A new marriage decision

I haven’t been able to keep up with things electronic the last few days — partly due to huge piles of work that have to be moved through on my actual desktop in my office, and partly due to computer problems. If I’d had the time, I would have tried to blog at length about the guest blogging going on at Lessig’s blog by two authors — Ian Ayres and Jennifer Brown — who have written a book called “Straightforward: How to mobilize heterosexual support for gay rights.” They’ve done some wonderful entries, and I highly recommend going back through Lessig’s blog and reading them.

I couldn't pass up this one, however, because it gets at some of the really crucial questions straight people ought to be asking ourselves. As Ayres and Brown put it:

"Now that it is possible to marry in a jurisdiction that does not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, is it moral for heterosexuals to marry in discriminating states?"

Eric and I struggled for a long time before getting married in church, because we faced this question head-on in that context. We tried to use our marriage liturgy to open up the issue at least, and we have made it a personal commitment ever since to work on making the sacrament of marriage available to gay couples. I'm really grateful for Ayres and Brown for writing this book -- it helps keep those of us who would like to be allies honest, and it provides a ton of useful ideas. I didn't know this, but Ayres and Brown point out that in 2003:

"about a dozen clergy from Connecticut and Massachusetts refused to sign marriage licenses for heterosexual couples until unions between same-sex couples are legally recognized. Their motive was not to renounce the tainted benefits of discrimination, but to avoid facilitating the discrimination itself"

I wonder what other kinds of things people directly related to practices of communities of faith we could be doing? Is there such a thing as ecclesiastical disobedience?