Scottish Unitarians participated in a press conference at the offices of the Scottish Youth Parliament in Edinburgh. The Scottish Youth Parliament has been campaigning alongside the Equality Network, LGBT Youth and NUS LGBT Campaign for marriage equality. Leaders and representatives from the Quakers, Liberal Judaism, Unitarians, Metropolitan Community Church and Pagan Federation want the law changed to allow them to preside over same-sex marriages. A 14-week consultation asks if marriage in Scotland should be allowed for homosexual people through a civil or religious ceremony.

• Coverage in The Scotsman   
• There was a good photograph of Rev Maud Robinson and Rabbi Mark Solomon of Liberal Judaism at the press conference 
• A Press Association article released before the event was carried on several websites  
• And from BBC Scotland   
• Derek McAuley's response

Derek McAuley

Derek McAuley, Chief Officer, writes in the latest issue of GA Uni-News:

The deadline for responses to the Government's consultation paper on civil partnerships on religious premises is 23rd June 2011 and I would urge any congregation or individual wishing to respond to do so by this date.

It is important, even at this stage in the legislative process, for our views to be heard. I shall be submitting a response on behalf of the General Assembly based on our agreed position and general principles of freedom and equality but others will be most welcome.

I had the opportunity to meet with the civil servant conducting the consultation and we talked about the need to ensure that any proposals are practical and can be easily implemented. I indicated that I thought the cost of registration of £1500 for three years was excessive and that the comparison with secular commercial venues was invidious. We do not have the option of recouping the fee from sales of food and alcohol! Indicating the reality of finance for congregations may be useful in this debate.

I have recently also spoken to Stonewall, the organisation who worked closely with Lord Alli to secure the amendment to the Equality Bill to permit religious premises to be registered for civil partnerships. The support that we, with the Quakers and Liberal Jews, gave to the amendment proved very persuasive to parliamentarians in the free votes on this measure. Hopefully my views will influence their response.

We must ensure that this measure is implemented in a way that is effective and practical for our congregations. It is hoped that registrations can begin later this year.

Respond to the consultation paper

Derek McAuley, Chief Officer 

The subject of marriage and what is legal and what is not is getting increasingly more confusing, especially since a Liberal Jewish synagogue was in the news recently for performing a same-sex marriage (which is recognised by Liberal Judaism but not by the state). Apparently Scotland is just about to begin a process of consultation about same-sex marriage. So here's a list of what is and is not currently legal:

Legal (permitted by law and recognised by the state):

• Opposite-sex church weddings (couple legally married and registered)
• Same-sex civil partnerships in a register office / registered premises for weddings
• Opposite-sex marriages in a register office / registered premises for weddings

The law allows, but there's no mechanism for implementing:

• Religious civil partnerships (civil partnership ceremonies in a religious building)

Not forbidden by law, but not recognised by the state

• same-sex blessings in a church / synagogue
• same-sex marriages in a church / synagogue where the marriage is recognised by the church / synagogue  but not by the state
• Pagan handfastings (weddings) in England & Wales - both same and opposite sex
• Pagan same-sex handfastings in Scotland
• Blessings of polyamorous relationships

Illegal (not permitted by law):

• Same-sex church weddings (couple legally married and registered)
• Opposite-sex civil partnerships in a register office / registered premises for weddings
• Same-sex marriages in a register office / registered premises for weddings
• Marrying more than one person

Another difficulty is that if a transsexual married to a person of the opposite sex to their original sex wants to change their birth certificate to reflect their new sex, they would have to divorce their partner (whereas if same sex marriage were legal, they could stay married).

Legal (permitted by law and recognised by the state) in Scotland only:

• Pagan opposite-sex handfastings where the celebrant says the required form of words (the same as for all other legal weddings)

Have I missed anything?

Terry Gross's interview of Hillary Clinton on NPR is getting some press, because of a length exchange in which Terry Gross pressed Hillary Clinton for an answer as to whether or not she had "evolved" on the issue of same-sex marriage, or whether she had been in favor of it much longer, but didn't take a stand for political reasons.  After several exchanges, the picture emerged of an evolving perspective on Clinton's part. 

Clinton said:

Were there activists who were ahead of their time?  Well that was true in every human rights and civil rights movement, but the vast majority of Americans were just waking up to this issue and beginning to think about it, and grasp it for the first time, and think about their neighbor down the street who deserved to have the same rights as they did, or their son, or their daughter. It has been an extraordinarily fast, by historic terms social, political, and legal transformation and we ought to celebrate that instead of plowing old ground when in fact a lot of people, the vast majority of people, have been moving forward.  

And then a bit later she said:

“I did not grow up even imagining gay marriage and I don’t think you did either. This was an incredible new and important idea that people on the front lines of the gay right movement began to talk about and slowly, but surely, convinced others about the rightness of that position. When I was ready to say what I said, I said it.”

