My Priest opposes Prop 8 by not signing marriage liscenses.
Today was a day to sleep in…church would have to wait till next week.
My son and I share a Saturday night ritual of watching an action movie after the house has grown quiet and my wife and daughter are sleeping peacefully…what better time to rock the house with a bose system that puts a beautiful base beat of explosions and rocket fire through the timber in our walls.
Last week we watched the MATRIX. Last night we watched the second one in the trilogy, THE MATRIX RELOADED. When the film ended with the message: to be concluded…he was on the edge of his seat. That's when he flashed those blue eyes at me and said, “Dad…don’t you have the third one?”…a very, very late night it became.
So this afternoon when I rolled out of bed around the crack of noon…I decided to make some french toast. That was right about the time my wife came home from church and we began to play the, “how late did you keep up our son” dance, with a “you would have loved being in church today” guilt kicker. But she does it mostly in a very cute way, thankfully, making my french toast palatable.
I then sincerely inquired about today’s sermon. If there is one thing I love about our church, besides the incredible diversity in the congregation…are the sermons. Rev. Ed Bacon, the Rector of All Saints Pasadena is known for his extremely passionate and motivating sermons. He is not one to stray from issues others are afraid of tackling…or take opposition to. Hence our church being in the national news quite often…nothing like being at an airport in Atlanta and seeing your church on CNN. He has also made several appearances on Oprah to discuss his feeling towards gay marriage and how he feels that Prop 8 is not only wrong…but also during one appearance he made the landmark statement that, “being Gay is a gift from God.” I love this guy!
However, Rev Bacon was not there to give the sermon today. It was Rev. Abel Lopez. When she filled me in on his Pentecostal sermon…I was most intrigued with his thoughts on Prop 8 and a personal proclamation he made towards the end. I had heard about a minister coming out with a similar statement earlier this week…so I headed right over our church’s website and watched the video of today’s sermon
Although I have added a edited video version of that sermon later on in this post…Let me quote part of it here:
“ lets not shy away from the fact that the abolishment of Proposition 8 and the discrimination that is spreads like a net…is a civil rights issue.”
He goes later on to quote Dr. King, “He who passively accepts evil, is as much involved in it…as he who helps perpetrate it.” And then adds…
“So in order to be true to ones conscious and true to God, the righteous person has no alternative but to refuse to co-operate with an evil system. I am not a man who uses the word evil very often, but the discriminatory actions of the state, in refusing to acknowledge the commitment and love of same gender couples. are at the center of an evil system. A system that doesn’t allow life long partners to be at their loved ones bedside when they die, a system that denies them the custody of their children, the ownership of their home and the same basic equal rights that I have as a heterosexual…that is evil. For some time now…in the spirit of God the Disturber, I have been bothered by my participation in this injustice.”
With that spirit, a little further on he makes this proclamation,
"…going forward, I as a Priest, commit myself to performing sacramental blessings, the religioius ritual of marriage for mixed gender couples as well as same gender couples…but I will not perform the civil ritual of marriage, the signing of a marriage license, I will not do so, until I am able to do so, for mixed and same gender couples equally. And I am hoping that the Bishop, the Rector, staff, vestry and this congregation will support me”
Below is the edited excerpt from his sermon: The Feast Of God The Disturber.
The full sermon, so nothing can be taken out of context…can be viewed here:
http://aschu.convio.net/videos/AL090531Sermon.html
Could you imagine if this caught on at every same like minded church in California?
I for one will support him completely…starting next Sunday when I show up to church. It won’t be hard to miss me. I’ll be the guy in the church pew who will be powered by the elbow jabs of my wife trying desperately to keep me awake.
My son has never seen Die Hard…and I’ve got every sequel.
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Dorinda...it will be interesting to see if it catches on. I only know of two so far.
Chicago Guy: Let's hope...
Leslie: You're welcome...I'm glad the wonderful internet allowed me to see it too.
Buffy: You're right, especially when you know you wont be pleasing everybody (even those close to you) when you do.
Stella: Yep...Episcopal Priest.
Bella99: I find the answer that I thought of highly ironic...God only knows.
For whatever it may be worth, one reason I waited so long to marry my partner was that same-sex couples did not enjoy the same right.
Boy. Heaven and hell really are both here on Earth, are they not?
Thanks for posting,
"S"
Rated
Nonetheless, it's certainly food for thought.
