Tag Archives: legal issues

World Vision, Gay Marriage, and the Queer Calling of Serving the Poor

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World Vision, a leading international development charity known for its child sponsorship program, created a fire in the blogosphere by announcing (and then retracting) a decision that gay Christians in legal same-sex marriages would be eligible for employment at the charity. In the 72 hours of the news cycle thus far, we’ve seen a lot of opinions expressed: some writers praised World Vision’s initial move as a radical acceptance of gay marriage. Others decried the decision as caving to worldly pressures. Still, others began calling upon progressive Christians to support the charity financially as conservative Christians dropped their child sponsorship commitments. Yet another group encouraged conservative Christians to sponsor children with more theologically orthodox charities. Then, when the decision was reversed, people on both sides of the debate became disgruntled.

The two of us here at A Queer Calling see another perspective on the events of the past three days, and we haven’t seen this discussed much yet: we believe that each Christian tradition has an obligation to define marriage and guide members of that specific tradition to Christ-honoring ways of life. All Christian traditions and organizations should recognize that people are people, create in God’s image and likeness. And lastly, service to the poor is its own kind of queer calling.

Christianity Today interviewed Richard Stearns, the director of World Vision, after the initial decision to allow hiring of staff members in legal same-sex marriages and reported:

Stearns said World Vision has never asked about sexual orientation when interviewing job candidates. Instead, the organization screens employees for their Christian faith, asking if they can affirm the Apostles’ Creed or World Vision’s Trinitarian statement of faith. Yet World Vision has long had a Christian conduct policy for employees that “holds a very high bar for all manner of conduct,” said Stearns. Regarding sexuality activity, World Vision has required abstinence for all single employees, and fidelity for all married employees.

Let’s be clear about something: World Vision is not a church, and it hires Christians from a wide range of traditions. We don’t know for sure the variety of denominations represented by World Vision’s staff members, but theoretically, there could be members of the United Church of Christ working alongside members of the Roman Catholic Church. When you insert multiple Christian traditions into the mix, it’s not terribly hard to see that there are many points of theological disagreement. These different traditions have come to varying conclusions about the acceptability of same-sex marriage, but also have markedly different views on virtually everything that could be used to define a Christian tradition: sacramental theology, worship practice, Christology, views on authority, church organization, salvation, you name it. World Vision has kept a practice of bridging these differences by asking job seekers to affirm the Apostles’ Creed or World Vision’s Trinitarian Statement of Faith and to agree to a Christian conduct policy.

In reversing their decision, Richard Stearns published an open letter in which he wrote the following:

We are writing to you our trusted partners and Christian leaders who have come to us in the spirit of Matthew 18 to express your concern in love and conviction. You share our desire to come together in the Body of Christ around our mission to serve the poorest of the poor. We have listened to you and want to say thank you and to humbly ask for your forgiveness.

In our board’s effort to unite around the church’s shared mission to serve the poor in the name of Christ, we failed to be consistent with World Vision U.S.’s commitment to the traditional understanding of Biblical marriage and our own Statement of Faith, which says, “We believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God.” And we also failed to seek enough counsel from our own Christian partners. As a result, we made a change to our conduct policy that was not consistent with our Statement of Faith and our commitment to the sanctity of marriage.

Such is the work of today’s American “orthodoxy.” Divisions in faith and practice can be myriad. Many American Christians shop around for various churches, visiting congregations attached to different Christian traditions and looking for the magical mix that spurs them to consider one particular local church “home.” For many Christians, especially those in evangelical traditions, diversity of belief and practice amongst different denominations and local congregations is viewed as acceptable when it comes to a wide range of issues. Yet, the instant questions of homosexuality and same-sex marriage enter the fray, the loosely organized conservative Evangelical Church appears to fight the good fight in the name of defending the faith, the authority of the Scriptures, the rightness of one particular biblical interpretation, and the cause of Christian unity. It’s no wonder that gay Christians feel frustrated, angry, and hurt when our lives (or people’s assumptions about our lives) become the deal-breaking factor many straight Christians consider when deciding to support (or cease supporting) charitable organizations.