Hillary's painting the picture of a world where only the most vocal and "front lines" of advocates were for marriage equality in 1996 made me think, as another heterosexual female, "When did I decide same-sex marriage should be legal?"  I wasn't, by any means, a "front line" advocate on any issue in 1996.  How does my own timeline compare to hers on this issue?

Now, I'm quite a bit younger than Hillary Clinton, so I think I came later to this issue in terms of dates than I would have as an older adult who might have been thinking about the issue a decade before me.  But truly, I can't remember not believing in same-sex marriage.  I can, however, remember a time when I probably hadn't thought about it at all.  I know it was an issue I never even thought about in high school.  I wasn't even really aware of the gay rights movement, as far as I can remember, until I got to college.  The first time I can remember arguing with someone about LGBT rights was with my friends in about fall of 1990 -- my junior year in college -- when I had my first couple of close friends who were out as bisexual.  But I don't really remember any discussions we were having on marriage specifically.  I was more focused on AIDS awareness and domestic violence as the issues I was working on. 

Bill Clinton's first term was the second presidential election I got to vote for as an adult.  He was elected just after I finished college.  At that time, some of my friends weren't "out" yet, and I didn't have many LGBT friends that I knew of, only a couple. 



After college, I took a couple of years off from school, and was not terribly active in any social justice causes during those years, although I do remember that my mother was starting to get involved in LGBT advocacy.  My mother, for the record, is just slightly older than Hillary Clinton.  Their college years overlap. My mother and I talked about it a lot during the next couple of years, as I entered graduate school.  My mother was in seminary at Candler School of Theology at Emory University, and involved in a GLSEN group there.  She was vocal enough about LGBT rights, including ordination, that her local Methodist church refused to endorse her for the ministry, and her ministerial career was stalled.  (I'll explain some other time how it is that my mom was a Methodist seminarian at this point, but who raised me UU.)  In graduate school, my number of LGBT friends increased dramatically, and I remember being more strongly an LBGT advocate, to the point where my Dad, as I remember it, sat me down to assure me that if I was a lesbian they would still love me. During that time, I remember I attended my congregation's Welcoming Congregation workshops and was a strong supporter of that process.

DOMA was signed by Bill Clinton in September 1996, which was the same fall I entered seminary.  I can't remember if it was before then or at that point, when I was close to getting engaged myself and also considering performing weddings, that I started to believe so strongly in same-sex marriage.  It's the same with LGBT rights in general -- I can't remember not supporting them, and I can't remember when the issue first came to mind for me, but I'm pretty sure I supported it the instant it occurred to me that it was something to support.  But I do know by the time I entered Meadville Lombard in 1996, I was solidly in favor of same-sex marriage, but hadn't done any real advocacy work on the issue.  By the time Peter and I got married in 1999, we personally spent a lot of time discussing whether we ought to get married at all with same-sex marriage not legal.  I performed my first same-sex marriage during my internship in the spring of 2000, and my second that summer while doing summer ministry in Rockford, IL.  So you could say that from my first being aware of the issue of gay rights until the time I performed my first same-sex marriage, a dozen years had passed, during which I had evolved from awareness to advocacy to direct involvement. 

By 2002, newly in the ministry, I was writing articles, sermons, and taking stands on same-sex marriage, as well as doing direct lobbying on the issue.  In 2003, I stopped signing licenses in Massachusetts until same-sex marriage was legalized there.  That year I performed the wedding of a friend who hadn't been out to me (or anyone) when we were college roommates a dozen years before.  And in 2004, when we got marriage equality in Massachusetts, I happily performed many ceremonies before moving to Michigan, where we promptly banned marriage equality that fall.  When Obama was elected in 2008, I wasn't a fan at him at first, for two reasons.  One was that he wasn't in favor of same-sex marriage, and the other was that I thought his healthcare plan didn't go far enough.  Of course, Hillary Clinton wasn't in favor of same-sex marriage, either, yet.  But some candidates did -- Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel.  Edwards was saying during the campaign that he was "conflicted" while his wife publicly said she supported it.  Hilary was perhaps the most hampered from coyly suggesting support, tied as she was to her husband's passing of DOMA.  After he was in office, Obama began "evolving" (2010) on the issue. 

In the end, I think if Clinton is accurate in saying that "When I was ready to say what I said, I said it," then she was very late to the game in terms of opening her mind.  She announced her support of same-sex marriage in 2013 at the point where fully half the people in polls were saying they did, too.  She didn't evolve with the second lines or even third lines of supporters.  She didn't evolve when progressives and mainstream liberals were evolving.  Her support came after most liberals, half the moderates, and some conservatives were supporting it.  To put it in perspective, the month Clinton announced her support for same-sex marriage we had the first Republican U.S. senator announcing support, too, and by the end of that spring, we had three Republican U.S. senators.  But at this point, is it more respectable for her to say she waited to announce her support for political reasons, which she denies, or to have evolved so slow?  

