Our Hearts Were Young and Gay is a 1944 movie based on the real life misadventures of two teenage girls, who grew up to be writers that turned their awkward adolescence into comedy gold. “Gay” used to mean upbeat or happy. There were men and women named “Gay”, like Gay Talese an award winning American writer who is a heterosexual man married to his wife Nan for 64 years (and counting) with two adult (now somewhat elderly) children.
The meaning of the word “gay” took a turn after the 1969 Stonewall Riots in Greenwich Village, New York City. New York City police raided a gay bar called “Stonewall” rather enthusiastically and rousted people who were minding their own business and doing what anyone does in a bar. Those present took umbrage at the brutal tactics and evident glee with which the NYPD busted them and the joint up. Prior to this event, those who preferred their own sex were commonly referred to as “homosexuals”. After the Stonewall Riots, the term “gay” began to gain traction and eventually changed the meaning of the word for the wider culture. It’s a bit like what has happened to the name “Karen” for women in these modern times.
I mention this because Pope Francis has recently announced that he is open to allowing the Church to bless same sex couples. The Catholic Church won’t be performing gay marriages anytime soon, but same-sex couples may soon get blessed by a priest within the walls of a Catholic Church. This is a momentous change in Church policy and one that is not universally welcomed. Folks wonder, what’s next? Married or even female priests?
Homosexual marriage, but often not homosexuality itself, has been frowned upon by societies for millennia. That’s because the raison d’etre for marriage across cultures and throughout time has been for two general purposes; the organization of society and the production and legitimization of children. That’s why polygamy for males was the dominant model for marriage in ancient societies. The world is big, and possession is nine-tenths of the law, so population was needed to claim territory. If a man has four wives (that was typically the maximum in ancient cultures) he can have four children in a year (assuming no multiple births) and everyone knows who the parents are. That’s not true if a woman has four husbands: only one kid in a year and who’s the daddy? That arrangement didn’t meet what was “good” for the goals of society and so female led polygamous marriages were not sanctioned by and large.
There were several ancient cultures where homosexuality was normalized. For example, the Greek and the Roman societies spring to mind but also the Samurai in Japan. Sex was for pleasure; marriage was for procreation. Part of the reason for two swords for Samurai, a long and short, was marriages were arranged. Arranged marriage was the general societal practice throughout the world up until about the 17th Century in Europe with arranged marriages still quite common across Middle Eastern cultures today. That’s because marriage was to do with the organization of society and not necessarily about the happiness or even the compatibility of the couple getting hitched. For a Samurai, your one true love was another Samurai, but one needed a wife to bear offspring. Often times the women weren’t all that keen on the men their fathers arranged for them to marry, so the Samurai slept with the small sword underneath their pillows – in part – to protect themselves from their own female spouses.
In the mid 1990’s, the Hawaiian Supreme Court weighed the issue of whether or not it was discriminatory to deny same-sex couples the right to marry. That caused a flurry of activity in legislatures across the rest of the country, including in South Dakota where I was a member of the Legislature at that time. I, and others, were concerned about Article IV, Section 1 of the US Constitution which states; “Full Faith and Credit shall be given to each State to the public Acts, Records and judicial Proceedings of every other State.” That clause is why, if you buy a car on credit in South Dakota you can’t beat the payments by moving to Iowa. That vehicle purchase contract is constitutionally enforceable across all fifty states. Marriage is also a contract. If the Hawaiian Supreme Court ruled gay marriage was legal there, it would potentially be legal everywhere. That’s because a couple that flew to Hawaii to get married and to honeymoon (and Hawaii is a great place to do just that) would have their marriage there legally enforceable and recognizable by any other state they happened to return to and reside in under the Constitution’s “Full Faith and Credit Clause”, as Article IV of the US Constitution is colloquially known as.