Since World Vision made its initial decision (and even more since the reversal), people have been asking us our opinion on this whole messy situation. Some have assumed incorrectly  that because we are a celibate couple, we were glad to see World Vision’s retraction and apology. Not so. We tend to advocate for the freedom of Christian traditions to define marriage in accordance with their own theologies and guide people within those traditions to Christ-honoring lives. This doesn’t mean we agree with all possible Christian theologies of marriage and sexuality, but it does mean that we respect the autonomy of each church/denomination to make its own decisions on these matters. There are many Christians who, within the contexts of their own traditions, have reached different conclusions on sexual ethics than we have. We don’t see it as our job to impose our own theology of marriage and sexuality upon other people, and we don’t see such as the job of nondenominational Christian charities either. Again, World Vision employs people from many denominations, presumably some that affirm same-sex marriage, and is not a church. 

Now that World Vision has reversed its decision, we wonder how the organization might react to a job candidate who is not in a same-sex marriage, but a civil union or domestic partnership. Call us pessimists here, but we’re not too confident that the terminology used would make any difference. One could make an argument that these other types of arrangements are neither scriptural nor unscriptural–that they are legal relationships having nothing to do with how religious terms are defined. One could make a similar argument about “legal marriage” in contrast to “religious marriage.” But somehow we doubt that most of the donors who pulled their sponsorships of children would be any more amiable toward the idea of LGBT people in civil unions, domestic partnerships, or even as singles working for an organization like World Vision.

In the worldview of many Christians, it is totally acceptable to make a number of assumptions about a person’s sexual ethic, way of life, faithfulness, and so on if that person is LGBT. That a gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender (or any combination thereof) couple has acquired some form of legally recognized relationship says nothing about that couple’s sexual ethic or religious understanding of marriage. Since so many of the basic rights tied to caring for another person are granted only with a government-recognized marriage, it’s entirely possible that a couple in our own situation might find state-sanctioned marriage the only means of protecting each other legally. But regardless of a couple’s (or a single person’s) situation or convictions, it’s difficult for us to see how hiring a person for work that involves service to the poor necessarily implies endorsement of that person’s sexual ethic or theology of marriage. We’ve read a couple of arguments that World Vision’s retraction was a move to protect marriage/a Christian sexual ethic and not an attempt to keep LGBT people in general out of employment in Christian charitable organizations…but to us, that seems to be wishful thinking. How many of the donors that pulled support from World Vision still would have done so if the original announcement had been about acceptance of LGBT people rather than willingness to hire married LGBT people? We’ll never know the answer to this, but we remain highly skeptical of the claim that this controversy has only to do with gay marriage.

In our estimation, service to the poor is its own kind of a queer calling. With so many social messages that happiness, fulfillment, and a life well-lived come from acquiring many assets, opting out of the materialistic rat race is surely countercultural. Individuals who take on this work forgo many benefits assumed with employment in other positions, and usually people interested in faith-based international development jobs are willing to move every few years to advance different projects around the world. Often, workers–irrespective of sexual orientation, gender identity, and marital status–make radical commitments to serving others at the expense of their own comfort and wellbeing. There is a reason Christians of all sexual orientations and gender identities are committed to establishing a preferential option for the poor: the Gospel compels us to care for the least of these. World Vision has consistently displayed a commitment to enter communities that would most benefit from their services, including those significantly affected by AIDS. World Vision sees these people as people and fights for the chance to serve them. It seems a bit ironic that an organization so committed to seeing Christ in the global poor has offered such a mixed message on the inclusion of LGBT Christians in its work.

