In seminary one day one of our professors spent almost the entire hour speaking against homosexuals and homosexuality. He quoted the Bible, of course, and I kept raising my hand and saying that the Bible speaks against women preachers, too, but we don’t go along with that any more; there are several women here who are going to be preachers. We don’t think women should be silent in churches, even though that’s what the Bible says. He brushed my comments aside and kept talking against homosexuals and against homosexuality. I raised my hand again and I said, “The Bible supports slavery, but we don’t go along with that, we ignore those passages. Why don’t we ignore these passages?” He just brushed my comments aside and kept on talking against homosexuals and homosexuality. Then, at the end of the hour, he switched topics and started talking about the environment. He said the earth is becoming overpopulated and that something has to be done about it or we’re going to have too many people on the earth. So I raised my hand again. “Yes, Mr. Freeman?” I said, “Well, maybe homosexuality is God’s way of keeping down the population.” (Laughter) His jaw literally dropped open, for about ten seconds, and then he said, “Oh, that’s a good one, Mr. Freeman. Ha, ha, ha. Class dismissed.” The Bible can be used to justify just about anything.
In our preaching class we had to preach a wedding sermon. We had to imagine two people that we were going to marry and then preach to them and an imaginary congregation, like the real one you have at a wedding. So I preached a wedding sermon to Chris and Pat. (Laughter) Now Chris and Pat could have been a man and a woman, or two men or two women. It was a gender-neutral wedding service. I would say things like, “Take your beloved,” and things like that. After the class one of my classmates wrote on my evaluation, “Chris and Pat?” I went up to him the next day and asked him what he meant. He said, “I just wanted you to know, somebody got it.” (Laughter) A couple days later I went in to see our preaching professor and I said, “This is what I did and if you want to mark me down you can.” He said, “Chris and Pat? Why didn’t I think of that? Why didn’t I realize what you were doing?” And I got an A on the sermon. (Of course, he was also an easy grader.) Some people realize, even though they can’t publicly admit it, that the Bible says things that shouldn’t always be taken as the “gospel truth.”
I performed a gay wedding a couple of years ago, actually a lesbian wedding, the only one, unfortunately, that I’ve ever done. I married two young women in Grandville. It was a wonderful wedding. There were a couple of surly people in the audience that I assume didn’t approve, but for the most part people could see that the love these two women had for each other was palpable. Protestants have two sacraments: communion and baptism. Catholics have seven sacraments, including the sacrament of marriage. I kind of like that. I think a wedding is a sacrament. I define a sacrament as a sacred moment. The wedding that I did for those two women was a sacrament, a sacred moment.
“Don’t ask; don’t tell” has been rescinded by the Congress. The military no longer will kick out gays and lesbians. It hasn’t been fully implemented yet, but as I understand it, they no longer kick people out for being gay or lesbian; no longer do their comrades in arms have to “tattle” on them, or whatever you want to call it, “out them” for being gay. I think that act, rescinding “Don’t ask; don’t tell,” shows that America is making some progress.
President Obama says that the Defense of Marriage Act is indefensible. The Justice Department will no longer defend an act that defines marriage as between one man and one woman. I believe he thinks it violates the Fourteenth Amendment, the Equal Protection Clause. Several states allow gay marriage, so how can the government say no to that, especially if the President, a Constitutional scholar, he taught constitutional law, who believes that it’s unconstitutional, how can he send his Justice Department to defend it? I listened to, I think Glenn Beck, yesterday for about two minutes (that was about all I could take), anyway he said, “What is he, a monarch? Is he some kind of monarch?” I don’t think so, I think he’s like a prosecutor who uses his discretion and says, “I’m not going to prosecute these people for this.” He’s like a policeman who says, “I’m not going to give this guy a ticket for this.” We remember the Nuremburg trials, where people can’t just follow orders because they’re given. I think that’s what President Obama is saying, that he’s not just going to follow a law that he believes is unconstitutional. America is making some progress.
Ten months ago, you may know, I went before the Holland City Council and asked them to pass a gay rights ordinance. Some might say the wheels of government are turning slowly, others might say they’re trying to cross every “t” and dot every “i.” Hopefully in the next month or two the Holland City Council will be presented with an ordinance that prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity in the areas of education, employment and housing. Maybe I’m being optimistic, but hopefully they’ll pass it. Then Holland, like America, will be making some progress.
“Seven Passages” is a play about the seven passages in the Bible that condemn homosexuality and/or homosexuals. It’s also a movie that’s going to be shown this Friday night at the Park Theater, put on by Holland Is Ready. I’ve seen the play twice now. It’s very powerful. A Calvin College professor interviewed over a hundred gays and lesbians, bisexual and transgender people, to find out how those seven passages impacted their lives. The impact was not a good one for most of them, for all of them. Imagine. Put yourself in a church at the age of 13 and there is your minister railing against homosexuals and you yourself are realizing that you’re gay. He’s quoting those passages calling for the condemnation of homosexuals, that say homosexuality is an abomination, that homosexuals should be killed. Imagine how that would make you feel. That’s a lot of what this play is about. There are parts of the Bible that are more hurtful than helpful.
The Bible says that we should beat our children. “Spare the rod and spoil the child.” But many of us ignore that. We’ve seen studies and stories that say that kids who are beaten sometimes grow up to be violent themselves. So we ignore that passage of the Bible. There are other parts of the Bible that we just ignore because we know parts of the Bible are more hurtful than helpful. It says that parents can smash their kids’ heads against the rocks if they act in a bad way. We ignore that. We know that there are parts of the Bible that are more hurtful than helpful.
