Monday, October 23, 2006
Vote for love, families and commitments
From the RoundTable blog
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Wyman, of Floyd, has raised eight children and is a hospice worker.
Recently I attended a family wedding with my husband, my oldest daughter and her fiancé, and our youngest daughter, who prefers women.
We were missing sharing this significant occasion with our many sons who, for various reasons, could not be there. Although this was a traditional Catholic wedding Mass, it felt warm and inclusive.
The emphasis was certainly on loving and respecting one another across the board. The chill came when, during prayers offered for various intentions around the world, the priest asked that God guide our lawmakers to clearly define and preserve the sacrament of marriage.
When the moment came to respond “Lord, hear our prayer,” I was silent. All the other prayers felt right, but this one felt small. Small like humans cowering as they have since the dawn of time before the unknown and the “other.”
Instead of getting my vote on that prayer, the priest actually sent me on a brief fantasy journey. I saw myself in years to come at many varied weddings. The weddings were those of my children and grandchildren, some of whom are straight and some are gay and lesbian.
These weddings were full of love, ceremony, light, song, family and spirit. These weddings were the official leaping off place for persons bound to each other by love, destiny and a conscious commitment to play out their many individual roles. These weddings blessed and empowered partners to grow, change, believe, support and lovingly affect our wounded world.
A moment later, I was back in St. Catherine of Sweden Catholic Church in Wildwood, Pa., looking at the beautifully sculpted back of the bride, our niece, in her elegant long white gown. This is what I was thinking, “Note to self: As soon as you get back home, write that commentary about the 'marriage amendment’ coming up in November for Virginia voters.” So, here it is.
A constitutional amendment to ban marriage for same-sex couples will appear on the November ballot. This amendment is designed to shape, through fear and prejudice, the structures by which mature adults express love and commitment, create family and support each other in their life’s work.
The metaphor that leaps to mind is looking through the wrong end of a telescope, everything gets very small and limited. I prefer a world in which we are all trying to expand in love, commitment and service to each other and our planet at a rate commensurate to the demands of these challenging times.
To imbue our families, our work and our world with the kind of spirit required for lift-off, I believe we will have to come to value all loving relationships, every kind of family, and trust, too, that differences are not bad, but merely expanded expression by the creator and further opportunities to look at what scares us about ourselves.
Please go to the polls in November and vote consciously, fear aside. Try looking into the future. Contemplate a long-range vision teeming with celebratory commitment ceremonies and families where orphaned and abandoned children are taken into two-parent homes.
See individuals who function fully and happily with a same-sex life partner.
Envision our communities, employers and state government empowering these commitments and these families.
Please do not leave the legal and societal definition of our future families to the “faithful fearful.” Think beyond where we are now. Think about where we want to be, where we long to be. How do we get there? Imagine.
