Marriage and meaning

It’s pictures like this one that make me cry. It’s a photo of Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin, the first same sex couple in the US to be officially married. They’ve been together for FIFTY YEARS and are only now able to express in public, legal terms the commitment they’ve shared. Let me repeat what I’ve said here before: publicly recognizing and blessing such relationships can only help nurture and sustain the fabric of our society. It seems to me actually a profoundly conserving measure to support people who make open, public, monogamous commitments to each other. Marriage is a difficult vocation to sustain, and we need communities to support us as we undertake it. I think people can understand this. I realize that there are religious communities who refuse to acknowledge that such marriages can be sacramental, my own (the Roman Catholic church) is one of them. But there were religious communities who refused to sanction marriage between people of different colors, too, and that has changed. Those of us who believe in the sacrament of marriage and who recognize that love crosses all sorts of boundaries, need to be open and clear about our support for people joining in marriage, whatever the combination of their sex or gender.