Jesus knew that. Jesus said, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’” What he was saying is, it’s said in the Bible. It’s there in the Hebrew scriptures, “Hate your enemies.” But Jesus knew that should be ignored, so he said, “But I say to you, love your enemies.” Jesus knew that there were parts of the Bible that were more hurtful than helpful.
Now let me tell you what Jesus said about homosexuality and about gay marriage. You may want to write this down. It was very profound. What Jesus said was something that we should all remember. (Silence.) That’s right, as you know, Jesus didn’t say anything about homosexuality or gay marriage. Now you might say, “Oh, come on, Bill, of course he didn’t say anything about gay marriage, they didn’t have that back then.” But they did have homosexuality, since the beginning of time. Since Adam and Eve and Steve were created. But Jesus didn’t say anything against homosexuality. Not one word. Because Jesus wasn’t like that. He sometimes did condemn rich people, but he didn’t condemn people in general. If he thought homosexuality should be condemned, why didn’t he say that? Or was this one of those instances where Jesus said parts of the Bible are more hurtful than helpful and I’m not going to say anything about it?
Now I know that as an interfaith chaplain, I’m supposed to be tolerant of everybody. I don’t really like that word. How big of me to be tolerant of people. I say that I love and respect everybody, or at least I try to do that. But if somebody is going to think that homosexuals are bad and ought to be condemned, fine, you can think anything you want. But if you’re going to speak out against homosexuals and homosexuality, then I’m going to speak out against you. I’m sorry if that shows that I don’t love and respect everybody and everything and every thought, but the reason I do that is because I know that there are people, as demonstrated in the play, “Seven Passages,” who are injured because of people’s words, sometimes emotionally and sometimes physically injured because of words, sometimes, like Matthew Shepherd, they’re killed because of those passages, or at least, seemingly, because of the culture at large, for the most part, hating gays. So I can’t remain silent about that. And I won’t.
Peter Gomes died this past week. Peter Gomes was a minister at Memorial Church at Harvard. He was a professor of religion at Harvard. He wrote several books, wonderful books. The New Yorker said that he was a fiery preacher, that he was a fiery Baptist preacher who was sort of a mix between James Earl Jones and John Houseman. He spoke at the second inaugural of Ronald Reagan. He spoke at the inauguration of the first George Bush in 1989. Then in 1991 students were protesting outside Memorial Church at Harvard, his church. He got up to speak. They were protesting because a conservative publication on campus said some vile things about homosexuals and homosexuality. Peter Gomes said the Bible can be twisted to say anything at all. Then he said, “I am a Christian who happens to be gay.” The crowd went wild. His sermons at that church were always filled to the rafters. He never again got invited to speak at the inauguration of a Republican president for some reason. In 2006 he came out as a Democrat, which I suppose for some people is even worse than coming out as gay, but anyway, he said he voted for Deval Patrick, the governor of Massachusetts. Peter Gomes knew that the Bible could be twisted, that some parts were more hurtful than helpful.
H.L. Mencken, the late great newspaper editor from the first half of the last century, defined Puritanism as “the haunting fear that somewhere, someone might be happy.” (Laughter) I think that’s what upsets a lot of people who hate gays. They don’t want to think that two gay guys or two lesbian ladies might be happy someplace. I think they hate the term “gay.” I think they would rather have the term be “miserable,” because that’s how they’d like to see gays. But wishing and hoping doesn’t make it so.
Nelson Mandela has a new book out called “Conversations with Myself.” It’s a collection of his letters and speeches and other writings. It’s a wonderful book. In it, a story is told about a guy who buys a house. He moves into the house and after a while he starts hearing voices in the house. Come to find out, the house is haunted. Well, the guy freaks out and he sells the house. He hires this guy to move his stuff. The guy loads all his stuff on a truck. They sit in the front of the truck and the mover says, “Well, where you moving to?” A voice in the back says, “We don’t know yet.” Yikes! (Laughter) The moral of the story is, you can’t run away from your troubles. You have to face them. Michigan has to face them.
It is time for Michigan to allow gay marriage. Several other states have. I don’t think you can read the Fourteenth Amendment, the Equal Protection Clause, and not believe that gays have the right to marry. Gays should have the right to marry just like straight people do. To deny them of that, I think, is unconstitutional.
It is time for the governor of Michigan and the State Legislature to allow gay marriage. I know there’ll be people who’ll say, “But, Bill, they’ve got more important things to do. Now is not the time.” Well, if people are denied their civil rights, if people are denied the liberty to marry the person they love, isn’t now the time to allow them to have that freedom? If not now, when? I never have understood how two gay guys getting hitched in Hudsonville somehow adversely affects a straight couple in Coopersville. How does that happen? Does the straight couple in Coopersville, if they see two gay guys getting hitched in Hudsonville, do they say, “Well, I guess now anything goes. I guess we should get divorced.” I don’t think so. I don’t think that’s happened in Massachusetts or in other states where they allow gay marriage. It’s a red herring.
It is time for Michigan citizens to allow gay marriage. Several other states already have. Iowa allows gay marriage. Iowa! Not exactly a hotbed of progressivism. If Iowa can do it, can’t Michigan?
Michigan was the first state in the nation to outlaw capital punishment, the death penalty. Let’s not be the last state in the nation to allow gay marriage.
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