Time to get married?

Friends,

New Year's Eve Jim and I began to discuss formally "tying the knot." In 2005, two Wisconsin gay couples of our acquaintance have already gone to Toronto to be legally married in Canada, and we helped a third couple of our acquaintance relocate and settle in Canada where they would be allowed to remain together, since Canadian immigration laws would not split them up and force one partner to return to his native Morocco as U.S. immigration laws threatened to do. I love the United States and Wisconsin, and it is a shame that we need to look elsewhere for the simple freedom of forming a family. Here in the State of Wisconsin, the Republican party, urged on by the state-level subsidiary of James Dobson's Focus on the Family is planning on passing an amendment to the State constitution to ban same-gender marriage and the possibility of civil unions. Of course, same-gender marriage is already illegal in Wisconsin, but the Republicans are very anxious to turn out right-wing Fundamentalists to help defeat our Democratic governor this November.

Am I being too cynical? No, I don't think so. Our legislature was all set to place the constitutional amendment on the state-wide ballot last Spring, but that would have been a waste of a good political trick. National Public Radio, this past weekend, carried an interesting story on Wisconsin politics pointing out that the Governor's race this Fall will be an important election on the national political scene.

How is the scapegoating of gays for political advantage any different that the Nazi scapegoating of Jews in 1930's Germany? The United Methodist Church will be ashamed when it finally owns up to its own role in playing along with the anti-gay hysteria of our culture. This is not new--while we can be proud of the few Methodists who worked long and hard to abolish slavery (not the least of whom was John Wesley)--we must not forget the large numbers of Methodists who supported slavery and organized the Methodist Episcopal Church-South. It is the institutional and spiritual descendants of those pro-slavery Methodists who've managed to gain power in our denomination today with a "southern strategy" little different from the Republican "southern strategy" that has proven so effective for secular Republican politicians.

I do not agree with those who believe a northern/southern (or western/southeastern) schism is the answer (and the Good News Caucus has looked back to the Civil War schism with great nostalgia for a generation now). I don't think a geographical schism does justice to the diversity of all regions of the country, including the South. This is also the problem with the so-called Red State/Blue State divide--the divisions run deep through all the states with one side or the other being more or less dominant in different regions.

Sooner or later we do need to learn how to get along. It will be a lot easier when people simply refuse to play along with political and ecclesiastical activists who seek partisan advantage and personal gain at the expense of the common good.