Homosexuals seem to be getting a lot of attention these days. It’s almost as if everywhere you turn, somebody is letting out a screech for or against homosexuals. The way some say it, persons with homosexual orientation are human beings who deserve recognition for their basic human rights and equal standing in our diverse society. The way others describe them, you would think they are aliens from another universe, posing an intolerable threat to an established and ordained way of life.

Some of the major Christian denominations are racked with conflict and schism over whether it is possible for gays and lesbians to be members of the church, enjoy the blessings of a religious service of union, live openly in relationship with a significant-other, become church leaders as clergy, and become eligible for elevation to the office of bishop or other extra-congregational ecclesiastic office. Some churches stop at points different than others along this scale, but none have been immune to the conflict that ensues.

Violence committed against gays and lesbians because of their sexual orientation has been classified as a hate crime following debate and passage in Congress and signature by the president. Those who opposed this law declared that there were already laws against such violence and that the inclusion of homosexual persons as a protected category amounted to an infringement on free speech. Supporters endeavored to communicate a very fine point in rebuttal, namely that sexual orientation is an identity factor, and violence against one is violence perpetrated with the intent to terrorize a whole group.

Now, in the wake of his State of the Union address, President Obama’s call for the repeal of the so-called “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law prohibiting gays and lesbians from serving openly in the military has resulted in expressions of support no less strong and expressions of opposition no less strident. When Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before a congressional committee that repeal of the law was the right thing to do, he was met with comments by Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council to the effect that not only should the law not be repealed, but that homosexual behavior ought to be criminalized.

Sprigg’s view notwithstanding, the attitudes of citizens in the U.S. regarding the service of gays and lesbians in the military is shifting. According to a recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, a growing majority of people favor allowing homosexual persons to serve openly in the military. The only categories where a clear majority opposes such service are Republicans, Evangelicals, and persons over the age of 65. Overall, men, women, black, white, Democrat, Independent, under 65, Protestant, Catholic, unaffiliated all support open service with substantial majorities.

While a federal trial in California on the legality of homosexual marriage is now in the hands of Chief Judge Vaughn R.Walker and the litigants await his decision on whether to overturn the ban on same-sex marriage, gay and lesbian couples are saying their nuptials in New Hampshire, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, and Iowa, with the only question being whether those marriages will be recognized as a matter of law or litigation in the other states. The implications of the court’s decision in California for gay and lesbian equality there and throughout the United States are far-reaching.

There are legal issues and matters of civil rights clearly at stake in the California case. But there is also a human social and religious frame at stake, one which may portend how we as a nation go forward in our experiment in democracy. As an indication of the mix-up in thinking going on in relation to this issue, political and social conservative lawyer Theodore B. Olson, a litigator in the California Case on behalf of those seeking to invalidate the ban on homosexual marriage, has argued forcefully a conservative position in support of such marriages.

It has never been a better time to be a supporter of gay and lesbian rights in our civil democracy. And yes, there has never been a better time to be in opposition to those rights and their increase.

But ultimately, it is freedom and the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that will prevail.

All things considered, there should be confidence in this end because our society is undergoing a metamorphosis, less by accident and more by design. Liberty is not something that one has so much as it is a condition that one realizes through the pursuit of well-being and relationships with others. We understand the “common good” to be just those conditions that make it possible for persons and their communities to flourish, so whenever any threat or barrier to a person’s well being is contested, there the common good is becoming tangible.

Lovers of democracy know full well that exclusion of some and the suffering of many diminish human freedom. The fact that personal attitudes and socioeconomic forces discount and marginalize some poses a risk to the flourishing of others; if one is bound, all are bound.

But the democracy in this country, so youthful and promising two centuries ago, has been in a constant process of change, adaptation, maturing, if you will, and this not because there is something inexorable about the advance of democracy, but because those who have lived—and now still live—in freedom have recognized over the centuries the need to include and embrace all within its community.

Those who believe the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ believe that the wide-ranging sweep of the divine love extends to all of creation, to every nook-and-cranny that bears the potential or realization of human community in a hospitable place. The nurture and power of this divine love has incredible capacity to contest, withstand, and ultimately prevail over those forces that would harm or diminish the goodness of God’s creatures—all of them! To be sure, the power that is this divine love is not always recognized, but wherever truth prevails over falsehood, compassion over antipathy, honor over shame, inclusion over exclusion, there one can be confident that the incredible and unmerited love of God is at work.

How are we to understand this metamorphosis? As in so many areas of social, political and religious change, we are no longer what we were as a nation, but there is, at best, a mist of uncertainty that shrouds the vision of the future. We have seen in just over half a century a most remarkable alteration of our social and economic fabric as a consequence of the movements to advance equality and civil rights for minorities and women. And yet there remains racial and gender inequality. Over that same period, we have observed the rise and fall of an economically-secure middle class, the further fall of growing numbers of persons and families caught in the web of poverty, and the catastrophic increase of income inequality. Clearly the economic future we envisioned for ourselves just a few years ago is not going to materialize. The poor get poorer, and the rich get richer, and more of those in the middle are falling down rather than rising up.

But the measure of our commitment to democracy and its principles of freedom, diversity and equality will be found in the degree to which we all work to realize these principles for those to whom they have been denied. It is we, both as individuals and as a nation, who need to press on and pass through this transition to full inclusion of all God’s human creatures in our society. The God whose love knows no bounds, and whose compassion leaves no one behind, is pressing us to realize the full measure of the conditions for well-being and equality for those who remain outside.

I think our society is in what Victor Turner called “liminality” in his book The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1969). Liminality is the state of being in-between. One is in a liminal situation if one is no longer where or what one was, but is not yet where or what one will be. Being engaged to be married is a liminal situation: one is no longer single, but one is also not yet married.

Our society is in a liminal period with respect to many of the areas where inequality remains. And most certainly, the right of gays and lesbians to serve in the military with honor and distinction, to marry their chosen one as an expression of their loving commitment and to enjoy the rights and privileges of marriage in our civil society, to live and work and play free of the fear of bodily harm and destruction of property, and to serve our God in response to the divine call to serve in any ecclesiastical capacity are among those rights that need to be fully secured.

We are not there yet. We are no longer where we were, and we have lovers of freedom and democracy to thank for that. But we are not yet where we can and should be, and we have these same lovers of freedom and democracy—and ourselves as people who follow a fully-embracing and deeply-loving God—to appeal to for continuing this way forward to the realization of the common good for all.

For some, this is the best of times; for others, this is the worst of times. In this period of liminality, it all depends on whether one is looking backward or forward. Justice will not happen automatically, but as a nation we will emerge from our liminality having been changed for the better—if we step up to secure the rights of all.

Peace,
Douglas Sharp