I have read the lengthy article on marriage, and I find myself wanting to cry out, “Stop it!” Stop with the desire to restrict the lives of my friends. Stop with the dismissive and condescending attitudes toward their love and mutual commitment. Stop with the pharisaic blathering. Stop with the self-serving, holier-than-thou posturing. Stop with the self-righteous attempts to find a second-class definition for relationships you regard as less perfect than your own. Stop with your identification of virtue with tradition. Stop with the prejudice. Just, please, re-read Luke 18 and stop it! Non-heterosexuals deserve respect, not “compassion.”

The article is a classic case of starting with the conclusion and searching for arguments to make it seem justified. As every argument founders, the supporters of prejudice will find another. So now it has come full circle, and now marriage is all about sex – excuse me, now it is all about “heterosexual sex.” So the couple featured in Denver newscasts a year or two ago – the couple who spoke their vows while the man was on his death-bed – that couple was not married? So the veteran who returns from war a quadriplegic, and who, together with a faithful opposite-gender partner who has waited for this moment, speaks vows before God and witnesses, and is pronounced married, but is unable to perform the act of heterosexual sex – that veteran is not married? So the couple who spoke vows while one partner was imprisoned, with years to serve before eligibility for parole – that couple is not married? So the vows of others who, for whatever reason, do not have “heterosexual sex,” are invalid? So the vows taken by innumerable couples over the centuries: “for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until death parts us;” the pledge “to have and to hold from this day forward … forsaking all others;” those vows are fatally flawed because they specify only the quality of a relationship but do not specify heterosexual sex?

I can hardly find words to express my dismay and outrage. I am straight, white, Protestant, ordained, living now more than half a century in a marriage that needs no “defense,” still proclaiming “grace sufficient,” having grown over my lifetime in recognizing, overcoming, and speaking out against degrees of misogyny, prejudice against racial and ethnic minorities, dismissive attitudes toward other nations and religious traditions, and prejudice against persons of other sexual orientations or gender identities. In each case, large segments of the church clung stubbornly to the prejudice. I think “marriage” is the right word for the loving, committed, life-long unions of non-heterosexuals, and would regard acceptance of that term as a joyful widening of the circle. How can the witness of the church be fully effective if we are more concerned to define the neighbor than to embrace? Please read my accessible little book, A Place at the Table: Scripture, Sexuality, and Life in the Church (iuniverse.com/bookstore). The whole church needs to repent, to take a fresh look at our sisters and brothers of every sexual orientation or gender identity (including heterosexual) who live with their own individual gifts and burdens, and to learn full mutual respect. It’s a New Testament attitude.