Forty-six years ago this weekend, June 28, 1969 in Greenwich
Village at the Stonewall Inn, police raided a gay nightclub in an attempt to
arrest its patrons because being gay was illegal in New York City. Being gay
was illegal. Riots ensued and, in their aftermath, the LGBT rights movement was
born.
In light of the situation in America five decades ago, today’s
Supreme Court decision arguing that gay and lesbian individuals’ rights are
ensured by the 14th Amendment, the equal protection clause,
including the right to marry whomever they choose, could be seen as miraculous.
The Executive Director of the Central Conference of American Rabbis CCAR said:
As Jews, we believe we are all formed in God’s image. For many years, Reform Judaism rabbis have called for equal rights for all members of our communities, and we see today’s Supreme Court decision on marriage equality as a huge moral victory for the United States.
The Reform movement has been a strong advocate. Last March, the CCAR marked the 25th anniversary
of a 1990 resolution calling for the ordination of openly gay and lesbian
rabbis, and installed its first openly gay president, Rabbi Denise Eger. I
personally have performed a number of same-sex marriage ceremonies and spoke on
several occasions at the Iowa Capitol about it.
The majority opinion, written by Justice Kennedy is not a simple legal document. It is beautiful. For example, it states the following about the institution of marriage:
The
annals of human history reveal the transcendent importance of marriage. The
lifelong union of a man and a woman always has promised nobility and dignity to
all persons, without regard to their station in life. Marriage is sacred to
those who live by their religions and offers unique fulfillment to those who
find meaning in the secular realm. Its dynamic allows two people to find a life
that could not be found alone, for a marriage becomes greater than just the two
persons. Rising from the most basic human needs, marriage is essential to our
most profound hopes and aspirations. The centrality of marriage to the human
condition makes it unsurprising that the institution has existed for millennia
and across civilizations. Since the dawn of history, marriage has transformed
strangers into relatives, binding families and societies together.
Beautiful! Yet, the stories
of the three couples cited by Justice Kennedy in the opinion are heart
wrenching:
- 1. A married couple wherein one spouse died from ALS, but because the state in which they resided didn’t recognize same-sex marriage, it refused to list the surviving spouse on the death certificate. Imagine not being listed as the spouse of your beloved because the state decided you weren’t allowed to marry.
- 2. A married couple with children, wherein because the state would not recognize the couple’s same-sex marriage, neither would it recognize both parents as the legal guardians of their adopted children leaving not only the couple, but the children as well, at risk should anything happen to one of them.
- 3. A couple including a soldier who served with the Tennessee National Guard in Afghanistan, whom when he returned home found that he was considered unmarried.
Justice Kennedy noted:
Even
when a greater awareness of the humanity and integrity of homosexual persons
came in the period after World War II, the argument that gays and lesbians had
a just claim to dignity was in conflict with both law and widespread social
conventions. Same-sex intimacy remained a crime in many States. Gays and
lesbians were prohibited from most government employment, barred from military
service, excluded under immigration laws, targeted by police, and burdened in
their rights to associate… For much of the 20th century, moreover,
homosexuality was treated as an illness…
Change was slow to come. It wasn’t until 1990
that even the highly progressive Reform Jewish movement was willing to ordain openly
gay and lesbian rabbis and congregations were not exactly banging down the door to hire them when it did.
Justice Kennedy explained that times and our understanding of our world changes, something at the basis of Reform Judaism, discussed 130 years ago in the 1885 Pittsburgh Platform. The Justice wrote:
The
nature of injustice is that we may not always see it in our own times. The
generations that wrote and ratified the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth
Amendment did not presume to know the extent of freedom in all of its
dimensions, and so they entrusted to future generations a charter protecting
the right of all persons to enjoy liberty as we learn its meaning. When new
insight reveals discord between the Constitution’s central protections and a
received legal stricture, a claim to liberty must be addressed…
It is noteworthy that rather
than speak to a definition of civil marriage, Justice Kennedy spoke of what
marriage should be. He stated:
The
nature of marriage is that, through its enduring bond, two persons together can
find other freedoms, such as expression, intimacy, and spirituality. This is
true for all persons, whatever their sexual orientation… Marriage responds to
the universal fear that a lonely person might call out only to find no one
there. It offers the hope of companionship and understanding and assurance that
while both still live there will be someone to care for the other.
While, in the opinion there are
many paragraphs about legal benefits based in marriage and problems caused by
exclusion from it, how beautiful is the statement, that marriage “offers
the hope of companionship and understanding and assurance that while both still
live there will be someone to care for the other?”
I’m personally not sure I
would have needed any more than that statement alone to justify what the Supreme
Court of the United States did today. Yet, the concluding paragraph
offered by Justice Kennedy is worthy of sermon and will itself be long
remembered and oft quoted.
No
union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of
love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union,
two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the
petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may
endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they
disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect
it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope
is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of
civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of
the law. The Constitution grants them that right.
And so 46 years after the
Stonewall Riot in Greenwich Village when simply being gay was cause to be
arrested, today it is legal for two gay men to be married there and their
marriage will be recognized everywhere in America.
I often urge us to action as I
did last week. I point out that we can make a difference even if what our own actions contribute is but a drop of water. Many drops, as was all too clear
this week here in Des Moines, create a river and sometimes a very flooded one.
What we can clearly say, after this Supreme Court decision, is that our drops
of water, all of our advocacy through the years, created that river.
We made a
difference.
I stand before you,
thinking of my own family members, who were never able to publicly acknowledge
that they were gay or lesbian.
I stand before you,
thinking of those in our congregation and in our community who have struggled
to have their freedom and rights recognized, often suffering persecution and
discrimination because of their views.
I stand before you, having
spoken often about Antisemitism and the Holocaust, remembering pink
triangles and getting choked up about it. This has been a long and painful
struggle.
I stand before you,
knowing the elation of nearing the mountaintop, having labored so hard and long
on the climb. What a feeling!
We
are here on a day when these words ring more truthful, “We the people who
hold this truth to be self-evident, that we all are created equal.”
Today, my friends, we live in a nation beginning to live up to the lofty
promise made by its first President to a little community of Jews in Rhode
Island 225 years ago. In the words of President George Washington to the Hebrew
Congregation in New Port Rhode Island and quoting the words of that
congregation’s leader, Moses Seixas:
The Citizens of the United States of America have
a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an
enlarged and liberal policy, a policy worthy of imitation.
All possess alike liberty of conscience and
immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as
if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the
exercise of the inherent natural rights. For happily the government of the
United States, which "gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no
assistance,” requires only that they who live under its protection should
demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their
effectual support…
May the children of the Stock of Abraham, who
dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other
inhabitants, while everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig
tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.
This
is truly a momentous day.
And
so, how can I conclude this sermon with anything other than Shecheheyanu,
thanking God for bringing us to this long sought after day?
Blessed
are you, Adonai our God, ruler of the universe, for sustaining us in life, strengthening
us, and enabling us to reach the day!