As we have read the developing story, we’ve been stricken by how easy it can be to overlook the lives of real people in favor of combatting an ideology one might perceive as threatening–and in most situations, that goes equally for liberals and conservatives. We’ve read a number of posts in the blogosphere that suggest the decision for faith-based charities to hire people in same-sex marriages would endanger a broader Christian theology of marriage. We’ve read others that claim World Vision’s reversal is unchristian because it shows compassion for the poor (at least in terms of wooing donors back) at the expense of the LGBT community. While we aren’t going to pick an argument with those who hold these positions, we will say that we find it troubling how often Christians fail to see people as creations beloved by God rather than “enemies” or “allies.” We are grieved for the thousands of children who lost sponsors as a result of reactions to World Vision’s original announcement, the unknown number of LGBT Christians denied the opportunity to serve Christ by serving the poor via World Vision or similar charities, and a worldwide Church that is in such desperate need of peace and healing.

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Terms of Engagement

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A reflection by Sarah

On January 8, 2014, one evening before the opening session of the Gay Christian Network Conference, Lindsey and I visited a small, independent bookstore in Chicago. We had spent the entire day driving to the Midwest from our city, since 3 AM in fact, and were exhausted. I was still shaken from a car accident we had experienced just hours earlier, and after meeting up with our friend Alison at the last minute for dinner at a nearby Mediterranean restaurant I was ready to turn in for the evening. Still, Lindsey insisted that we take some time to stroll around the bookstore and see what hidden gems we might find. We split off into different sections for a while. Later, Lindsey met me in the adventure books where I was perusing a copy of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues under the Sea. We began talking about all the amusing situations we’ve found ourselves in since we first met, and I noticed a positive shift in my mood. Ultimately, we ended up in a conversation about how our life together is turning out to be the craziest adventure upon which either of us has ever embarked.

That discussion was one I’m sure I’ll never forget. It was the evening when, after months of discernment, Lindsey and I affirmed to each other that we feel called to continue living our celibate vocations together for the rest of our lives. We came to a decision that after spending the next year to reflect further, we will pursue some form of legal protection and find the most appropriate way to honor and celebrate our family. A couple pursuing marriage (however one defines that term) might consider such discussions characteristic of “engagement.” But we aren’t preparing to enter a marriage, so most people we know are baffled by our discussions of commitment and share life.

As I’ve reflected before, Lindsey and I have always struggled to find the best words to describe our relationship and our way of life. The English language and societal expectations don’t make it an easy task: there isn’t exactly a concise term for “couple committed to living a celibate vocation together that isn’t a marriage, but still allows for financial security, the ability to make health care decisions for each other, etc., etc., etc.” There’s no option for “preparing to live fully into a lifelong celibate partnership” on Facebook’s “relationship” dropdown menu. Even more significant a complicating factor is that our Christian tradition offers us little language beyond “celibacy” for describing our vocation and no guidance at all for developing a meaningful way of life in our specific circumstance.

Another layer of difficulty in determining what language to employ is that people in our lives don’t always understand why we believe it important to use certain descriptors and not others. At one extreme, we have acquaintances who urge us not even to identify as being in a relationship with each other. They encourage us to describe ourselves as “best friends” and “roommates.” In most cases, these same people become uncomfortable when we use the phrase “lifelong commitment” in relation to each other, but experience no discomfort with the idea that monastics enter lifelong commitments to each other in their communities. On the other hand, we know people who have trouble recognizing why, as an LGBT couple doing life together in a committed relationship, we wouldn’t want that referred to as a marriage. Many of these folks urge us to discuss our relationship in spousal terms, and some have indicated that our disinterest in doing so sets us in opposition to the movement for marriage equality. With minimal availability of comfortable terminology and an abundant presence of people ready to tell us how we ought to define ourselves, the quest for the best words can leave a person (or a couple) feeling very isolated. Yet despite these experiences, we are heartened by the number of people who, in diverse ways, have been unapologetically supportive of us in our vocation. We have many friends who offer us encouragement daily and show interest in helping us engage with the tough questions, regardless of what conclusions we reach and how those may or may not match with their own conclusions.

