This last week, we were waiting for Isabel, anticipating the arrival of a hurricane. The weather was nice, but there was a feeling of anticipation and anxiety. It was the calm before the storm. We are in a similar period politi-cally, about the question of gay and lesbian

marriage, and I do not think that it will end as anticlimactically as Hurricane Isabel. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has heard the arguments in the case Goodrich vs. Department of Health, in which seven gay and lesbian couples are challenging the state's refusal to grant them a marriage license as unconstitutionally discriminatory. The court has delayed making a ruling on that case, but eventually it will. Many people think that the court will rule in favor of the right of gays and les-bians to have their life commitments recognized by the state. And if that it is the ruling, everyone predicts that the legislature will take up legislation to nullify the court's ruling. In addition, the fact that a another state has recog-nized gay unions, will cause their to be even more debate on the national level, including Congressional action, and possibly further action on the pro-posed constitutional amendment. By then, the storm will have hit. The issue will be on the table.

Now, among my duties here, is that I marry people. The commonwealth of Massachusetts recognizes me as a genuine certified marriage technician In addition, I have been married for 27 years, and I counsel couples on occasion So, unlike foreign policy, where what I know is what I read in the papers, marriage is something that is in my professional and personal field of knowl-edge.

I support the rights of gays and lesbians to be married and to have their committed relationships recognized, on an equal basis, with heterosexual re-lationships. I have said so publicly, and chances are good that I might well say so even more publicly if this becomes a hot political issue here in the Com-monwealth, and in the nation.

I don't presume to speak for you, and I imagine that some of you are in some degree of discomfort with this -- from complete disagreement and maybe even anger, to being just unsettled by the whole issue and wanting more time to think about it. Do not worry, I am not preparing to wheel out the big rhetorical guns this morning. Paul Ropp, your moderator, once de-scribed the experience of listening to a passionate sermon, about which you passionately disagree, as like "having your head held under water for twenty minutes." He was talking about me, but I have had the experience too many times myself.

So, let me start by just telling you where the first few times I ran into this issue.

I think the very first time was the first service that I went to at the First Unitarian Church of Dallas, in 1994 or 1995. Just like here, people do-nate the flowers in the chancel, and the church prints the dedication in the or-der of service. And that week, the flowers had been donated by two men, in honor of their 49 years together. Anyway, I was quite taken aback by this. This means that their relationship went back into the 40's, in the era following World War II. These were men of the Greatest Generation. Their relationship went back to a time before there was a public gay movement, back to a day when homosexuality was considered a mental illness and a crime.

What it meant to me was that gay people having long term committed relationships was not some fad, it wasn't some cultural trend of the moment, some style, like dipping your bread into olive oil, instead of having a roll with butter. I couldn't just sit back and decide whether I liked it or not, or whether it was something that I decided had "gone too far", like punk rock, or reality television.

The next little turning point for me was that film, Four Weddings and a Funeral. You know the one with Hugh Grant and Andie MacDowell, a ro-mantic comedy. What struck me was not the four weddings, but the funeral. Two of the characters were middle aged men and in a long-term relationship. One dies and the film takes us to the funeral. And there, his partner reads the Auden poem:

The Heterosexual couples declared their love in public at their weddings, but this gay couple had to wait until a funeral. And this struck me as terribly sad.

And so while the little announcement of the two gentlemen in the Dallas church order of service brought home to the fact that gay people were in long term relationships, quite apart from fashion, or politics, this movie made me aware of the need for real ceremonies to mark these relationships, that everyone who loves someone has the need to have to love named and proclaimed, shouted from the rooftops, so to speak, in a public ritual.

But where this issue came home closest to me was the story told to me by my wife's Sue's aunt Dorothy.

Dorothy, who was Sue's father's sister, had lived for years with another woman in Washington DC. They were both civilian employees of the Penta-gon, and had begun living together sometime in the 50's. Teal, Dorothy's partner, was older and when she had become ill and invalid, Dorothy cared for her in their home. But when Teal finally went to the hospital and died, Doro-thy, the woman who had shared Teal's life and had cared for her in decline, was not permitted to be involved in the decisions of her care, nor was Teal's body released to her at the time of death. Everything had to come to a halt, until a nephew, who had been out of contact for years, was found in Florida and brought to Washington D.C. Because Dorothy and Teal's relationship had no legal status, and no one was obligated to recognize it.

Later on, after Dorothy died, we found out that these two women had kept their life savings in cash, in locked metal boxes in their apartment. And at first, we thought that this was odd, or eccentric, behavior, but in fact, it was a way to ensure that their money would remain their money after one would die. The ease with which assets flow from a husband to a wife at the time of death for married heterosexuals, requires design, and planning and lawyers for unmarried people who share assets. It was Dorothy's story that convinced me that not only must gay and lesbian relationships be celebrated and honored in a ceremony, but that they must also be given legal status, and recognized by the state.