What I can say, is I wasn't a front-liner on this issue.  And as woman legally married to a man, I wasn't called into this issue by my own necessity.  But I had been performing same-sex weddings for over a dozen years by the time Hillary Clinton decided she could support the idea.  From my perspective, she was about a decade late of where I would have hoped a national leader would be.  And so I'm rather happy Terry Gross pushed her on the issue and brought it into the national spotlight. 

It's time to finish up my series about my memories of that day in Ann Arbor.  With the abundance of clergy we had, the blessing was that those who had religious communities were often able to find their own clergy person and have them perform the ceremony, and many others were able to find someone who represented their own faith tradition, whether Christian or Jewish or Pagan.  I did see one African-American couple come down who were specifically looking for an African-American minister.  It sounded like they had seen him earlier and were trying to find him again.  I don't know if they did, or not.  I hadn't seen him, but the room was very crowded for most of the day. 

Those couples without connections to local clergy had their pick of the rest of us who were there available. I officiated at two services.  And just enjoyed the day and celebrated with other couples and witnessed and helped the rest of the time. 
The first wedding I performed that day was for Adam and Michael.  They have been together over a dozen years, and had had a wedding before, although it wasn't a legal ceremony.  They'll now have two spring anniversaries to celebrate.  Adam and Michael were glad to hear I was UU -- they said they were hoping for either a UU or Unity minister.  Here in this picture (by Annette Bowman), I'm blessing the wedding rings that they have been wearing for years.

At the end of the ceremony, I copied what the Rev. Gail Geisenhainer of the First UU Congregation of Ann Arbor had been doing during all the ceremonies she had been performing that day.  I held their hands aloft, and loudly proclaimed them married and introduced them to the room.  As each marriage was thus announced, all other activity in the room would pause and the room would all cheer and celebrate together, and then other ceremonies would resume.  This picture (by Jon or Kathy McLean), is taken just as we're bringing our hands down from that moment.  It captures Adam and Michael mere seconds after their marriage has become legally recognized. 

The second ceremony I officiated at is one I don't have pictures of except from The Detroit News, where they're shown in the slide show here (slides 8 and 9).  Shirley and Shirley were among the last couples to get married that day, and the room was emptying out.  You have to be a resident of the county to get a license there, and one Shirley lives in Detroit, but the other Shirley is an Ypsilanti native.  It was fun introducing Shirley Hayslett-Cunningham and Shirley Cunningham-Hayslett to the room, though I got a bit (understandably, I think) tongue-twisted with that one. The room cheered and laughed in a friendly, loving way.  

Before long, it was after 1pm, and couples were being turned away as the Washtenaw County Clerk's office closed.  Despite the fact that our governor is refusing to recognize these marriages and a stay on performing more is in effect, the law of Michigan right now still stands that our constitutional ban on same-sex marriage is overturned, and same-sex marriage is legal.  Refusing to recognize the marriages while the appeal is pending is to refuse to recognize couples that were, and are, legally married.  Thankfully, the Federal government is recognizing these marriages. 

It puts a damper on that day that these couples are on hold, certainly.  In cases like Michael and Adam and Shirley and Shirley, these couples literally don't even know what their own name is, since hyphenating your name is a perk of legal marriage, without any other steps necessary to have a legal name change.  It's just one of the thousands of legal problems that couples whose marriages aren't legally recognized have arrange separately.  It's the smallest example, and one that heterosexual couples just take for granted and don't even think about.  Some of the same-sex couples were startled to find, that day, that this was something they could easily and legally do in a legally-recognized wedding. 

Name changes are one thing --  although names are fundamental to our identity, and meaningful -- but the inheritance rights and the adoption rights are very significant and have a huge impact.  So many couples in my community live in situations where if one person dies, the other parent will not have any legal claim on the children they have raised and parented together.  The court case in Michigan began as an adoption case for this very reason. 

I find myself unsure about how to end this post.  This was a joyous, celebratory day, full of love and full of the joy of recognizing families in our state.  We knew that a stay would come to the decision, but I had hope that these marriages would be recognized in our state until and unless an appeal was successful.  I think it's a crime that they're not.  And so a day of joy is still a day of joy, but followed by anger and sorrow.  We are still are fighting for equality in Michigan. 

Over a decade ago, I decided I wasn't going to be an instrument of the state anymore if the state continued to prohibit same-sex couples from marrying.  I talked to my congregation and the board of trustees about it and then, in October 2003, I took a public vow not to sign any more marriage licenses until the Commonwealth of Massachusetts allowed same-sex marriage.  I was one of about a dozen clergy who had done so, one of whom was the Rev. Fred Small, author of the beloved song "Everything Possible."  After hearing Fred Small talk about his decision and his reasoning, my mind was made up.  I cried when I heard him, because he had given name and voice to what I had been feeling, and had reached a solution that removed him from the wrong equation.  I knew I had to do likewise.


