Washington State legalizes same-sex marriage–Republican Walsh speaks out
Recently our federal government cast doubt on the validity of thousands of same-sex marriages while saying that they have no intention of reopening the debate (same-sex marriages were enshrined into law under Paul Martin in 2004). Is there a fly in this soup?
Four days ago across the 49th, Washington State, after rounds of thermal debates, became the seventh state to legalize same-sex marriage.
I remember the debates back here swirling at the foothills of our 2004 federal election. I remember the vitriolic reports coming out of the town hall meetings. I remember responding in our town newspaper (a decision that put me on notice among some in my church).
I recall watching Question Period and the scrums—all the fulminating, the barbs, the squeaky soundbites, the "facts" about homosexuals, the flourishes of rhetoric about the new demon on the back of traditional marriage.
I recall much of this, but I don’t recall a speech quite like the one by Washington State Representative Maureen Walsh, a Republican, who stood to give an unpolished and deeply personal address, that perhaps, though her sensitivity and humour assured the passing of the bill.
1. You have neighbour two doors down who is abusing his children. Do you…?
a) Wait for his immediate neighbours to intervene and report him.
b) Arrange for an opportunity to make friends with him, perhaps borrow one another’s tools, watch one another’s pets when away, and over time, as you build a relationship with him, tell him that what he is doing to his kids is wrong and that you would like him to stop.
c) After reporting him, confront him and tell him that until he stops the abuse or releases his children into proper care there can be no normal neighbourly relationship; and that until he finds help, you will continue to work to have his kids removed.
2. There is a country across the ocean that is abusing its citizens. Do you…?
a) Wait for nearby countries to intervene and show their disapproval through sanctions.
b) Arrange for opportunities to create close economic ties, sign dozens of trade agreements that gives your country access to billions in capital in exchange for raw resources and clears a path for an unfettered free trade agreement; and in the mean time, express deep concern about their human rights record, and ask the leaders to curb their violations.
c) Work to expose the hundreds of thousands of human rights violations, imprisonments and executions, and refuse political and economic ties as they would serve to undermine any condemnations or political pressure.
In 2006, Stephen Harper said he would do c) two day ago he did b).
In 2006, Stephen Harper said, “…I don’t think Canadians want us to sell out important Canadian values – our belief in democracy, freedom, human rights. They don’t want us to sell that out to the almighty dollar.”
Yesterday in a speech, after signing 22 separate agreements worth 3 billion dollars Harper stated, “…in relations between China and Canada, you should expect us to continue to raise issues of fundamental freedoms and human rights, and to be a vocal advocate for these just as we will be an effective partner in our growing and mutually beneficial economic relationship.”
Later in the same speech, he said, “We are an emerging energy superpower. We want to sell our energy to people who want to buy our energy. It’s that simple.”
But apparently not all Tories would have gone this route: Tory MP Garry Breitkreuz noted, “Some of the most serious atrocities are happening in China at the present time and I think we have an obligation to speak up.”
Finally, Zhang Tianxiao, whose sister, Zhang Yunhe, disappeared in China in 2002 and whose brother-in-law is among the confirmed 3,400 murdered by the regime for refusing to renounce his belief in Falun Gong, cited the principle Canada is now in search of:
There is only one principle about trade, it is just that Canada should never sacrifice human rights and moral principles for any material benefit.”
Dear God, please let me never live beside a Christian who takes the command to love his neighbour as a moral absolute, divorced from any personal experience of heartbreak and being swept up by a grand irresistible and peaceable love. Not that I wouldn’t appreciate the casseroles, at least to begin with; and I could overlook the tracts under my door because of the fruit pies; but eventually the conversations laced with agenda would grow weary and then rivalrous, and the pies would stop, the tracts multiply, until one day a knock would come and I would be taken away by something like the Guardians of Faith and Freedom—my neighbour watching through Venetian blinds.
Please excuse me. You see I just read a Gallop poll that suggests the more devout and pious one is, the more one attends church, the more one is likely to favour war. "In general, the more frequently an American attends church, the less likely he or she is to say the (Iraq) war was a mistake.”
So how does this work exactly? A friend sent me Gary Kohl’s recent article, What kind of Christianity is this? It may shed some light on this.
But before I head for the narthex, here’s something: A survey taken by Baylor, published a few months ago in Christianity Today, suggests that frequent bible reading will nudge one toward a more liberal world view. There are a bunch of caveats in the study but I found this possibility refreshing. And of course it makes sense, especially if, as is my position, that the bible must be read through the lens of the gospels. It was however disappointing to scan the 95 comments. Most disagreed with the conclusion; in some cases there was hostility.
I suspect we’re still some distance from Kohl’s contention that,
Jesus of the Gospels was an outspoken, nonviolent leftist who tried to reform his authoritarian conservative, dogmatic church but also refused to shut up with his call for justice for the down-trodden – even when his superiors threatened him with serious consequences if he didn’t.
