An Easter Letter to my Christian Friends

Dear friends,

This has been quite a week.  Today is Easter Sunday, and a few days ago the Supreme Court heard arguments in the same-sex marriage cases.  The religious right (has that term become interchangeable with "evangelicals"?) opposes same-sex marriage, arguing that homosexuality is against God's law and that same-sex marriage threatens the institution of marriage.  I know that includes some of you.

There was a time, much earlier in my life, decades before anyone thought seriously about same-sex marriage, when I accepted the view that God loves homosexuals, but that homosexual conduct was sinful behavior.  During my senior year in college, I was placed in the middle of a conflict between the campus Christian fellowship that I helped lead and a member of the gay Christian community.  Although I was the one voice of dissent among the fellowship's leaders concerning how to resolve the conflict, once the decision was made, I dutifully followed the evangelical script.  My internal conflict over doing so, however, was a major factor in my break from evangelicalism.  I did not then, and do not today, have the intestinal fortitude, or whatever it takes, to tolerate intolerance.  Nor am I constituted in a manner to support any class of persons being treated less equally than others.

I have long believed in equal treatment for gay and lesbian couples, but I was skeptical about a constitutional right to same-sex marriage until I read Chief Justice Margaret Marshall's eloquent opinion in the Goodrich case that made Massachusetts the first state to recognize a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.  That decision convinced me that the denial of same-sex marriage, and all the many legal and societal benefits that accompany the state of matrimony, was, in practice, a denial of equal protection under the law.  I was also influenced by the horrible plight of a lesbian associate of mine who lost her partner in a tragic accident.  She was denied access in the hospital where her partner was dying because she was not a relative, an act of unfathomable, if unintentional, cruelty.  

Which brings me to my thinking about same-sex marriage and this Holy Week.  Much of the religious protest against same-sex marriage is about preserving the institution of marriage, yet I don't know of any heterosexual couple in Massachusetts who feels that their marriage has been harmed in the slightest degree by our state's recognition of same-sex marriage.  More important to me, however, is that the Jesus I believe in was a lover of persons, not of institutions.  Indeed, the perception that he was a threat to the institutions of his day, derived in part from his rejection of his culture's conventional thinking, was why he was crucified.  And although he may have told the adulteress to go and sin no more, he never is recorded to have spoken a single word against the expression of love or commitment among persons of the same sex.  

If Jesus is not known to have condemned homosexuality or gay love, who are we to do so?  And if we Americans believe, as our founders did, in equal protection under the law, how can we deny the benefits of marriage, the benefits we ourselves enjoy and celebrate every day, to our gay citizens?

I still consider you my friends, and I enjoy sharing postings with you on Facebook and seeing you on those rare occasions when we take the time to visit each other.  I enjoy learning about your happy marriages, your wedding anniversaries, and the births and accomplishments of your children and grandchildren.  Many of us have been very blessed with our family lives, and I know we will never take those blessings for granted.

Although I am no longer an evangelical, I am still a Christian.  As a Christian, I cannot support continuing to deprive the gay community of the same blessings that the rest of us enjoy and hold so dear.  I hope you agree, or will come to agree, that, if we truly want to reflect Christ at work in the world, we need to care less about preserving every traditional attribute of our valued institutions and care more about extending the benefits of those institutions to the persons to whom they have been denied.

I believe that's what Jesus would do.

Sincerely,

Don Frederico