A year and a half later, in May of 2004, same-sex marriage became legal in Massachusetts.  I performed a few weddings that spring and happily signed licenses for all, and then, that summer I moved to Michigan.  A few months later, in November of 2004, we passed our constitutional amendment on same-sex marriage.  I didn't take the same vow in Michigan as I had in Massachusetts.  In Massachusetts, it felt like it was part of a building momentum towards changing things.  Here, it felt like it would be futile, so I went ahead and signed.  But with every license I signed, I felt like I was doing something wrong.  For ten years I've ministered in this state and signed licenses in this state, knowing that it felt wrong each time.

There are 1138 benefits at the federal level alone that go along with marriage.  There are benefits at the state level, as well.  My friend Shelly explained on Facebook this week that if her wife were to die, Shelly would have to pay taxes on the house that they both own.  Those taxes would be enough that she would likely lose her home.  Her wife would have to do likewise if Shelly were to die.  And her wife would have no legal claim over the son they've raised together.  Shelly's story is just one of thousands in our state.

Finally, after almost a decade since it became legal in Massachusetts and banned in the constitution here, we had a brief window last weekend where we were able to perform legally-recognized same-sex weddings in Michigan.  Those marriages are now on hold, with our governor saying he won't recognize these legally-performed weddings until the appeal process is finished.

Having signed the marriage licenses on Saturday for two same-sex couples -- Michael and Adam, and Shirley and Shirley -- I don't think I can go back to signing just licenses for opposite-sex couples. 
I realized this just as I was typing this.  I wasn't planning on writing this today.  But if these marriages are on hold, so am I.  Until all the marriages that I perform are recognized by the State of Michigan, the State of Michigan is no longer part of my role as minister.  I will officiate at weddings, but until I can sign licenses again for same-sex couples in Michigan, I'm not signing any licenses in Michigan and will only sign licenses in states which recognize same-sex marriage, from this point forward. 

I owe that to Michael and Adam, and to Shirley and Shirley.  I can do no less.  Their weddings are no less real and their marriages no less valid than any other I have ever performed.

Before I write about the the marriages, and what a joy that was -- I want to write about the helping things that people did, because they made a huge difference.

At the Washtenaw County Clerk's office, there were about twenty clergy and judges present ready to marry people, and they came from all sorts of different faiths.  There were a few of us Unitarian Universalists (the Rev. Gail Geisenhainer, the Rev. Tom Schade, and myself, and the Rev. Mark Evens was there at the beginning).  I saw several UCC ministers.  There was a rabbi.  There were three Pagan officiants of various stripes.  There was a Native American officiant.  There was an Episcopal priest.  I'm sure other Protestant denominations were present.  And then there were a handful or more of Universal Life Church members.

Now, I've always had a sort of a "thing" about ULC ministers.  It's always seemed a bit unfair or wrong that without any training and any credentialing process, people can hang out a shingle and do what I do, into which I put 5 years of training into and tens of thousands of dollars (which I'm still paying off).  And perhaps a bit of my sore attitude is due to my own ULC ordination.  When I was doing my CPE (hospital chaplaincy) during seminary, some of the other CPE students ordained me through the ULC as a joke -- making fun of UUism, basically.  They went online, put in my name, and voila, I was an ordained ULC minister.  I keep the certificate, which they printed off and framed, by my desk even today.   

Well, I was about to get "schooled" in the commitment and dedication -- and love -- of ULC ministers.  And now I'm proud to be one.

I was sitting next to a ULC minister named Ted Van Roekel, mentioned here. Ted had come not knowing if any other clergy would be there, and he had come with enough papers that he could have performed all the marriages if he needed to.  At the table perpendicular to mine were three more ULC ministers.  One, Naomi, had just become ordained for this particular purpose, or so I heard through a friend of a friend.  She is Jewish, and had asked her rabbi, the one who was present, if this was a way that would be appropriate for her to help out.  He had agreed, and so she came.  Between her and myself was another ULC minister.  She had a full day's schedule and had to come and go, but she contacted Thomas Dowds, who came with a case of water for us.  The room was hot, and after a while those performing the most weddings were getting parched, so the water was a real blessing.  Even more special, however, Thomas brought two large sheet cakes for wedding cakes so that all the couples could have some wedding cake. 

Back to Ted: Ted didn't know who might come, so he created a plan.  He put out a request for friends to come and help -- to work as runners, to serve as witness.  And he asked particularly for two friends of his, Annette Bowman and Matt Klinske, to come and take photographs.  Annette served as wedding photographer for 32 weddings that day, and took down each couple's emails on a sheet of paper so that she could e-mail them later.  She took over 600 photographs and processed them for over four hours on Sunday, and still wasn't done.  By Tuesday evening, she had sent me pictures of the ceremony I performed that she photographed, which was near the end of the period.

There were so many clergy present that those of us who didn't have a church in the area were not in high demand.  I performed two ceremonies.  Ted performed two ceremonies.  When he did the first one, he was nervous and even shaking from excitement and joy.  I understood -- I had felt the same way minutes before when I performed my first ceremony of the day, even though I performed legal marriages in Massachusetts a decade ago.  I helped by filling out his paperwork as he did the ceremony, just as some of the other ULC ministers had done while I performed a ceremony. 