But let me end with this: It’s lexicon we’re stuck with; but how weary liberal/conservative, right/left. Don’t we—on either side—drag our feet in our attempts at understanding? Don’t we scapegoat the scapegoaters?
We use our doctrine, our concept of God to shield us from undergoing necessary heartbreak, the very thing that could lead us into mercy and love and conversations without agenda, except for a desire to understand.
Having done his time, Phil was back on the street. He was bulked up—upper arms the size of my torso—looking as if he power-lifted his way through his two year sentence. There was a whip-edge to Phil and it was not my desire to see him snap. I was the shelter manager and it was my job to decide on his stay.
There had been a minor occurrence, some words with staff, and now he sat across from me in my office. I told him I wanted him to make it, but that if he threatened staff in any way I would have to bar him. I added that everyone at the mission wanted him to make it, that we would do all we could to have that happen. He relaxed, smiled his Morgan Freeman smile, and in his rasping voice laid open his life. Regret upon regret. Ache upon ache. An hour, maybe two, and still there was more.
Phil did make it. He made it in short bursts, then in long stretches, then again, in fits and starts, until last summer when he died.
Phil was one of 22 men and women—the ones we could confirm—who died in our inner-city in the past 12 months. They were our friends and a couple Sunday’s ago they were remembered at a memorial service held at Hope Mission. Family, friends, street friends, street family, came together through grief, recalled softer times. There were stories, there was laughter, weeping—and there were "why’s".
A band played—a worship band partly made up of people who are in the Mission’s addictions program. They played and 150 people from the inner-city sang “Jesus Loves Me” and “Amazing Grace.” And Frank at the back of the room, drummed on his hand drum.
Then a collective eulogy: pictures and names of the deceased appearing and fading on a white screen, while a single guitar played. Not all the names were matched with pictures; some, like Phil, had only a head-silhouette.
It’s too obvious and inadequate to say those who died were all people with stories, with mothers, with childhood friends now lost to them. Stories too easily forgotten. Silhouetted faces we passed by hundreds of times.
What was it that they longed for? What were their joys? Their sighs? What did they leave? What dreams were untried? What was left undreamt?
What they had in common was an intimate knowledge of the street and a tenuous connection with a healthier community. Also in common, too often, was an addiction; but with it, as often, there were genuine attempts at staying clean, turning things around, committing to something higher.
Among these 22, there were failures, catastrophic failures, and there were successes, exemplary successes.
There is no template for this—for how one makes it. A clean sprint can be as Herculean an effort for one as a lifetime of abstinence is for another. An addiction overcome, can reveal the roots of the deeper longings and addictions of the soul, and without an intervention of love, the revelation can bring back the external, the obvious addiction.
And what of us, are we so different? What and where would we be without tenderness, without an early history of love-interventions? If we’re lucky we’ve received, through many kindnesses, the internal tools to be able to externalize, turn over and release our anger, envy, despair, bitterness, rivalry. If we’re not, the term dry drunk comes to mind—we haven’t had a fix for years, but neither have we had a "sober" day.
As it is we are all in process. For us all, beneath our grotty to glamorous exteriors there percolates a kind of glory. As the Chaplain pointed out in reference to the epitaph on Ruth Graham’s gravestone (Billy Graham’s late wife), this is a glory only fully revealed when we’ve reached the "end of construction."
There is, in our common humanity, a hidden glory that points to something beyond ourselves. And this is what rose up at the memorial service. And it brought comfort and restored dignity to friends and family—by restoring dignity to the men and women who died.
In the meantime there was a message left for us. A lady who has eyes for deeper wisdom, who stood to speak about her friend said, "These were beautiful people and for us who are still here, it’s our tears, our tears will give us strength, as we cry not apart but together."
Some beauty to counter our confusing late January dun.
Poem and picture by Wendy Morton:
THE POND AT SOLSTICE
Today, wind, alderfall. The thin December sun.
I’ve picked a bouquet of calendula, lemon balm,
and the last Abraham Darby rose.
I know that darkness arrives early each day,
with rain or the eclipsed moon. Ice.
In the pond, each leaf, a celebration.
The ardent air of Southern California (So Cal in the currency) creeps in easily enough, and unlike Cosmo Kramer, I’m fine with it. I should be; this marks 10 years of Russ Reid conferences for me.
Over the decade, my comfort at these things has increased. I’m becoming practised at rising above my introversion. But even if this wasn’t the case, I’d still enjoy coming. Yes, the setting is salutary, but most of all I enjoy meeting and listening to people from across North America who do what I do, who have come naturally or intentionally to the vocation of relieving certain aspects of human misery—which means raising resources to that end. And our partner here is Russ Reid, an organization (largest of its kind) dedicated to helping missions like ours flourish. In effect they’re partners in offering real hope to homeless and destitute people. Russ Reid, incidentally, was once an Edmontonian and an acquaintance of Herb Jamieson, a Hope Mission patriarch.
