criminalization of homosexuality.)

My response, quite frankly, is a shrug of the shoulders with a twinge of sadness.  This has been the goal the whole time for the breakaway dioceses, parishes, provinces, and their leadership. Disagreements over human sexuality were a convenient rallying point for a new order.  So they're declaring it at last.  Maybe they will take some of the rancor with them.  Merry Christmas?  Or "Hummmmbug"?

What has been is what will be,
   and what has been done is what will be done;
   there is nothing new under the sun.

Ecclesiastes 1:9

Yes, they will co-opt the name "Anglican" as schismatic groups have done in the past.  But as has been pointed out in a number of places already, the new "province" won't be formally part of the Communion until (if ever) properly ratified by the Anglican Consultative Council -- that is, by a solid majority of representatives of the provinces of the greater Communion.  It is with multiple ironies I write: Best of British luck!

In short, a new church is in the making.  All the power to them, I suppose, but major hurdles await, far beyond the formal process of recognition.  Namely, they will have to come to terms with their own differences in a newly "purified" body of Christians: purified, that is, of gays and lesbians and all of us "reappraising" folk.  That leaves disagreements over the ordination of women, ecclesiastical structure, piety, liturgical norms, and even finer points of theology to be reckoned with. . .

Life will go on.  General Convention meets this summer.  98% of The Episcopal Church will remain just that: The Episcopal Church, with all of its diversity, rough-and-tumble, and shared history and mission.

Tobias Haller offers some sharp insight into the roots of schismatic and otherwise disagreeable ecclesiology and behavior.  Mark Harris is also keeping well up with everything in Anglican Schism Land.

Aside from that, I have little to add, except to wish all, discontented or no, a Holy Advent.  'Tis a time of waiting as much as preparation.  

I close with this before getting back to the real work with real people in this real place: 

Making the ways straight for God has much more to do with reconciliation and lifting up the poor and the voiceless than it does with schism.

Jesus would weep -- were he not, it seems at least to me, so busy with more important things.

The Hollow Case Wins

Proposition 8's narrow win in California is a defeat for basic equality, which is more than just a political issue: it's a theological one.  Jesus' vision for the new community that he called "the kingdom of heaven" was fundamentally about breaking down the walls of separation often defined by un-equal treatment. Martin Luther King, Jr., captured this essential piece of Christian theology when he popularized "the beloved community" as a vision of God's future for the human family and all of creation.

Speaking as an American citizen, Prop 8 represents a sorry collision between the democratic ideals of the referendum process and the obligation of the judiciary in a democracy to uphold the basic rights of minorities -- over and against the potential tyranny of the majority.  The irreconcilable conflict of rights now written in the California state constitution will be the subject of many court battles to come, and rightly so. However much the Prop 8 proponents may cheer at their victory this day, I take hope that their success has far less margin than the referendum vote of only a few years ago -- one that they argued they were defending.

And what were they defending?

Those of us who live in communities where gay and lesbian couples are openly sharing covenanted relationships -- yes, that's what I and many other Christians call marriage -- and some of them raising families. . . Well, we see no threat whatsoever to heterosexual marriages. Indeed, my marriage has been strengthened by their witness.

Prop 8 rode a dubious, hollow case that somehow its rejection would mean gay and lesbian marriage would be taught in schools. State educators made it clear this was not at all true. Another spurious claim was that clergy would be forced by the state to marry same-sex couples. This is as naked a red herring as there ever was.  Then there's the idea that traditional marriage, whatever we mean by that, needs to be "protected." Again, I ask (and I have yet to hear a cogent answer) from what, exactly?

Behind these flimsy arguments are the real questions that need to be addressed, if we listen closely.  Here are only two of them:

Is there truly a threat that same-sex marriages pose to the integrity of the household, Christian or otherwise?  

Do we still dare to believe that people can "catch" homosexuality, as though it's a disease?  

Proposition 8 is a sham and a shame. It enshrines fear and discrimination at the constitutional level in California.  It affirms ignorance over compassionate knowledge.  It throws a thin veil of abstract morality over bigotry and intolerance.  It idolizes gender and sexuality, when true marriage is fundamentally about neither. And contrary to its disciples' assertions, Prop 8 will not save marriage.  Nor will fear.  I wish and pray that many setting out to "save marriage" would stop attempting to do so through fear.  Fear has destroyed many a marriage, after all.  And fear undermines the God-given dignity of the human family. 

I only echo Martin Luther King, Jr.,  by writing this: 

Given the long arc of history in this country, Proposition 8 will not ultimately stand.  Hollow cases built on fear and ignorance cannot remain for long in God's time.  Nor can they, by definition, withstand the light of reason.

My thoughts and prayers are very much with our sisters and brothers who are hurt by this mean proposition.  Their dignity and future security is what is truly threatened, and that of their children.  This is the true offense to morality.  

Long may we defend them: with renewed and prayerful patience, solidarity, and witness to the fruits of covenant already among us.

The World has Changed

I shared with Hiroko last night as the electoral college votes locked in a victory for Barack Obama that this was the first time I can remember in at least eight years I was truly proud to be an American.

Obama has proven once again that Americans refuse to be victims of history, even their own. The grip of the withering hand of racism was loosened.  Now my son, another child of two national heritages and two racial identities, can see in the eyes of his president an experience, a life not so very far removed from his own.  Over dinner last night, even before the results were absolutely clear, Daniel explained in his five-year-old matter-of-factness that Obama had won. It was like him stating the sky is blue, water is wet, or God is good.  In a profound moment, Daniel was stating an existential reality that many of us more jaded adults scarcely believed possible even a few months ago.  

Obama is his president.

And I wonder at the mobilization of countless young people in this country who were not so very long ago written off as disinterested and apathetic.  Some of them right here in the parish and community I serve poured enormous energy and countless hours into changing the electoral landscape of the country.  Their success asserts that beyond all the cynicism of the last decade is the reality that we remain, fundamentally, a people of hope.

We have a leader now who apparently refuses to live out of a place of anger or fear.  Who plants hope with a good dose of humility. Who admits his mistakes while carrying a vision for the future.  Sure, our president-elect will not be perfect.  He will sometimes disappoint me.  

But he embodies and lives into a reality to which we are all called:

The world has changed.  But we have a say in what tomorrow will be.  It's time we claim that and act on it.

God be with him.