As of now, we find that the terms “family” and “team” roll most naturally off the tongue when describing ourselves to others. “Partners” also seems to fit well because this word implies shared work and a shared journey. Despite the fact that many equate the word “partnership” with “sexually active relationship,” we feel drawn to the basic meaning of this term, as we do understand our vocation to be shared responsibility for serving others and serving Christ.

It’s regrettable that people in various types of relationships aren’t always free to define those relationships such that all involved parties feel comfortable with the language used. Language around relationships is highly politicized. How one identifies one’s relationship can raise all kinds of associations for other people. In America, both religions and the government define marriage. In the eyes of a public audience, one’s willingness or unwillingness to define a particular relationship as a marriage often carries ideological connotations, regardless of whether one actually identifies with said ideologies. If any freedom to define one’s relationship and not be pigeonholed into a political category ever did exist, it seems that freedom is now gone. The terms of engagement for discussing our own life situation do not belong to us, and that will never change unless we make an active decision to take them back. With this post, consider it done. Lindsey and I are a team, a family, and a partnership, even if those words don’t have the same meanings for you as they do for us.

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.

9 Things We Wish Straight Allies Knew

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We know many straight people who are interested in actively supporting the LGBT community. Some people choose to be allies by simply being our close friends, other people choose to be allies by lobbying for legislation that can mitigate harms being done to the LGBT community, and still more people choose to be allies through different mechanisms. Some of our friends have felt compelled by their Christian faith to learn more about LGBT issues and concerns to be agents for positive change. So many of our straight allies have worked to educate themselves when encountering LGBT people with unfamiliar stories. Yet at times, we feel that messages regarding what makes a person an ally are given with the assumption that all LGBT people have the same needs, views, and life experiences. From our perspective as a celibate, LGBT, Christian couple, here are 9 things the two of us wish our straight allies knew.

1. We are individuals.
LGBT people are just as diverse as the rest of the population, so there isn’t a “one size fits all” approach to being supportive of all of us. What one LGBT person might perceive as supportive, another may see differently. This is also true of LGBT Christians. For example, many LGBT Christians are grateful for allies who advocate for change in their denominations’ theologies of marriage. However, there are also LGBT Christians who are in complete agreement with the teachings of their respective Christian traditions on this matter. There are LGBT couples who desire that their relationships be recognized as marriages within their denominations, and there are LGBT couples who understand their relationships as something different from marriage. Because we are individuals, it is helpful to ask us what we would find most supportive instead of assuming that all of us have the same feelings, needs, opinions, and theological positions.

2. Our stories belong to us.
Regardless of sexual orientation, every person has a story. Stories are powerful and dynamic. They come in many varieties: childhood stories, coming of age stories, coming out stories, faith stories. They hold vital pieces of ourselves, so to share one’s story with another person is to become vulnerable, entrusting that person to safeguard a precious gift. Please remember, especially with stories related to our coming out processes and faith journeys, that these stories belong to us even if we’ve shared them with you once. Not every LGBT person is comfortable with his or her story being used for political purposes. If you’re going to share our stories with other people, cultivate real relationships with us where you can stay current on how our stories are developing over time.

3. We are glad to answer your questions.
We really mean that. Of course, the two of us can’t speak for every LGBT person, but at least from our perspective, questions are welcome. We would much rather answer questions about our way of life, our self-understandings, and our faith than be told what we should or shouldn’t be doing by people who haven’t walked a mile in our moccasins. We have many straight ally friends who are constantly posing new questions to us. Often, these questions challenge us to think more deeply, and to become better Christians. However we have also encountered many allies who seem to think they know everything that is best for LGBT people. They’ve done a lot of reading, talked to a lot of people, and formed their own conclusions. We would like to stress that we appreciate all the researching and communicating our allies do on a regular basis, but what you have read, heard, and seen from other people and sources does not give you the right to make blanket statements about what all LGBT people should do in a given situation.