It was these special touches -- the photographers, the cakes, and the buckets of flowers that somebody else brought -- that built a community around these people.  Ann Arbor Unitarian Universalists were part of building that community, too.  They came to celebrate and form religious community, folks like Kathy and Jon McLean, wearing their Standing on the Side of Love t-shirts and standing as the congregation for wedding after wedding that Gail performed.  Beloved Community was created in Ann Arbor on Saturday.  And I am still in awe and tears about the caring and dedication of all these people, who came and helped and celebrated because they were standing on the side of love.

I arrived at the Washtenaw County Clerk's office about 9:05, and licenses were to begin being issued at 9:00 a.m., so I was a tad late.  The crowd was packed into the building, and a few people were milling outside, but the line wasn't yet out the doors.  I walked in and heard a gentleman with a clipboard telling a couple where they should go and what they should do.  I approached him and said, "I'm clergy.  Where do I go?"  He said, "There's a room downstairs.  The stairs are over there.  And thank you for being here!"  I headed down stairs and asked someone downstairs where I was to go.  They told me the clergy were all in the back corner of the room ahead.  I wove my way through the crowd, and saw the Rev. Mark Evens, who is very tall, and knew I was in the right area.  I tossed my coat on a table that had a bunch of coats, and greeted Mark (who had to depart early) and the Rev. Gail Geisenhainer and the Rev. Tom Schade.  I didn't yet really realize what was going on, but the first wedding of the day at that site was being performed by Judge Judy Levy, and she was giving it all due honor, taking her time to craft a really beautiful ceremony, that I was too breathless and excited to really pay attention to, to my fault.  Later in the day, she came over beside me to get her papers in order, and I learned that the ceremony she used was one she adapted from her own wedding ceremony.  She's a brand new judge, having only been finally confirmed ten days before.  In fact, I had met her a few weeks ago, when she was not yet "Judge Judy" when I went to hear the court case with the Hanover-Horton High School GSA, and Judge Friedman introduced us to her as she happened by.  My biggest regret of the day is that I didn't listen more intently and reverently, because I was anxious to get started. I was in too much of a social justice mode and not yet really in a worshipful spiritual mode.  And while we were doing the work of justice that day, it was really not about that.  It was about weddings, about love, and about these incredible couples and their relationships and lives and families.  It took me a little while to really let that sink in and understand it at a deep level.  I get the social justice stuff quickly and intuitively.  Gail helped me to see, by witnessing her and listening to her, that this was sacred space. 

After the ceremony was done, and a lot of cheering happened and photographs were taken by all the press and onlookers, someone made an announcement explaining the basic process.  You got a number, when your number was called you could go up and apply for your license.  When you got your license, you should come back down here, and clergy would be at the tables along the walls ready to perform ceremonies.  There were about twenty clergy in the room scrambling to find places at the table as the room emptied out a bit.  After a while, one of the Ann Arbor members came along with their Standing on the Side of Love banner, wondering where we might put it.  We decided to lay it out on the table like a table cloth, and the other ministers sharing the table with us didn't seem to mind.  Tom Schade laid his stole out in front of me to create a little sacred space.  He had offered to lend it to me, and it's his only stole, but he and I had both donned our collars for the occasion instead.  I turned on the chalice app on my tablet. A lot of members of the Ann Arbor church were there to witness and celebrate and form the Beloved Community for the members and friends Gail would be marrying that day.  Two of them, Kathy and John McLean, had been members of the Marquette, Michigan congregation back when I was a student minister up there.  Their daughter is in seminary preparing for the UU ministry, and Kathy has been making her stoles.  She had just finished a rainbow stole for her daughter, and had brought it along for the day so that it could soak up the energy of the day.  Although I was content without a stole, and could've worn Tom's, I offered to wear Kathy's daughter's it so that it would be even more a part of the day, and Kathy happily lent it to me. Honestly, it was the most beautiful rainbow stole I've seen, and I was really proud to wear it for her.  Kathy and John and the other Ann Arbor UUs were amazing that day -- witnessing and celebrating and helping.  They were the congregation, made visible and present for each and every wedding. 

As we settled into place, it wasn't long before couples with licenses started entering the room. 

Photo by Annette Bowman

This past Friday, after 5 p.m., when the county clerks had just closed, Judge Bernard Friedman, of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, ruled that our constitutional ban against same-sex marriage, voted into the constitution in 2004, was unconstitutional.  In his findings, he said:

In attempting to define this case as a challenge to “the will of the people,” Tr. 2/25/14 p. 40, state defendants lost sight of what this case is truly about: people. No court record of this proceeding could ever fully convey the personal sacrifice of these two plaintiffs who seek to ensure that the state may no longer impair the rights of their children and the thousands of others now being raised by same-sex couples. It is the Court’s fervent hope that these children will grow up “to understand the integrity and closeness of their own family and its concord with other families in their community and in their daily lives.” Windsor , 133 S. Ct. at 2694. Today’s decision is a step in that direction, and affirms the enduring principle that regardless of whoever finds favor in the eyes of the most recent majority, the guarantee of equal protection must prevail.

