Is it time to "get a backbone"

Last night Grace Cathedral in San Francisco played host to a forum on
"Politics, Religion and Discourse: A Conversation about Same-Sex
Marriage." Bishop Marc Andrus moderated a distinguished panel
including Bishop Gene Robinson, in town from New Hampshire; Joe Tuman,
a professor of Communications at San Francisco State; the Rev. Yvette
Flunder of City of Refuge United Church of Christ and Presiding Bishop
of The Fellowship, a multi-national, multi-denominational faith
grouping; the Rev. Lindi Ramsden who serves as Executive Director of
the Unitarian Universalist Legislative Ministry in Sacarmento; and
Rabbi Douglas Kahn of the Jewish Community Relations Council.

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The room was packed with eager and slightly anxious listeners.

Dr. Tuman led off with a very concise and useful overview of how a
California Supreme Court decision legalized same-sex marriage a year
ago, the campaign to outlaw it by way of Prop. 8 ensued, and the same
California Supreme Court upheld the vote last month. He emphasized
that despite upholding the new constitutional provision, the Court did
not back away from its finding that LGBT people still legally
constitute a "suspect class", forcing anyone choosing to discriminate
against us to be subject to "strict scrutiny," essentially a refutable
presumption of wrongdoing. That is, California law still protects gay
equality far more vigorously than it did before this sequence of
events.

Professor Tuman then offered his prescription for future efforts to
repeal Prop. 8: we must remember that "my opponent in this is not my
enemy." We are called to dialogue with a lot of skeptical people,
including often our own families. If we do this, we can win many over.

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Panelists offered their distinctive wisdom. The Rev. Flunder shared
some historical perspective, describing the flexibility that Black
churches under slavery had to adopt to create an ethics that responded
to their members' lack of control of their own lives. She trusted that
churches can likewise learn to respond to the novel social reality of
contemporary loving, responsible gay and lesbian partnerships.

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Bishop Robinson was his usual charming, but also bracing, self. He
attributes the recent success in winning same-sex civil marriage in
New Hampshire to inclusion of "unnecessary" but "reassuring" language
in the law promising that no religious body will have to "marry"
anyone against their beliefs. He looks forward to a time when the
Church gets out of the civil marriage business.

But further, Robinson urged the LGBT movement to "get a backbone." He
believes we need to understand more deeply that the movement for full
equality of all people is a long process. We stand today on the
shoulders of people who have been through these struggles before us;
others will come after and stand on the shoulders of the LGBT movement
we are now part of.

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Posted By janinsanfran to Walking With Integrity
<http://walkingwithintegrity.blogspot.com/2009/06/its-time-to-get-backbone.html>
at 6/23/2009 11:30:00 PM