Coming here also restores a certain faith in American people for me. Well, it’s my own lack of reasoning and imagination that this occasionally needs restoring. But perhaps I’m not so different. While we Canadians—when stopping to think—know there are millions of grand-hearted people in the States, it sometimes slips away from us because of the caricature we get from the politicized broadcasts of FOX and CNN—not to mention the sudsy culture of Hollywood. But coming here, and hearing from and seeing hundreds of people who have invested themselves in caring for homeless people is always hopeful and redemptive.
Russ Reid is Hope Mission’s (and close to a hundred other mission’s) partner in the business of fundraising. Or as I prefer: the bizarre vocation of convincing people to follow their deepest desire—bringing them the joy of being the cause of someone’s welfare through the simple act of giving.
And as in every vocation, there are some virtuosos here. Some dazzlingly skilled women and men who have come up through the ranks of frontline inner-city work, or have cultivated a certain humility of mind and character, or both. Whose presence enjoins a particular open-handed posture and invites another into the vision of relieving human misery. And this presence—which is nothing other than a gospel presence—is aptly represented in the leadership and all the staff of Russ Reid.
Now I occasionally have caught myself thinking, and I suspect I’m not alone, that the nature of what we do has an elevation to it. A sort of mark that distinguishes. Of course this is a great danger. And if it’s not caught the "industry" of fundraising takes over and "technique" becomes the driving force; and a chasm opens between the thing we hope to happen and those we need to make it happen, and both it and we become an ugly thing.
This is how fundraising can loose its spirituality—the invitation to join in communal caring, if not continually nourished and pruned, can too quickly devolve into mere manipulation. Well, guilt works for awhile; and if it’s creatively-clever-guilting, it works better. But this kind of fundraising is momentary and has no lasting appeal, no vision.
Certainly, all the creative work is necessary, as well as the research, and too, the science. And when this is joined to a narrative compellingly relating the hard inhumanity of homelessness and the real possibilities of restoration, people connect and respond. What is happening here is that a vision for relief of human despair and the bolstering of liberty is being articulated’; and when the vision is articulated well it touches on something greater than either asker or giver, and a community of love forms and money—the great classifier—is relegated to its proper corner, and the important rises up.
This is the kind of ardent air I don’t mind breathing.
I cannot say as much as a blue butterfly,
I do not speak Nymphalidae,
and I cannot transform these few words
into a silver-washed fritillary.
But on this your 50th year,
I’d still kill to cocoon with you,
still thrill when enwrapped by you.
Happy that our love still finds leaf-shade
in the heat of the day,
finds a shawl and enswathes,
on those colder days.
Happy that your wings are still unfurling.
Happy you’ve picked me as flying companion.
Happy our migratory patterns still entwining
our road still unrolling.
We’ve worried the shape of passing clouds, have been glad of many horizons; and on night-time beaches and through lancet windows, our eyes have searched night stars and day moons—and still we dream—even as our dreams have long been answered in each other.
What do you do when your marital record has been somewhat elastic, your concupiscence keeps getting called up, your chaste is besmirched, you don’t have a solid evangelical base, and you happen to be Newt Gingrich? Well, you make it right—no wrong there. Then you go out and get a "rapture-ready seal of approval" from Tim LaHaye—Mr.
Won’t-be "Left Behind.” (Who’s already left behind 16 books, 65 million copies, three movies, three video games and counting). Then, for the coup de grâce, you go get an endorsement from someone who has already been called up yonder, flown to Glory, already singing and shouting the victory, and so someone who knows Newt never did knock over no Piggly Wiggly in Yazoo, and will rise straight from the river waters to Paradise, and so quite naturally be the most qualified president. That now-omniscient knower? The Reverend Jerry Falwell.
Like Tim said,
As my friend, the late pastor Dr. Jerry Falwell told me personally, ‘Speaker Newt Gingrich is the most qualified man in America to run as president of the United States.’
Should the latest version of the National Defense Authorization Act, signed by Obama Dec. 31, come into effect March 3 as scheduled, civil liberties in the USA will take a “catastrophic blow.” And so perhaps it is fitting that yesterday, Martin Luther King Day, Chris Hedges filed a law suit against Barak Obama.
The supine and gutless Democratic Party, which would have feigned outrage if George W. Bush had put this into law, appears willing, once again, to grant Obama a pass. But I won’t. What he has done is unforgivable, unconstitutional and exceedingly dangerous.
Curiously, even the FBI, the CIA, the director of national intelligence, the Pentagon and the attorney general didn’t support it. They believe it may hinder their ability to investigate terrorism, “because it would be harder to win cooperation from suspects held by the military.”
But it passed anyway. And I suspect it passed because the corporations, seeing the unrest in the streets, knowing that things are about to get much worse, worrying that the Occupy movement will expand, do not trust the police to protect them. They want to be able to call in the Army. And now they can.