 We knew that the state attorney general, Bill Schuette, had immediately filed an appeal and an emergency stay of the decision, but that it, too, happened after the close of offices Friday.  So it looked like if couples were to get married, it would happen only licenses could get issued over the weekend.  On Facebook, I began to see UU colleagues in Michigan immediately asking if any clerk was going to be open over the weekend.  We heard a statement from Barb Byrum, the Ingham County Clerk, that she would open first thing on Monday morning and start issuing licenses, but we knew that the emergency stay could go through so quickly that we wouldn't have our window if we had to wait until Monday. I called Equality Michigan to find out if they knew anything more from any county clerks, and only got answering machines, unsurprisingly.  Then I called Randy Block, Director of the Michigan UU Social Justice Network.  He hadn't learned anything about any clerks opening yet, either, but said he would call and e-mail me if he did and I said I would post it by e-mail to the clergy groups and to Facebook. 

Around 9:30 p.m., I had just seen that the Washtenaw County Clerk was going to open on Saturday morning via a post from Gail Geisenhainer, who was busy talking to her members and community contacts and perhaps the clerk himself.  Randy Block called to say that he had learned Washtenaw County Clerk (in Ann Arbor) was going to be open and also the Muskegon County Clerk, and amazingly the Muskegon County Clerk would be issuing licenses from the Harbor UU Church there in Muskegon!  He sent me an e-mail about Muskegon and I forwarded it to our chapter Yahoo group, along with the request that if anybody were to hear about any other county that they notify the group.  Some folks wanted to stay in their own counties and put pressure on their clerks to open, but I knew my own County Clerk would not be opening, based on our experience with her in October, so, faced with a choice of protesting here or helping there, I prepared to travel to Washtenaw.  Oakland and Ingham County seemed the most likely to open, so I and others kept an open ear.  We knew Barb Byrum in Ingham had said Monday, but also knew that she wanted to issue licenses.  And the Oakland County Clerk, Lisa Brown, had been active and public about the desire to issue licenses, and had testified for the defense in the case.  Those were the counties to watch.  The UU ministers in Southeast Michigan had done some good work earlier in the year getting to know who our county clerks were and identifying which of them would issue licenses with the most haste.  We had created a Google doc to share this information. 

On a personal note, my daughter had a performance on Saturday and my whole family was heading here to Jackson to see it.  And my car had been totaled a week ago, and we had just gotten the news that the insurance company considered it totaled slightly before Friedman's decision, but they wouldn't be issuing us a rental car until Monday.  So I had a busy schedule to juggle and one car for our household.  I posted to Facebook asking if any other local progressive clergy would also be interested in heading to Washtenaw, but got no positive response.  But I determined that if we left here at 8 and got me to the courthouse at 9, my husband and daughter could get back just in time for her to show up for her performance.  I didn't know for sure how I would get home and when I get home, but we agreed to play that more by ear.  I knew my daughter would understand why I wanted to be in Ann Arbor.  I had been saying all year as this case progressed that if I could get anywhere and perform ceremonies and sign licenses when it became legal, that I would do so.  I knew all the couples I had married before in non-legal ceremonies were in counties where they wouldn't be able to get licenses, so I was free to go wherever I could.

Around 1:15 a.m. I saw a post from Equality Michigan on Facebook that Lisa Brown in Oakland would be opening for business, and I shared the post and e-mailed our HUUMA Yahoo and Southeast MichigaN UU Ministers Yahoo group.  In the early hours of the morning I realized my copies of the ceremony I had prepared and my stoles were all at church, and I wouldn't have time to get them in the morning, as there was no way my husband was going to agree to get up the extra 40 minutes early.  I hunted down my clergy collar that I hadn't worn since maybe the Phoenix GA -- I hate the thing, as it's too tight.  I printed off new copies, with my printer that had decided in the name of equality that it would cooperate that day.  And then I went to sleep to get the five hours that would carry me through the next day.

The next morning I awoke and got ready, and checked Facebook.  Across Michigan, we were preparing for the day.  Jeff Liebman stayed in Midland, prepared to act if his clerk would open, and talked to the press and contacted couples he knew were waiting there.  Colleen Squires and Fred Wooden prepared for a protest to happen in Grand Rapids on Sunday.  I saw that Barb Byrum must have decided to open for business, because Kathryn Bert had posted that she was headed there.  She brought her team of Nic Cable and Julica Herman with  her.  Kimi Riegel awoke to see my post about Oakland County and headed there.  Tom Schade and Gail Geisenhainer had already said the previous day that they would be there in Ann Arbor.  Mark Evens came briefly, as well.  And in Muskegon, Bill Freeman headed to church. 

The UU clergy of Michigan were ready and prepared for this day to come, and it had come at last.

