So here it is: Yesterday I helped change my evangelical father's mind about gay marriage. It was just about the greatest gift I could have asked for. Jump with me.
Before I explain, I should warn you all that I am a Christian, and what I will write here will deal heavily with religious matters. If you're an atheist, I respect that, and I won't try and change your mind. But if reading about God is going to make you angry, do us both a favor and stop here.
I found myself, at 11:45 PM on Christmas Eve, sitting in front of the computer with tears in my eyes. By 3:30 AM Christmas day, this is what I had written.
I come in peace, with a Christmas thought. I'll try and be brief.
My spiritual journey has led me far and wide, and, ultimately, to the United Church of Christ.
For as long as I have believed in God, I have held exactly one thing to be true.
God. Is. Love.
Period. No asterisks. No disclaimers. No announcer talking really fast at the end of the commercial. No "void where prohibited". No preconditions.
God. Is. Love.
My personal relationship with God started on the day I was overwhelmed by this love. I didn't deserve it, I thought I didn't need it, and I didn't return it. It was there anyway.
My words will never do justice to this experience. As much as I love my fiancée - and only she and the Lord know how much that is - this was the single greatest moment of my life.
God's love came to me through the haze of chronic and dangerous drug abuse. God's love came to me through the depression and self-hatred that warped my view of myself and the world around me. When my life had turned to quicksand, and all I wanted was for it to end, God lifted me. It made no sense. It was obviously a terrible investment. I told God this as He was lifting me. God lifted me anyway.
Seriously, I really am trying to be brief. Bear with me.
All that is holy is love. And all that is love is holy. God loved the world so much that He sent His only son to die for our sins. God sacrificed His only son because it was that important for Him to forgive us. When we deserved it least, God not only forgave us, but loved us more than ever. God loved us as if our every sin were a sacrament and our every vice a virtue.
We didn't deserve it then, and we still don't today. It was a terrible investment on God's part. I’m sure somebody told God this as He was forgiving us. He forgave us anyway.
Today we still celebrate that love and forgiveness. Today we call it Christmas.
In the spirit of the season, and in the spirit of love, I will ask something of you. You may dismiss it out of hand, and that will be easy. You may choose to grapple with it, and if you do so honestly that will be hard. Either way, I sincerely thank you in advance for hearing me out.
What I want you to consider is gay rights. What I want you to consider is gay marriage.
OK, stop. Right now, either in the back of your mind or in the pit of your stomach or in your adrenal glands, chances are your defenses are going up. Red flags are waving. Alarms are sounding.
Chances are you think you're being attacked - though you may consider "attacked" to be too strong a term. Chances are, in the worst case, you think I'm trying to pick some kind of fight with you - and, in the best case, you think I'm just rehashing some tired agenda I may have been indoctrinated with.
So please let me reassure you that I really do come in peace. I wouldn't be sending you this if I didn't value you as a friend. And then let me tell you a couple things.
Firstly, if the whole gay marriage thing makes you feel as though you are fighting, you may be. If you feel besieged, you may be. If you feel as though the tide is turning against you, it may be. It gives me no pleasure to say so.
To those who oppose gay marriage: I am not your foe. It is not me who stands against you. If it were me who stood against you, you might win.
But whoever seeks to overcome love itself seeks to overcome the Lord - and has my pity.
Secondly, let me just say that I have raised those defenses. I have waved those red flags. I have dug those trenches. I have fortified my defenses with reasons, justifications, and excuses. I have armed myself with asterisks, disclaimers, and preconditions. I told God again and again that He might as well give up. I told God that my soul was broken and black. I told God I was unlovable.
I failed. God loved me anyway, and through His love I was redeemed. Just as we all were.
When love stands in your way, you're headed in the wrong direction.
Because God. Is. Love.
No asterisks. No disclaimers. No preconditions.
God challenges us every day to love others as we would ourselves, no matter how different they may be. God challenges us every day to love others with the strength, the invincibility, the miraculous nature of His love for us.
But God also gives us free will. If you choose to believe, as I do, that there is no love that is not holy, that all who speak with the voice of love speak with the voice of God, that is your choice. If you choose to believe, as many do, that there are asterisks after love, preconditions on love, fast-talking lawyers giving disclaimers at the end of the commercial for love - then I will pray for you. I will pray, firstly, that your heart might be moved by Christ-like compassion even for those who are different from you. And then I will pray that you may never find yourself on the business end of one of those asterisks, preconditions, or disclaimers.
There was a time that a marriage - an officially sanctioned and legally recognized love - between blacks and whites was forbidden by the law. In January, we will inaugurate a man as President who is the product of such a love.
Love is more than a privilege. Love is more than a right.
Love is holy. Love is a miracle. Love makes no sense whatsoever. Love is inevitable.
Love is God, and God is love.
Period.
I will leave you with these words from first Corinthians:
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails....And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
Merry Christmas. God bless us. Every one.
I sent this to just about every Christian in my contact list who I thought might read it. I did not expect for a moment that any of them would agree, and honestly I still anticipate some flames back from them.
Christmas afternoon, my Dad checked his email. He told me how proud he was of me, which didn't surprise me. Even when we disagree - which is often - he respects that my positions are rooted in some form of love for my fellow human.
What did surprise me is when he said, later that night, that he was glad I had written that message when I did because it helped him make up his mind. I was taken aback and asked him how so. He said that it was something he'd been thinking about, and praying about, a lot lately.
Let me explain briefly that my Dad grew up in Alabama in the fifties and sixties. My Dad had to sneak out of his house and concoct a cover story when he wanted to go see Ray Charles play in Atlanta. Later, my dad was an active participant in the civil rights movement.
He told me last night that he considered the denial of basic civil rights to an entire group of people to be an attack. And he said that he didn't think that, if Jesus were alive today, that he would be participating in this attack. He no longer considered fighting against gay marriage to be the Christian thing to do.
I paused for a second to reflect that this was the first time in my entire life I have ever helped change my Dad's mind about anything even remotely political. He and I have agreed about basically nothing regarding politics since we both voted for Ross Perot in 1992 (I was young, cut me some slack).
Eyes watering, I told him I couldn't agree more. And then we went home and had dinner.