Mike Huckabee: yesterday, Jesus and I wept together

I read yesterday's Supreme Court rulings on DOMA and then California's Proposition 8 with tears of joy in my eyes. Mike Huckabee tweeted that Jesus wept when he read the rulings, too. Of course, former governor Huckabee meant that Jesus was disappointed in the rulings and a host of other conservative leaders took to the interwebs to cite similar concerns about the Supreme Court overturning "God's" law. 

Hey, folks, your churches can still choose to uphold your god'(s') law! The issue at stake is that the government has taken up the business of marriage. Afterall, people can be married by justices of the peace. Legislators subsequently make laws that grant rights and privileges to married couples. When the Supreme Court struck down DOMA, it was because of the equal protection of the law under the fifth amendment. God didn't write the Constitution, those are the words and laws of men. Men, who in their infinite wisdom, chose to respect the right to religious freedom, which the Supreme Court has, in turn, translated into the separation of church and state.

Religious groups have always been allowed to discriminate against women (e.g. Catholics) or the LGBT community. That's their constitutionally-protected right. Why are the Universal Uniterians, then, not allowed to perform legally-binding marriages? Are their religious freedoms being upheld?

Speaking of the laws of men, 100 years ago yesterday, women won the right to vote in Illinois. It was the "civil union," "skim milk" (Justice Ginsburg) version of voting. Women were allowed to vote for president, mayor, aldermen, and some other offices. Women were not allowed to vote for state reps, Congressmen, or governor. Separate, but definitely not equal. 

The thing I find most troubling is the idea that opponents to same-sex marriage keep citing how they support "Traditional Marriage." Anti-Suffragists claimed the same argument - allowing women the right to vote would be, according to a female suffragist cited in the Trib on Sunday, a "grave peril that threatens our fine American womanhood."

Today, that quote seems downright silly. I find myself to be a "fine American woman," as do most who know me. My voting does not threaten the traditional family any more than same-sex marriage threatens the traditional family. If you don't want to have a same-sex marriage, no one is forcing you to have one yourself.

I know lots of people whose varieties of "traditional" marriage would not work for me. My husband and I are extremely egalitarian in our division of labor, household chores, and childcare. My friends who are stay-at-home-moms with husbands who are primary bread winners do not threaten my marriage. My friends who choose not to have children do not threaten my marriage. The fact of the matter is that my marriage and my family is strong enough to stand on its own. How others define their relationships does not affect how Jack and I define ours.

So back to where I started. Yesterday, I quietly wept as I read the Supreme Court decision overruling DOMA. Despite the consternation of the Mike Huckabees of the world, I'm sure Jesus wept along with me and for the same reasons as me. 

I'd like to end with the Prayer of Saint Francis. Regardless of your faith (and I am not a Catholic), I think its words can and should be internalized as we seek to go out and comprehend the world around us:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master, 
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive.
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
Amen.