4. We aren’t just LGBT. We are people, first and foremost.
Our self-understandings as lesbian, gay, bisexual transgender, queer, etc. are very important to us. However, our identities also have many layers. We are sons, daughters, sisters, brothers, teachers, engineers, church members…but we are also people, and that is what matters most. We are not just your “gay friends” or “transgender friends.” We are human beings made in the image and likeness of God. While we are glad to talk with you about LGBT issues, our lives do not involve thinking constantly about our sexual orientations. Start conversations with us in the same way you would with other straight people you know. Ask us about our trip to the art museum last weekend, or our favorite chocolate chip cookie recipes, or the time we spent volunteering with the local wildlife rescue. There are far more interesting subjects to discuss with us than how we feel about the most recent case of a gay couple being denied a table at a restaurant. The more you talk with us, the more you’ll probably see that our lives aren’t very different from yours.

5. Gay marriage isn’t the only issue.
It seems almost anytime a straight person realizes that we are members of the LGBT community, that person’s conversation with us ultimately ends up at the topic of gay marriage. Sometimes, that person will self-identify as an ally and begin telling us how ardently he/she supports gay marriage and how deeply shameful and oppressive he/she thinks it is that gay relationships do not have legal recognition in every U.S. state. We’ve written on the issue of legal recognition before, so clearly we see it as an important topic worthy of serious discussion. But gay marriage is not the only issue of concern for LGBT people. We’re also concerned about the discrimination we can encounter in our places of work, the fact that our LGBT statuses could prevent us from being offered a lease on an apartment, and the reality that we could be refused services at a local business on the basis of our sexual orientations and gender identities. But much more significant than any of those issues are the experiences of LGBT people in countries with far fewer freedoms. There are countries, like Uganda, in which being gay can land a person in prison with a life sentence. There are also places in the world where gay people face the risk of being killed. In the grand scheme of things, we believe situations like these call for a much more urgent response, including constant prayer from the entire Body of Christ.

6. Celibacy and self-loathing are not synonyms.
Frequently, well-intentioned straight allies assume that if an LGBT person is celibate, he or she is trapped in a state of self-loathing. Secular allies can be quick to tell celibate LGBT people that we are allowing ourselves to be manipulated by religious dogma. Christian allies can be just as quick to offer the message, “Jesus loves you no matter what. I can support you in accepting that it’s okay to have sex.” Sometimes, allies make assumptions about the sexual activity statuses of LGBT couples; if a person is in a relationship, this must mean he or she is sexually active or intends to become so in the future. These kinds of attitudes and remarks can be exceptionally wounding, and just as hurtful as the common message we get from many conservative Christians: “You can’t be gay and a Christian.” When straight allies either state or imply that we are repressed because of our celibacy, the message we hear is, “You can’t be gay without having sex.” Asking more questions about our way of life is a much kinder, more compassionate approach.

7. Not all LGBT people want to be activists and educators.
It’s true that some LGBT people feel drawn to the roles of activist and educator. However, not all are so inclined just by virtue of our sexual orientations and gender identities, and we do not “owe it to the LGBT community” to fill those roles. Many of us want only to live our boring, daily lives in peace. Please do not assume that if there is a local protest regarding a marriage amendment that all your queer neighbors will be penciling that into their calendars. And please do not expect that we will want to make the national news if we experience discrimination in some aspect of our daily activities. When we share an experience of hurt or injustice with you, “Which news outlet should I call first?” is not the appropriate question to ask. Forcing us into the spotlight over said incident is not doing us or the broader LGBT community any favors. A better question to ask might be, “How did you feel when that happened?” or “What can I do to support you as you process this?”

