She was 38 and dying. It was cancer that was claiming her life. I was a hospital chaplain in Chicago when we met. By my fourth visit, I had the sense there was something she wasn’t telling me. I don’t remember how it came out; if I asked her or if she just told me, but we came to the heart of the matter. She was gay. She had been with her partner for almost a decade and they had a child. Her family was Christian and estranged. The missing component of her story was the fear she lived with: the fear her biological family would not honor her wishes and allow her partner to come hold her hand and be with her as she died. The fear that there would be legal battles over her biological son, their grandson who was “no one” to her partner—even though the boy called her partner mom.
Recently, in Washington state, laws were past that gave gay couples some of the same rights that married couples afford. Of course, prop 8 in California is still fresh in our minds... People from faith communities registered all kinds of responses everything from dismay to joy. Mostly though, dismay. As believers, we often fall back on faith traditions to justify why we believe the way we do about a particular issue. As Americans, we also look to our laws and constitution. It can become complex to navigate between religion and state as our American tradition has a separation of church and state to allow for religious freedoms for all kinds of believers. While for some, this separation is troubling, it has been one of the things that makes our nation great.
From the beginning, religious freedom allowed for a diversity of believers to live along side each other with relative harmony unlike other parts of the world where believers with different ideas were persecuted. Many of us who are here from several generations back are here because our families were seeking freedoms to practice and live the way we wished to live: Life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
What about this woman in the hospital? Oh yes, believers might say that she’s unnatural or against their holy scriptures. But doesn’t even a sinner deserve to have her last wishes honored on her death bed? Aren’t all of us as Americans afforded the rights to choose how we choose to pursue our lives as consenting adults?
I have heard many people say that a family made up of two mothers or two fathers is somehow hurtful to marriage everywhere and perhaps I am just not tracking, but I can’t figure how. As studies continue to show kids who grow up with gay parents tend to be well adjusted, productive children who are as capable as their counter-parts. So how is it that gay families wreck other families? How is it that rights such as a same sex partner being in a hospital room would wreak havoc on a family with a man, woman & a child?
I know that has been a tough issue for many people but I can’t help thinking about that woman in the hospital. I think everyone regardless of our personal religious beliefs deserves the ability to be with the person they love the most in the world. These two adults had shared a decade together and struggled and laughed and cried and dreamed together—come on, even the worst unrepentant sinners get to have their loved ones—I watched as gang members died with mothers and girl friends and gang members there—and somehow that didn’t test the metal of family—I wonder why one woman grieving alongside another would.
Recently, in Washington state, laws were past that gave gay couples some of the same rights that married couples afford. Of course, prop 8 in California is still fresh in our minds... People from faith communities registered all kinds of responses everything from dismay to joy. Mostly though, dismay. As believers, we often fall back on faith traditions to justify why we believe the way we do about a particular issue. As Americans, we also look to our laws and constitution. It can become complex to navigate between religion and state as our American tradition has a separation of church and state to allow for religious freedoms for all kinds of believers. While for some, this separation is troubling, it has been one of the things that makes our nation great.
From the beginning, religious freedom allowed for a diversity of believers to live along side each other with relative harmony unlike other parts of the world where believers with different ideas were persecuted. Many of us who are here from several generations back are here because our families were seeking freedoms to practice and live the way we wished to live: Life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
What about this woman in the hospital? Oh yes, believers might say that she’s unnatural or against their holy scriptures. But doesn’t even a sinner deserve to have her last wishes honored on her death bed? Aren’t all of us as Americans afforded the rights to choose how we choose to pursue our lives as consenting adults?
I have heard many people say that a family made up of two mothers or two fathers is somehow hurtful to marriage everywhere and perhaps I am just not tracking, but I can’t figure how. As studies continue to show kids who grow up with gay parents tend to be well adjusted, productive children who are as capable as their counter-parts. So how is it that gay families wreck other families? How is it that rights such as a same sex partner being in a hospital room would wreak havoc on a family with a man, woman & a child?
I know that has been a tough issue for many people but I can’t help thinking about that woman in the hospital. I think everyone regardless of our personal religious beliefs deserves the ability to be with the person they love the most in the world. These two adults had shared a decade together and struggled and laughed and cried and dreamed together—come on, even the worst unrepentant sinners get to have their loved ones—I watched as gang members died with mothers and girl friends and gang members there—and somehow that didn’t test the metal of family—I wonder why one woman grieving alongside another would.
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