Now, some might say at this point, Tom, why not just have civil unions for gay people, and reserve the word "marriage" for heterosexuals? The problems that Dorothy faced could have been solved or prevented with some good lawyering. To which I reply, why should we have a special status, or require extra legal steps for gay people? And someone could say, "well, it makes people uncomfortable since they believe that marriage is for one man and one woman." And I can understand that discomfort, but it seems to me, as conservative as I am, that we should not invent this whole new legal category --"civil union"-- which is marriage in everything but name, because some folks are uncomfortable. And basically their discomfort is based on a preju-dice -- the desire to make sure that everyone understands that "they" are not like "us."

I do want to talk some about people's discomforts with this movement toward equal marriage rights for gays and lesbians.

Now, some have objections on religious grounds, and particular on the grounds of the way that they read the Bible. But we don't make public policy, or write laws, in this country based on one religious viewpoint, much less one way of reading the Bible.

And some people become uncomfortable because talk of gay marriage makes them think about gay sex, and thinking about gay sex makes them very uncomfortable. I will point out that thinking about my parents having sex was always disturbing to me, but I was still glad that they were married..

I hear two other objections: one is emotional, and therefore needs to be taken quite seriously, and other is a broader critique of the whole problem with marriage. Both start from the common enough observation that higher rates of divorce, and all the difficulties that seem to flow from that, seem to indicate that there is a serious problem with the institution of marriage these day. It is felt that people don't respect the marriage vows enough.

Somehow, it then seems to some people that gays and lesbians getting married further cheapens the institution. I read an article online the other day, and I cannot find it again, but the man who wrote it, reported from a gay wed-ding, and was surprised, he claimed, by the intensity of his feeling that his own straight marriage was being mocked and devalued. And I have to admit that I could recognize that feeling; that I knew what he was talking about

Why does it seems like it devalues marriage for gay people to get married?

Gay people are taking marriage, lifelong commitments and monogamy, more seriously, which seems to be seen as evidence that marriage is becom-ing less important.

I just have to suggest that prejudice is involved here. I think that what it shows is that gays and lesbians are still stigmatized in the culture. Marriage is going through what some call the "Cadillac effect". Back in the 50's and 60's, when Cadillac automobiles became identified with the African American middle class, the Cadillac brand began to suffer a loss of prestige among white middle class consumers. The prejudice that some whites felt toward African Americans was transferred to the car. The brand of car was cheapened, in some people's minds, by the fact it was being chosen by black people.

And frankly, I think that this is behind the worry that gays and lesbians getting married cheapen and devalue marriage. And so you get the absurd situation that we are in now: reality television shows offer marriage proposals as a prize in an elaborate game show (the Bachelor, the Bachelorette, Joe Mil-lionaire, Who wants to Marry My Dad), but people think that a couple of les-bians, or gay guys, making life-long vows, pledging to love, honor and cherish each other til death do them part down at the Unitarian Church is cheapening the institution of marriage.

But this is not to say that there are no problems in the ways and whys that we marry. And some have said that recognizing gay and lesbian mar-riage is a further step down the path of romanticizing marriage, which is what is weakening the whole institution of marriage, gay or straight. Let me ex-plain:
We now believe that people get married to each other because they are really, really, really in love, so much in love that they want to spend the rest of their lives together.

The problem is, of course, that being really, really, really in love is an emotional state that doesn't exactly describe what a real marriage is really like. People who are married, and especially ministers who have been married for a while, try to explain this fact to the brides and grooms, but it seems like we might as well be speaking another language.

I think that we ministers especially are becoming aware that this roman-tic conception of love is not enough to guarantee a life long partnership. And yet this is the logic behind gay and lesbian marriage: people, gay or straight, who are really really and most truly in love, should get married.

Many people believe that something more is needed, some more solid foundation is needed for a marriage. And so, for some, the commitment to children has been that extra something, that extra incentive that keeps people working at their marriage in the face of difficulty. "Marriage is about chil-dren." Of course, that has not been the case so far, as the innumerable di-vorces involving children testifies, or the fact that we uphold the validity of marriages that have no possibility of children. .

Marriage in the end is simply a promise, a vow, a commitment from one person to another, and to follow the path of love through its many twists and turns, through the working week and Sunday rest, its passionate summers, and its colder winters, through the days of its ease and the days of difficulty. It is only somewhat about children, it is really about the vow and the promise. .
Why do some people seem to have trouble keeping that vow?

I am thinking today of the honor guard who maintained their position at the tomb of the unknown soldier during the storm. I know that this is an im-perfect metaphor for marriage. That honor guard showed great courage and great commitment -- a strength of character to which we can all aspire. But that honor came from the condition of freedom they were in. They had been given a choice as to stay at their ceremonial post, or to seek shelter. They chose the greater honor, because they were free to do so.

Similarly, no one is compelled to be married and little or no social stigma is attached to being divorced. I believe that greater growth and satis-faction come in the end from making and holding deeper commitments, but only as we have chosen as persons in liberty.

Gays and Lesbians seek that liberty to make those commitments, that liberty to try and that liberty to fail at them, but also the liberty to grow in strength and character by honoring them. And so it seems that if gays and lesbians present themselves in this society as wishing to deepen their com-mitments to each other, to pledge love til parted by death, coming to make promises and vows and commitments, we cannot deny them that liberty and right.