Welcome to the Harbor Unitarian Universalist Congregation

A minister is called upon to do many things. We preach and we teach. We attend many, many meetings. We counsel people and we design rituals. We pray at public functions and at the bedside of sick and dying people. We envision a future for the congregations we serve, and work to share it and to inspire others.

We plan programs and demonstrations. We try to grow hearts and spirits. Among these various tasks, two stand out as the most enjoyable. They are naming and dedicating babies, and Marryin' Folks.

During the time I have been here in Muskegon, I have officiated at weddings here at HUUC, and at St.Jean's Catholic Church. I have joined lovers in wedlock on the shores of Lake Michigan and in clearings in the woods. Small homes and large have housed weddings. Back yards and parks, meadows and motels--all have served as sacred places in which loving couples exchanged vows.

I am delighted that Helen Fink is joining me in this out-reach to the larger community. I always feel bad when I must say to the excited voice on the other end of the telephone that I will be out of town, or am already booked for that time. Now we can expand our presence in the religious life of this area.

I have one major regret. Neither Helen nor I can legally marry some of the couples who come to us. Although we are happy to join in loving partnership the same-gender people who come to us, state law prevents us from legally marrying them. Marryin' Folks is fun. I just wish I could do it for everyone who wishes to marry.

When a couple calls me to see if I am available to officiate at their wedding, there are certain requirements that must be met. Some of them are very simple--am I available for that date? If not, I can now offer them Helen as a possibility. Where do they want it held? (I rule out very few places, but will not consider underwater or parachuting.) They want to know what it will cost, and I require at least three interviews.

I want to get to know the couple before the wedding. Partly, this is to help them craft a significant wedding, and partly to see if I can flag emotional land mines that might cause problems. I ask them about their families of origin, if their parents marriages are still intact, what their religious background is, how many siblings, and whether there will be small children involved in the ceremony.

Some of this I learned at theological school in a workshop about accompanying couples as they join their separate paths into a joint path called marriage. How-ever, the importance of taking a thorough family history was learned through experience.

I was in my internship year when I was approached by a lovely couple to officiate at their wedding. They were school teachers, it was the first marriage for both of them, and they had purchased a home in an integrated neighborhood because they wanted their children to grow up there. I really liked and approved of them.

When I took their history I discovered that the bride's mother had died about five years ago. "But," she said brightly, "my aunt and cousins will be here. The cousins are bridesmaids." They wanted to write their own vows, and I encour-aged them to do so. They also wanted to recite them from memory--a practice that I had been warned was not to be encouraged. But they, especially the groom, were adamant.

They held the wedding rehearsal in their home--a lovely old home with a beautiful staircase. I was introduced to the family, including the aunt and cousins. Now, you know that I lived in the south for many years, and I grew to like it and its people. However, it is also true that there is a stereotype of southern women that pictures them as gushy, overbearing, and fluttery. The aunt was such a stereo-type, and her daughters slightly modified versions. They greeted me with excla-mations of what a WONderful occasion this was, and what a WONderful couple they were, and what a WONderful wedding it would be.

I also met the bride's father, who had just flown in from California, with a younger woman at his side. She had not been expected.

We began the rehearsal, the bride and cousins walked down the lovely staircase, and all was going well, until we came to the vows. The groom recited his from memory, and the bride, tears welling in her eyes, began hers in a quivery voice. I prompted her a few times, and then she burst into tears, sobbing uncontrollably. We stopped the rehearsal, she retired to her room under the ministrations of the fluttery aunt and her daughters, whose voices had risen two octaves. After about 30 minutes we tried again, with me coaching the bride, saying that I would feed her the lines, that she didn't need to worry, and that all would be well. She was distraught, still weeping, and saying she didn't deserve the groom, who was looking a little frayed. Of course that take didn't work either, so we called it a night, agreeing that all would be well tomorrow afternoon.

It was not. When I entered the club in which the wedding was to take place, I was greeted by the manager. I asked if the bride was there, and she replied, "She's upstairs, hyperventilating." Greeting the groom, who was partaking of the generous bar, I went upstairs. I found the bride, standing in the middle of the room in her wedding undergarments, weeping profusely. The aunt was fluttering around her, gushing endearments, and attempting to redo her make-up, which kept being washed away.

I elbowed my way through the wedding party, and talked quietly to the bride. I asked her if she had any reservations about getting married. "Do you," I asked, "really want this marriage?" "Oh, yes," she cried, "I don't know why (the groom) wants to marry me, but I am the luckiest girl in the world." "Okay," I said, "don't worry about anything, especially the vows. I'll feed them to you, and we'll be fine."

And that is what happened. She continued crying as she walked down the lovely staircase. She wept during the first part of the service. She sobbed as we did the vows, but managed to repeat the words I gave her. She cried during all the pictures, and in the receiving line. When I left she was still crying. However, I got a note from them from Paris, where they honeymooned. They were fine, they said.