Today I went along with the Hanover-Horton High School Gay-Straight Alliance to view the historic trial going on in the federal court in Detroit that will potentially overturn Michigan's constitutional amendment that bans same-sex marriage.  The GSA group walked proudly and peacefully past the protestors for "traditional marriage" outside as we came into the federal court building.  Judge Friedman greeted us warmly as we came into the courtroom, asking if we were the high school group that he had heard was coming, giving the group president a moment to introduce the group, and saying he would stay around afterward to share some information about how the courts work and answer any questions excepting that he could not answer questions pertaining to the case.

Today in DeBoer vs. Snyder there was one witness on the stand.  DeBoer's team called their Harvard's Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History, Dr. Nancy Cott.  In addition to being a professor of history at Harvard, Cott was an expert witness for the federal case Perry v. Schwarzenegger against Proposition 8 in California, and is the author of the book Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation. 

Hearing Professor Cott was like getting to go to a Harvard lecture on the subject.  She deftly covered the history of marriage and explained that those who would uphold "traditional marriage" are aiming at a target that's always been moving.  She explained three main ways in which marriage has changed in the course of American history: asymmetrical (gender) roles, divorce, and race, and explained how each was relevant.  To Michigan's credit, she noted, we were one of the first to, early on, get rid of laws banning interracial marriage (which she made a point of showing were always about whiteness, and never about two other races marrying).  An interesting example of women's roles in marriage changing that she gave was that earlier in history women who married men from other countries automatically lost their American citizenship, because their identity was assumed to be subsumed under their husband's.  She described how marriage in America has been increasingly moving in a direction of equality and openness.  She cleanly swept aside religious concerns explaining that in America marriage had been a civil institution from the beginning, citing a statement by William Bradford defining marriage as a civil institution in America and a critical distinction from England.  She explained that clergy performing legal ceremonies are doing so because the state has entrusted to them and loaned to them its power.  And she clarified that clergy could impose additional restrictions on marriage to what the state imposes, such as a Catholic priest requiring people to be Catholic or not divorced, but that those additional restrictions did not, in turn, affect the state's qualifications for marriage.  As a Massachusetts resident, she said that same-sex marriage had had no discernible negative impact on heterosexual marriage, and that, to the contrary, there were younger people who had been uncomfortable with the institution because it was discriminatory who now felt more comfortable with the institution.  Overall, she nicely laid out that the arc of our nation's history bends towards marriage equality. 

The state in their questioning of Professor Cott, the state looked foolish and awkward to this decidedly biased viewer.  The lawyer for the state began by stating that she was going to be asking yes-or-no questions and asked Professor Cott to restrict her answers to yes or no.  Judge Friedman told Cott that she could also state if her answer could not be restricted to yes or no, and so Cott managed to give a more nuanced answer to almost every question.  It was clear from the questions that the state's case will rely on the importance of binary gender, on the importance of the state upholding a model of biological mother and father as ideal in childrearing, and the idea that the state has an interest in procreation.  The state's lawyer tried to pin her down on the idea of gender being binary as important to the state's interests, and Cott responded that so far gender had been understood as binary, but that was changing as we understood and included transgender as a category.  They managed to pin Cott down as saying that the state did have an interest in procreation, but then Cott was able to explain that as she had thought about it further, she would have to qualify it, because that was such a vague statement.  She explained that the state had an interest in procreation occurring, because we need people, but that as to whether or not marriages were procreative ones or not, the state had never expressed an interest, such as in limiting marriage to those within ages where procreation is possible.  The one point at which I think she floundered a bit was in making the case for why we shouldn't also allow polygamy, which the state's lawyer defined as something that "fundamentalist Mormons" believe in.  Cott chose to address this by denying that any religious group existed that believed in polygamy, and that, rather, those Mormons who did believe in it were not only doing something illegal but something that went against their religion.  I think this was a weak argument for why same-sex marriage is different than polygamy, and a narrow understanding of Mormonism as monolithic and not viewing fundamentalist offshoots as valid religious organizations. 

The one awkward moment for DeBoer's attorney this morning came when he compared Michigan's case to the other states where Federal judges have overturned same-sex marriage bans.  Judge Friedman quickly pointed out that those had been summary decisions, not full trials like this one.  The lawyer quickly regrouped and said not that those were pointing for how this should be decided but rather that when the lawyer found in DeBoer's favor, as he surely must, that the Michigan decision would show that those decisions had been correct and uphold them further. 

As the court day concluded, Judge Friedman asked the state's attorneys how long each of their witnesses was likely to take, so that they could all have a sense of the timeline for the case.  It sounds like there will be another three days, roughly, of testimony as the state now brings their witnesses.