8. Pronouns matter.
Many LGBT people can feel exhausted by having to play pronoun games. We sincerely appreciate friends who care enough to learn our patterns of pronoun use. For some of us, respecting pronoun preferences can be as simple as asking, “What are your preferred pronouns?” Yet for others, the pronoun questions are not so simple. Transgender and genderqueer people might relish in having a safe place where others use the right pronouns but could also fear being outed in public. Some genderqueer people prefer avoiding pronouns all together. Be willing to ask questions, practice using appropriate pronouns, and understand why certain people might feel like they have no choice but to try and play pronoun games.

9. We are grateful for your support.
We know many LGBT people who probably wouldn’t make it without support of straight allies. The two of us have been tremendously blessed by some of our straight friends who have committed to travel with us as we adventure through life. As we reflect on the people who have been most supportive and just generally wonderful friends, we can identify an incredible number of straight allies. Some of our straight allies were the first people to know our LGBT identities. Many of our straight allies have helped us feel safer and more welcome in various church communities. We have been so blessed by sharing our lives with some of you for 10 years or more. Thank you so much for seeing us not simply as your LGBT friends but as members of your family.

Whether you are an LGBT person or a straight ally, we’d love to hear from you in the comments. What do you wish straight allies knew?

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.

When Legal Recognition MATTERS

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One evening not too many weeks ago, Sarah was having trouble breathing. Typically, one puff from the inhaler and all is well. But that night was different. Sarah couldn’t hold coherent conversation, was having trouble lying down, and labored with every breath. Lindsey tried to assess the situation. After watching Sarah’s symptoms develop and worsen over the course of the evening, Lindsey made the call to drive Sarah to the nearby Emergency Room.

It is times like these when legal recognition matters.

As a couple dealing with chronic health conditions, we are no strangers to navigating various healthcare webs. Health can play up just about anywhere or anytime. Because Sarah has severe asthma and other health problems, we tend towards choosing to see a doctor when we deem it necessary. In dealing with healthcare professionals, we have had significantly more positive experiences when seeing a provider who can recognize our relationship than when seeing one who cannot and will not.

We were in the middle of an impromptu day trip somewhere in the State of Virginia. On the side of the road, we saw an old train station that had been turned into a museum. Intrigued, we decided to stop and visit. It was a combined railway station and post office from 1910. In this building, a placard over one door reads, “White” while a placard over the other door reads, “Colored.”

It is in places like this where labels matter.

Now, before we take this post too much farther, let us say directly that we do not think it is appropriate to compare the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s with current movements to expand legal rights of LGBT people as though the two are exactly the same. There are many important points of difference, and the few points of similarity that do exist are not our reason for sharing these two stories in the same post. We began with these stories because they are experiences we have shared as a couple. Being in the two different environments–the emergency room and the train station–evoked various reflections that influence how we see questions of legal recognition for LGBT people.

As members of a sacramental Christian tradition, we have no intention of advocating for our church to recognize our relationship as a sacramental marriage. We have no problem with being known simply as “Lindsey and Sarah,” and we enjoy participating in the life of our parish together. A sacramental marriage in our tradition crowns two people as martyrs to one another, laying down their lives for each other in an act of sacrificial love. A sacramental marriage is not about legal name changes, the ability to file taxes together, qualifying for health insurance, gaining access to medical records, coordinating treatment across diverse providers, combining incomes when trying to qualify for a mortgage, and managing end-of-life care. Those functions get housed in the civil (legal) sphere.

Lindsey is often bemused when thinking about how monasteries secure various legal rights that enable them to care for members of their communities. Could you just imagine the scene of an atheist father and a newly-Buddhist mother barging into a Catholic monastery to demand that they alone have the right to plan the funeral of their son who has recently fallen asleep in the Lord? Chaos and madness would ensue. Could you imagine an Orthodox nun tasked to take a very ill member of the community to the hospital only to drop the patient off at registration and have no access to any information about her during her stay? It does not happen that way. Somehow, some way, laws exist in most places to protect the fidelity of the monastic vows and the relationship of each individual sister or brother to the community. …and if those laws do not exist, many Christians rightly call forth “Persecution!”