Roger Hunt, a State Representative from Brandon and later to be Speaker of the South Dakota House, sprung into action with a bill that outlawed gay marriage. I’m exaggerating a bit but, that bill called homosexuals deviants and menaces to society and made a number of value and moral judgments in the text of the proposed law. That bill passed the South Dakota House and failed in the South Dakota Senate by one vote. I was the vote that killed it. Roger wanted to know why? He knew I wasn’t enamored by the thought of South Dakota being forced to acknowledge marriages that our people then didn’t want to recognize. I told him; the law defines crimes and conditions; it doesn’t judge them. We define murder in statute, but we don’t say how awful a crime it is or how unfair it is to the victim to be snuffed out prematurely or how unjust it is for the survivors to be deprived of the income and presence of their loved one etc. So next session Roger brought back a bill that simply said, “Marriage is between a man and a woman” and I became the Senate sponsor. Hawaii ended up not siding with the gay couples that brought suit in that state and the issue moved to the federal courts. In 2015, the Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges legalized gay marriage.
The Court based its decision on the 14th Amendment which says, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
People assert we are a “Christian” nation. That is not, nor has it ever been true. For example, Thomas Jefferson (the author of the Declaration of Independence, the third President of the United States and denizen of Mount Rushmore) issued the “Jefferson Bible” which took out everything that quoted Jesus (the passages in red in many Bibles). Jefferson viewed Jesus as a great philosopher and leader, like a Gandhi or a Martin Luther King, but not as the Son of God. Most of our Founding Fathers, (George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison and others) were Deists. That is, they believed in a Higher Power – God, if you like – but not necessarily in the Divinity of Jesus. While not a “Christian nation”, we have always been a “God fearing” nation. The two are not synonymous. The First Amendment not only guarantees freedom of religion and explicitly guarantees your right not to be Christian, but it also implicitly guarantees your right not to be religious at all.
The difficulty in legislating based on Christianity and the literal interpretation of the Bible can be summed up in these examples:
Leviticus 25:44 says you can own slaves from neighboring nations – Look out Canada and Mexico!
Exodus 21:7 says you can sell your daughter into slavery – another threat to use with those difficult teenagers during their rebellious years.
Exodus 35:2 says those who work on the Sabbath should be put to death – does that mean Friday, since that’s the Sabbath for Muslims or Saturday because that’s the Sabbath for Jews or Sunday because that’s the Sabbath for Christians – or do we all get long weekends off from now on?
Leviticus 21:20 says you cannot approach the altar of God if you have a defect in sight – does that mean everyone with glasses is excused from attending church services?
Leviticus 19:27 is pretty specific about how men should let their hair grow long, especially around their temples – what is the penance for getting a haircut?
Leviticus 11:7-8 says touching the skin of a dead pig makes a person “unclean” – bad news for the NFL and anyone else who plays football.
Leviticus 19:19 calls for the death penalty for any farmer who plants two different crops in the same field and for anyone who wears garments that are composed of two different kinds of thread (cotton and polyester for example).
Leviticus 15:19-24 allows no contact with a menstruating woman and suggests women leave town all together when it is that time of the month. There are plenty of other Biblical references that a modern woman could take offense at, but I’ll leave it at that as my wife is a modern woman and it’s winter and cold in the garage this time of year – you get my drift.
Legislation should be based on the morals, sensibilities and values of the community rather than simply on the text or interpretation of any religious document, even if it’s the Bible. I was still in the State Senate in 1999 when the mass shooting at Columbine High School rocked the nation. Many of my conservative Republican friends wanted to pass legislation to post the Ten Commandments in schools across South Dakota because, you know if those two Columbine boys would have just realized that the Sixth Commandment forbids killing, they would have just turned around and gone home. Anyway, that was the supposition of my well-intentioned but naïve legislative colleagues. My conservative Republican friend Senator Eric Bogue, a man of principle (I admired him tremendously) amended the bill to allow any moral posting in public schools. Under the more inclusive Bogue language any of the following could have been posted in South Dakota public schools; the Ten Commandments, the Seven Ethical Principles of Buddhism, Confucian sayings, wisdom from Mr. Rogers etc. The House killed the bill. They wanted the Bible or nothing.
Morals and values change, look at how we view divorce and illegitimate children today as opposed to attitudes about these things in the 1950’s. The world has turned, and society has a different attitude towards gay people generally and gay marriage specifically than it did a few decades ago. The fact that Pope Francis has publicly embraced what Christ called the “greatest commandment” is a lesson for us all, regardless of our individual creed or beliefs. So, what is the “greatest commandment”?
It is this, Mark 12:30-31 “And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind and all your strength. The second is equally important; Love your neighbor as yourself. No other commandment is greater than this.”
That’s good advice, regardless of your religion or lack thereof.