They desire what they’ve been taught is best for us and for our eternal souls. My parents pray for me - and for my husband. Some friends have suggested that I simply walk away: “Why go where you’re not wanted?” That’s precisely wrong.
My friend startled me - and prompted eye-rolling from his own wife - when he asserted that she wasn’t really married, “not legitimately,” because she hadn’t had a religious ceremony. Recently, a devout and conservative friend told me that his sister had wed her longtime boyfriend. These hard lines will be tough to soften. They can’t make my relatives add a seat for my husband at the Thanksgiving table. The justices can compel the government to give us tax breaks because we’re married. And in both, the fight, though often depersonalized into a political cause, has emotional and practical ramifications for real human beings.īut the court does not have the influence that faith does, at least not in families like mine. The characters can roughly be classified as originalists, strict constructionists and so on. (In the case of marriage, many conservatives go back to the beginning, trotting out the line “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve,” which should be banned for its triteness, if nothing else.) In both church and court, we’re arguing over documents written long ago - one by the Founding Fathers, the other by the founding Father. In both, precedent has a powerful appeal. There are some funny parallels between court and church.
And nothing as expedient as a court ruling could change that, not for me and my husband, nor for thousands of other American families that view marriage as more of a spiritual and moral arrangement than a legal one. But to most of my family, including my parents, who didn’t attend, our wedding was illegitimate, as is our marriage. One of my aunts read my favorite psalm, the 121st, in Chinese, while dear friends read other Bible passages in English. Our pastor from Brooklyn, where we live, led us in making promises that we consider sacred. My husband and I married last fall in Massachusetts. Churches will pray, and activists on both sides will rally.īut whatever the court decides, it won’t matter. Pundits will parse the justices’ questions for clues. Jeff Chu is the author of “ Does Jesus Really Love Me? A Gay Christian’s Pilgrimage in Search of God in America.”Īll eyes are on the Supreme Court this week as oral arguments take place in two of the year’s most anticipated cases, involving same-sex marriage in California and the federal Defense of Marriage Act.
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