Society has a lot of automatic systems that just seem to “kick in.” There is a lot of support when parents are trying to make sure that a new baby is appropriately recognized as a member of their family, when monasteries tonsure new members, and when two individuals get married. Along the way, additional benefits accrue–often, without the recipients of the benefits even being aware. A call to one critical agency can set a Rube-Goldberg-type legal machine into action. It’s unlikely that anyone (except maybe some attorneys and the IRS) actually knows the full process by which a newly married couple formally receives all of the 1,000+ legal rights and responsibilities associated with that status.

Many people will argue that marriage or a similar type of legal recognition for same-sex relationships is unnecessary because a same-sex couple can use alternate contractual structures such as securing a Power of Attorney. Both of us know different LGBT couples who have tried to navigate the complex gamut of legal procedures required to use these alternate contractual structures. Several attorneys and multiple thousands of dollars later, they have a piecemeal collection of documents that they hope will safeguard their relationship when legal recognition matters most.

The problem of securing legal protection to care for and provide for loved ones is not unique to LGBT couples. Oftentimes, singles and heterosexual couples who have not yet married face similar problems. One of Sarah’s friends once shared a story in which he was denied bereavement leave from work when his fiance’s mother reposed. His workplace cited that they could not grant him bereavement leave because he was not yet married and had no familial relationship to the reposed. It did not matter that months later, the reposed would have been his mother-in-law. If this event had occurred when he was married, his workplace would have taken him at his word that he needed leave time for his mother-in-law’s funeral. In America, people who are related through blood, adoption, or marriage have a privilege that people who are related by choice do not. (Common law marriages try to bridge the gap in at least some of these instances when a man and a woman share a house for a number of years.)

When we think about it, we see that many Americans do not have the security of knowing the people they choose to share life with will be legally authorized to be there when their presence matters most. The only exception to this is if the people with whom one chooses to do life happen to be one’s family of origin, one’s (opposite-sex) spouse, or one’s monastic family. Any other relationship is relegated to a second-class status. In a way, it is like those signs that hung over the train station doors. It is discrimination based on one human being’s label for his or her relationship to other human beings: family of origin and family by marriage have access to the full range of rights and privileges, and family of choice often gets stuck with the leftovers. More than a few times, Lindsey has had no choice but to remain silently in waiting rooms with no updates when Sarah has been seriously ill or undergoing a medical procedure. Doctors have actively denied Lindsey the ability to see Sarah in a surgical recovery room and access to any sort of aftercare instructions. Once, when Sarah told a physician, “My partner, Lindsey, is here to take me home afterward,” the physician said, “That doesn’t matter. I asked if you were married and have a spouse here.” That same physician later requested contact information for Sarah’s parents even though Lindsey was less than 15 feet away. Because of various legal mechanisms, lack of a legal title negates any level of relationship that two people have to one another.

Given this reality, we ask: what option does an LGBT couple who do not regard their relationship as a sacramental/religious marriage have for ensuring that they are legally protected? Many Christian denominations have promoted the idea that allowing LGBT people to marry legally will have a detrimental effect on how that particular denomination can articulate an understanding of marriage. Therefore, these denominations assert the importance of limiting the legal definition of marriage to one man and one woman. But for all the concern about protecting the institution of marriage and ensuring that there will be no misunderstanding regarding their doctrines on the religious nature of marriage, there is little to no empathy for the lived experiences of so many LGBT couples when one partner has been denied the basic privilege of caring for the other in times of emergency.

For this reason, we tend to believe that all Christian denominations have a responsibility to define marriage theologically in whatever way they deem appropriate while also working to protect LGBT people from undue discrimination in various social contexts. We do not claim to know the best solution for accomplishing this particular work of justice. But, we find these questions critical, and we are grateful that currently, we live in a place where we have some legal options to ensure that we can care for one another. Not every LGBT couple is so fortunate.

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.