I learned two things. One is that trying to memorize vows is sometimes the final stressor in a stressful day. And the second is to pay more attention to that family history. I think the unexpected woman her father brought to the wedding was what set her off. And the fluttery aunts and cousins certainly did not help.

Another of my requirements for wedding couples is a character test that explores their preferred ways of learning and decision making. This test gives us a focus for talking about how they work and play together, and how they plan their future. And we plan a ceremony together. I ask them to try to craft a service that will show to those who love and care for them that they have been well and truly wed. And I ask them to pay particular attention to their vows. For that is the heart of the ceremony--the promises they make to each other.

Do I ever say "no" to a couple that wants to wed? Only once. It was a couple who fought a great deal. At our second meeting I recommended couples counseling before they proceeded. The wedding did not take place.

Never however, have I turned away a couple because they were of the same gender. The right to participate in a ceremony that blesses their union is not limited to heterosexual couples. But unfortunately, the laws of this state, now enshrined in its by-laws, do not allow a legal wedding between same-gender couples.

I believe this is morally and ethically wrong. I believe that same-gender couples have worth and dignity, just as do different-gender couples. I believe that justice, equity and compassion call us to work for the right of same-gender couples to legally wed and receive all the rights and benefits of marriage.

The denial of such rights constitutes a separation of our people into first and second-class citizens. The passage of the constitutional by-law denying such rights enshrined legal discrimination in this state. I believe it is morally wrong because it denies full humanity to a class of people. I believe it is ethically wrong because it denies equal rights to this same class of people.

The passage of this amendment also negates previous state employee contracts that would have given unmarried couples, including gays, domestic partnership benefits. Michigan State University and Kalamazoo are among the public entities that continue to provide domestic partner benefits in the wake of the amendment. In Ann Arbor, the Thomas More Law Center, funded by Domino Pizza magnate Thomas Monaghan, is trying to stop the Ann Arbor public schools from providing domestic partner benefits to employees. Jay Kaplan of the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan told the Detroit Free Press that the benefits offered by the district were not equivalent to marriage, “partly since same-sex couples do not get the 1,100 rights and protection that married people receive.”
(Website 365gay.com.)

Neither Helen nor I nor any of the many Unitarian Universalist ministers who support gay-marriage can perform a legal wedding of same-gender couples in the state of Michigan. However, if such a couple wants a religious ceremony that blesses their union and allows them to declare before their family and friends that they are a partnership, we stand ready to do that.

Our larger faith community, the Unitarian Universalist Association has publicly supported same-gender people and couples for many years. In 1980, the General Assembly, our national decision-making body, voted to encourage non-discrimination in ministerial employment. They voted to support gay and lesbian services of union in 1984, although some ministers had been doing them for al-most a decade. In 1987 they called for legal equity for gays and lesbians. And in 1996 they voted to support the right of Same-sex couples to marry. I am proud of this record, which continues today. "On May 17, 2004, Massachusetts be-came the first state to legally recognize same-sex marriages. The UUA's presi-dent and staff cheered as couples applied for marriage licenses all over the state and hosted the wedding of Julie and Hillary Goodridge at UUA headquarters. (presided over by UUA President, Bill Sinkford). Three days later, after the wait-ing period imposed on most couples by Massachusetts law, fifty same-sex coup-les were married in historic Arlington Street Church in Boston." (www.uua.org)

I have personally officiated at a few same-gender unions here in West Michigan. I would be happy to do more. I would be even happier to officiate at a legal wedding for some of my friends and faith companions. Sadly, that is not possible.

However, it is possible to make gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered people welcome in our congregation. It is possible to affirm that they have worth and dignity, that they are fully human in our eyes and in our hearts. It is possible to go the extra mile to welcome into our congregation people who may well have been rejected by the faith of their childhood.

A Welcoming Congregation Task Force is beginning its work in this congregation.
They are meeting and planning programs and workshops to help us learn the depths of pain that some of our brothers and sisters suffer. They will help us ex-plore the rich culture of our gay siblings. They will help us come to consensus on claiming the label--A Welcoming Congregation. We will begin next month to offer a nibble of what we think will ultimately be a rich feast of opportunities to learn and explore together.

We are unable to offer to our gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered brothers and sisters a legal marriage in the eyes of the laws of Michigan. However, we can offer them a liberal religious home that values them as worthy people. We can offer them a religious ceremony for the partnerships they form. We can offer to all people a faith community that crafts rituals that joins them in blessed unions. We offer a liberal religious congregation that values all people and wel-comes into covenantal membership those who embrace our values and practices.

Let us share the good news of this community with all with whom we interact.

Amen.
Blessed Be.
Shalom.
Saalat.