Why You Should Give A Damn!

Newsletter Archive

Newsletter #22, March, 2008

Creating the Right Kind of Global Warming: a Marriage Equality Sermon for the UU Church

by Davina Kotulski, Ph.D.

On October 16, 2000, Robert and Bill, a San Francisco couple who were registered domestic partners in California, traveled to DC for vacation. Robert got sick and ended up in the Maryland Trauma Center where Bill was denied access to his hospital room because he was told that registered domestic partners were not recognized in Maryland. Bill told the hospital staff that he had the power of attorney to make medical decisions for Robert. The hospital asked for written- proof. The paperwork was where most people keep their important documents in a filing cabinet at their home in San Francisco.

Bill called Robert’s mother and asked her to come to Maryland. He sat in the waiting room while husbands and wives were not asked to produce marriage licenses or powers of attorney and were allowed to be with their spouses. By the time Robert’s mother arrived and insisted that Bill be able to come back to Robert’s room, Robert had already died, ALONE—his wishes never heard. Bill Flannigan sued the hospital and lost. The hospital staff was just following the rules.

This is still happening today because same-sex couples are denied the right to marry!

Last year, a lesbian couple and their three children had just boarded an RFamily Cruise in Florida. One of the women became sick and was taken to a Miami hospital. Her partner and children were denied access to her hospital bed, and not able to see her until after she died. While traveling to Georgia on business, Patrick Atkins suffered from an aneurysm and a stroke. Despite the fact that Patrick and his partner, Brett Conrad, had been together for 25 years, Brad was unable to make medical decisions for Patrick because they didn’t have an advanced health care directive or medical power of attorney (rights automatically granted to heterosexual spouses). And worse still, was the fact that Patrick’s mother enforced her legal right to deny Brad hospital visitation and later visitation to the nursing home that Patrick was moved to.

Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. said “All life is interrelated. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny...strangely enough I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. You can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the way the world is made. I didn’t make it that way, but this is the way, the interrelated structure of reality.”

Dr. King understood that treating one group of people less than another, was harmful not only to the oppressed group, but to the group who mistakenly held the belief that they were superior because they were granted a greater standing in society. Dr. King pointed out, as Eckhart Tolle might point out today, or Buddha might have pointed out many years back, that the ego’s belief in superiority is our greatest downfall.

You may be asking yourself what does this have to do with marriage equality? Or, perhaps you already see the interrelatedness and so the direct harm to you, by belonging to the group that is perceived as morally and socially superior-or conversely if you belong to a group that is perceived as morally and socially inferior you know the pain it causes you. And you may already hear the call to step up and correct that error for your sake and the sake of your community, not just the gay community, but the human community, that is suffering from this collective delusion of superiority and inferiority.

This is a tall order, such a tall order in fact, that we are still working on understanding the effects of this web, this network of mutuality and shared destiny on one another, on our towns and cities, our forests, and even our drinking water, and we are still working to correct this delusion with regard to race and gender in 2008.

The UU community understands these connections and has played an integral role in awakening others to these connections not only by standing on the side of love, but because all Unitarian Universalist congregations are founded on principles which affirm and promote:

—The inherent worth and dignity of every person;

—Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;

—The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;

—Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

So, today we turn our attention to ending the segregation of marriage and integrating the marriage license counters. For we understand today that allowing this inequality to exist hurts all of us and that ending marriage discrimination will have positive benefits that will ripple out passed the individual couples, whose lives will become legally as well as spiritually joined. It will create a new understanding of our shared humanity and tear down false barriers. The way Gavin Newsom did on February 12, 2004 when he wielded a mighty hammer, in the name of love and justice for all, at the wall that separated gay people from their straight brothers and sisters—that separated us from our shared humanity.

While it is a tall order, it is easy to stand on the side of love. It is easy to simply close your eyes and begin visualizing a world where same-sex couples are received with the same joy at the marriage license counter as different-sex couples. It’s easy to celebrate and honor same-sex relationships as you would different-sex relationships. It is easy to begin using marriage equality inclusive language such as the term spouse when referring to someone’s same-sex partner, rather than immediately using the word partner. Think of the power difference. It’s much easier for a straight person to tell someone it’s okay to call my spouse my partner, then it is for a gay person to ask please call my partner- my spouse.

There are 1,138 federal rights, responsibilities, and legal protections that lesbian and gay people need, but are presently denied, and help educate others. If you look at these two jars of candy hearts you can see that one is full and one is empty. Each heart represents one right that gay couples are denied—health care, social security, the right to file joint taxes, the right to citizenship for a non-US born same-sex partner granted heterosexual partners through marriage. Look into my hearts and you can see the inequality made visible.

Educate yourself about these 1,138 federal rights denied same-sex couples everywhere in the US. Educate yourself about the hundreds of state rights, basic rights that same-sex couples are denied in most states-the right to visit a same-sex partner in the hospital, make medical decisions, burial decisions.

Put a bumper sticker on your car or in your office or wear a T-shirt in support of marriage equality. Talk openly about your support of equal marriage rights and come out against initiatives and amendments that seek to take away or limit rights or create separate, and inherently unequal, substitutes. These things are easy, they cost you very little, but they contribute to a growing consciousness, a growing environment of love and support for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender people.

These simple things can change the climate, creating the right kind of global warming—one of love and affinity: a community where the love of two women, or the love of two men, is cherished and valued; a world where gay kids can go to the prom with their boyfriend or girlfriend, share in the excitement of courtship and the beautiful ritual of marriage; a world where we can all rejoice because we have become integrated—gay and straight together.

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