Asterisk

By now, Good-As-You‘s Jeremy Hooper and his long-time partner have exchanged nuptials and are dancing the night away somewhere in Connecticut.

Congratulations, gentlemen! Living well and loving recklessly is the best response to our opponents!

I’ve been a fan of Nate Silver’s fivethirtyeight.com since last summer. At the time, the site was very focused on aggregating and interpreting various polls about the presidential campaign. Most famously, the site predicted which candidate would win per state, updating as new information became available. His prediction was stunningly close to the actual results last November.

Since the end of the election, Silver and the growing list of commentators have kept on talking about the statistics of politics. Usually it’s not germane to my little blog, but yesterday Silver uncovered an interesting phenomenon. When asked about marriage rights differently than we’ve been asking, people answer differently. (Go to the link for the entire article.)

And it turns out that if you frame a polling question in this particular way, as Gallup and USA Today did recently, you get a very different set of responses. Take a look at what happens:

When USA Today asks whether gay marriage is a private decision, or rather whether government has the right to pass laws which regulate it, 63 percent say it’s a private decision. This contrasts significantly with all other polling on gay marriage. The highest level of support gay marriage has received in the more traditional, positive-rights framing is 49 percent, from a ABC/Washington Post poll in late April. The average support is closer to about 41-42 percent. And indeed, this same survey organization, Gallup, last month released a poll that put the number of Americans approving of gay marriage at 40 percent.

But even though gay marriage had already become — however briefly — the law of the land in California, that wasn’t how the debate unfolded on Proposition 8. Instead, look at what Equality California said on its website at the time:

Every Californian should have the choice to marry the person they love. It’s a personal and fundamental freedom guaranteed by the California Constitution.

Emphasis mine. True, Equality California mentioned that gay marriage had already been established under the state’s constitution. The problem is that Proposition 8 wasn’t an argument over how to interpret the state constitution — it was an argument about whether or not to amend the constitution to render interpretation unnecessary.

What if Equality California had instead said this:

California’s government should not have the right to interfere with the decision of two loving adults to get married. It’s a personal and fundamental freedom protected by the California Constitution.

You see the distinction? Equality California was still stuck in the positive rights paradigm. Gay marriage was something given to California by the state Supreme Court in its benevolent wisdom, not an intrinsic (negative) right for which the government had a duty of noninterference.

I think Silver’s got something here. What do you think?

A warning before we start: These videos are long, 48 minutes each. It’s worth your time to bookmark this post and watch both of them in their entirety when you have time.

Many gay bloggers, most vocally and consistently Jeremy Hooper at Good-As-You, have been frustrated by the Religious Right’s seeming inability to understand the difference between religious marriage, (solemnized by the Church), and civil marriage (sanctioned by the State).

So I was excited this afternoon to find a video of Bishop V. Gene Robinson’s March 30, 2009 at Emory University on the topic “Why Religion Matters in the Quest for Gay Civil Rights”. I get excited every time I find something from Bishop Robinson, but this one addresses the separation of religious and civil marriage.

Emory University has provided a variety of resources including a written transcript of the speech as prepared. You can download and read it here (pdf), but the written transcript does not include the part that I find so exciting.

Again, these are long. Pop some corn or something before you get started.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDiNK7gEnag[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31CtEDlbtLE[/youtube]

Near the beginning of Part Two, Bishop Robinson makes a suggestion for the Church. It’s a suggestion that is so simple, so elegant, so obvious, that I don’t know why I haven’t heard of this before.

I think we need to make a distinction between civil rights and religious rites.

I’ve actually suggested to my clergy that they find someone in their congregation who is a Justice of the Peace or wants to become one. And so when a nice heterosexual couple comes and says they want to be married, the priest says, “Well, let me tell you how we do weddings here at St. Swithins by the Gas Pump. You know Joe Blow, he’s our Senior Warden and he’s a Justice of the Peace. He’ll be doing what the State does, which is affect the marriage, and he’ll sign the marriage license. And then, rather seamlessly, I’ll take over and do what the Church does, and offer the Church’s blessings and prayers for the marriage.”

Think of the ripple effect of that. Think of all the people who come to weddings who are not even associated with that church. Think of the educational value of separating Church and State; knowing where one ends and the next begins.

I’m interested in opinions on this. Members of the clergy and members of the churches, is there any reason not to follow Bishop Robinson’s suggestion? Is there a negative effect that I’m overlooking?

Today my Annual Conference is voting on Amendment One as well as many other constitutional amendments. The result of the vote won’t be announced until months from now after all Conferences have voted, but I’m keeping an eye on Twitter #wocumc for updates from the meeting.

This tweet came across a few minutes ago from delegate Jenny Smith.

In case you’re unfamiliar with the song, here are the lyrics by C. Her­bert Wool­ston in the 1800s:

Jesus loves the little children,
All the children of the world.
Red and yellow, black and white,
All are precious in His sight.
Jesus loves the little children of the world.

Currently winding its way through the Ohio legislature is the Equal Housing and Employment Act, known in the House as HB176. It almost hurts to type the words, but in my state it would be legal for my boss to fire me expressly and solely because I’m gay. Additionally, I could be kicked out of my apartment expressly and solely because I’m gay. It’s a horribly backward scenario, one that the Ohio Congress can fix with HB176.

The Ohio House recently heard testimony from a variety of individuals in favor of HB176. These included leaders from both civil rights and housing associations, a woman who was indeed denied a job because she’s a lesbian, and Bruce Ough, resident Bishop of the West Ohio Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. Their testimony can be found at Do What’s Right Ohio (which decided to post everything as pdfs for some weird reason), but I wanted to post an excerpt of Bishop Ough’s testimony here.

Last year, with the election of President Obama, the world watched with awe and hope as our great country, once again, demonstrated the dynamic strength and vitality of our Constitution – a Constitution whose basic tenets are that all people are created equal and, under the law, are to be treated equally. Our Ohio State Constitution enshrines these same ideals and inalienable rights. We are slowly, but unmistakably, moving toward the full equality and robust justice our forefathers and foremothers envisioned for every citizen of this country and this state. It is time for Ohio to take the next step in this steady march toward justice and liberty for all. It is time for Ohio specifically and unequivocally to prohibit housing and employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. It is time for Ohio fully to protect its gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender citizens. It is time for Ohio to honor our Constitution and trust its inherent truths and explicit liberties. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said in reference to the United States Constitution: “It is time to take the thin paper and turn it into thick action.” With the passage of HB176, we take another step of turning that thin paper into thick action – action that will protect the rights of Ohio citizens who have been discriminated against for too long.

This is the moment, out of our love for God and love for neighbor, to do no harm and to do good. House Bill 176 will do great good. It will put an end to the debilitating fear, deplorable discrimination and despicable harm currently experienced by many lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender citizens.

As people of faith, we United Methodists are in a position, and have the moral responsibility to do good. I call upon our state legislators to do the same: ‘to do good’ and to act now. It is time “to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God.” (Micah 6:8) “It is time to take the thin paper and turn it into thick action.” It is time to pass HB176.

It’s rare lately that I’m what you’d call “proud” to be a Methodist. My home church, absolutely. I’m a member of a wonderful congregation with a tremendously supportive pastor. Trust me, I examine this over and over. And over.

But to be proud to call myself a Methodist? That doesn’t happen very often. We have a lot of problems, and we’re still actively doing damage to the LGBT community.

So this pride in my denomination, the knowledge that we’re on the right side, is a good and forgotten feeling. Thanks to Bishop Ough for letting me feel it again.