I do want to point out, though, that the court's decision to preserve the marriages of the gay couples who got married - 18,000 of them - make full same-sex marriage in California an inevitability.
Civil rights moves in one direction only - forward. Okay, occasionally it's one step back and two steps forward, but it always trends forward. As Dr. King is reported to have said, once a door is opened by someone, you can't close it again.
(Oh, and the other stuff’s pretty cool, too).
Now if Father Lopez ( I presume he is Episcopalian, as no Catholic prilest would dare say that ) could have a talk with his Florida fellow clergy. You see, the Episcopal churches down here broke away from the American church, over the Gay issue! They have all aligned themselves with the African Anglican church who are espousing the same tired old stuff about Homosexuality being an abomination!
And get your son to bed at a reasonable hour!
(rated)
A priest who isn't afraid :)
" . . . the discriminatory actions of the state, in refusing to acknowledge the commitment and love of same gender couples. are at the center of an evil system. A system that doesn’t allow life long partners to be at their loved ones bedside when they die, a system that denies them the custody of their children, the ownership of their home and the same basic equal rights that I have as a heterosexual…that is evil. "
I think Fr. Lopez may be a bit behind the times. As far as I know the rights that he lists that same-sex couples are denied are the very rights that they have under California's domestic partnerships. In the recent Prop 8 decision the state Supreme Court basically said that domestic partnerships give same-sex couples the same rights as married couples, at least those rights that the state is able to give. What they lack is the word "marriage."
So perhaps the current system is not quite as evil as he thinks it is.
Of course for those of the social liberal persuasion same-sex marriage is the tail that wags the dog. Nothing must stand in its way, and everything must be organized around it immediately, and the slightest delay or disagreement with that is intolerable.
So do you think it's fair to have to tell someone...just to give one of many examples, that you cant take a job in that state for fear of what Rev. Abel mentioned?
That’s why, in my opinion, among a few other reasons, that this is a civil rights issue...that will be fought one state at a time.
It's thrilling to see a religious man with the courage to stand up for what is right in our world.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, YES!!!
Lopez seems like a jerk to me and is not serving the flock that is served by him.
It's not like he's surprising couples, like pulling out the rug from them at the last moment...he's up front about it...and if that's okay with them, fine...if not, there are other priests. He will still go through the religious ritual, he just wont sign the civil paper. In the eyes of the church your married. But I understand why you said "should" be the happiest day in the life of two people...but hey...I hear that three times a charm.
So...I read your posts here on OS. That must have really sucked for you when the "will of the voters" of North Carolina voted for Obama.
Do his fellow religious cohorts mind this behavior? I mean if he is a priest he's supposed to uphold the Bible, no? So if the Bible says that being gay is a sin (God that hurt me just to write) isn't he defying the Bible? Wow, a priest smart enough to defy the Bible. If I wasn't an atheist I'd visit your church!
First, if a priest wants to sacrifice some of his own time or inconvenience himself in protest of some issue, that's fine. What's happening in this case is that the priest's protest inconveniences someone else, namely members of his congregation, the people who pay his salary and who are supposed to be the object of his service. And this in a state that has a large number of rights available to those in domestic partnerships. Granted, not every state makes domestic partnerships available to same-sex couples. But then again, the priest's congregation doesn't live in those states.
Second, there are perfectly legitimate arguments on both sides of the issue, for and against same-sex marriage. (Not here on Open Salon, of course, but I'm talking about in the rest of the world.) And it is an issue on which reasonable people can disagree.
I don't see this as a simple civil rights matter. To the extent that same-sex marriage is a right, it's a right that somehow people missed throughout almost all of human history, in every culture and civilization that ever existed. Then suddenly a few years ago it is discovered in a handful of countries and in a few states in the U.S.
Though it would have been absolutely unthinkable at the time when all of the state constitutions and the U.S. constitution were written, suddenly it is supposedly mandated by all of those constitutions -- except for the pesky fact that some state supreme courts disagree, and the U.S. Supreme Court would very likely disagree. So it's a civil right that even some courts have trouble finding.
I think it's fair to say that to the extent that same-sex marriage is a civil right, it's not an obvious civil right, not obvious to most of the people in the country, most of the state legislatures, or to many of the courts.
So it seems odd to me that an Episcopal priest would come down on one side of that issue and declare the other side to be "evil." What about members of the congregation who supported Prop 8? What are they supposed to feel about that? Do they not matter? Are they disposable? Perhaps they are.