Afterwards, Judge Friedman did indeed come talk with our GSA group.  He seemed quite delighted in having us there, and introduced us to various people, including Judith Ellen Levy who has been nominated as a U.S. District Judge by President Obama and is currently the Civil Rights Chief of the US Attorney's Office in Eastern Michigan.  Levy is an openly gay attorney and was very friendly to the GSA and told them what the state of gay rights was like when she was in college and what her own marriage ceremony was like (in DC, if I recall correctly) -- her family sat in the jury box and gave her a "life sentence."  It was great for the GSA to get to meet this great role model in the legal and judicial field.  After that, Judge Friedman returned and told us about how the district court works, explaining with great enthusiasm the different types of cases and giving examples of a drug case and a case against Winnebago that he had judged, since he happened to have their displays hanging around and could use them as examples.  He steered clear of talking about the DeBoer vs. Snyder case except to say that he had left time after the case before his next case, as he intended to issue the decision right away since it was such an important case, and that there had already been groups, such as the county clerks association, asking for a stay, and it was common in cases like this one.  He didn't outright say that a stay would be issued immediately, but it certainly sounded likely. 

After today, my hopes are even higher than ever that equality will prevail soon in Michigan.  And when we do, we'll be the first state to have struck down a same-sex marriage ban with a full trial, making our stand even stronger.  I'm thankful the GSA invited me to attend with them today, and glad I did.  It was an uplifting day, full of hope and possibility.

An article this week from Tiffany K. Wayne, titled Same-Sex Marriage Does Threaten "Traditional Marriage" does an excellent job at pointing out just exactly what is threatened by same-sex marriage: traditional gender roles.  Wayne writes:

Same-sex marriage makes a lie of the very foundation of traditional gender roles.  Same-sex marriages say that a woman can run a household, or that a man can raise a child. This does not square with those whose lives and beliefs and relationships depend on upholding and living their lives based on differences between the sexes.

Wayne is right on in her analysis.  This is absolutely about equality.  It is absolutely also about feminism and gender roles.  The fight against same-sex marriage is inherently linked to the fights against women's reproductive freedom. 

Wayne doesn't get into religion in her article, which is a shame, because I think it would further her argument.  If one looks to the Bible for what marriage is about, and then looks at the Biblical arguments against homosexual practices (for the Bible doesn't speak about same-sex marriage, just sex), it's very clear that marriage laws are about property and same-sex relationships are problematic because they are a threat to the understanding of property.  Women are owned in the Bible; they are possessions.  Marriage is an economic agreement between men about the body of a woman.  As it was explained to me in reading and studying on this passage, the reason a man "shall not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman" (Lev 18:22, NIV) is because a man can't own another man.  Upsetting gender roles in general in the Bible is abomination.

Another example of the way property and sex are linked Biblically is to think about the case of Onan.  Onan "spilled his semen on the ground..." (Genesis 38:9, NIV).  For this, he was punished by God, which gives us the Biblical argument against masturbation.  But the problem with Onan's actions lies later in the same verse: "... to keep from providing offspring for his brother."  Onan's duty was to provide his late brother's wife with offspring, but Onan didn't want to do this.  What was at stake was ownership, property, inheritance.  Masturbation in the Bible isn't really an issue about sex -- it's an issue about property.

But back to gender roles, specifically women.  Wayne writes:

An even more frightening argument against same-sex marriage that is blasting from my TV is that the state has an interest in “procreation” – i.e. who does it and under what circumstances.... It is about who should bear children and under what circumstances. In other words, controlling women’s reproductive behavior.  We often hear the case of Loving v. Virginia (1967) – the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case undoing the ban on interracial marriage – brought up as an example or precedent for expanding civil rights when it comes to marriage.  But equally as relevant to the current political climate, I would argue, is the 1965 case of Griswold v. Connecticut, in which the U.S. Supreme Court decided that married couples could use contraception.  Let me repeat that: the United States Supreme Court had to decide that a married woman could practice birth control. And if you think that decision is untouchable and safely entrenched in the history books, then you haven’t been paying attention to threats to access to not only abortion, but birth control, in recent political battles.

Need examples?  In Michigan, a bill is advancing through the legislature that would allow health care providers to refuse to provide services based on religious objections.  This refusal would not be required to be disclosed in advance.  State law already gives health care workers the right to refuse to perform abortions.  So what is this about?  Birth control.  Oh, and it doesn't just give the right doctors and pharmacists to refuse to prescribe birth control or fill prescriptions.  It also gives Michigan employers the right to have their insurance refuse to cover birth control for their employees.  Think this won't pass through our Republican-controlled legislature and be signed by Governor Snyder?  I wouldn't bet on it.

What I hope for most is for our feminists and our LBGT advocates to ban together and understand that these issues are deeply connected.  If we lose the fight on same-sex marriage, we'll be losing the fight on birth control, and vice versa. 

In Michigan, having safely banned same-sex marriage by constitutional amendment, the push has been on restricting reproductive freedom, through limiting access to abortion and birth control.  It's time we pushed back here, and pushed back hard. 

And now, a brief advertisement.  For Jackson residents, our next JXN Community Forum will be on April 18th at 6:30 p.m. at the Carnegie Library downtown.  And the subject is reproductive freedom, with a small panel consisting of our representative, Rep. Earl Poleski (R), and someone from Planned Parenthood.  It will be an excellent opportunity to find out what the recent legislation in Michigan has accomplished, and what is upcoming.