Marriage Equality = Religious Freedom

Marriage equality is more than simply a civil rights issue. For me, it's a core religious conviction. The threads of love are woven exactly the same for gay and lesbian couples as they are for straight couples. They have the same expressions of love and support, and the same frustrations and struggles as anybody else. When our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters are denied the right to marry, it diminishes the institution of marriage, and while it may not diminish my freedom of religious expression, it diminishes my religion, Unitarian Universalism.

The Unitarian Universalist Association, in addition to several liberal Christian organizations, such as the United Church of Christ, has made strong pronouncements in favor of marriage equality. My congregation, Bell Street Chapel, has married many gay and lesbian couples during the seven years I've been a member, and, by congregational vote, made a strong proclamation on favor of marriage equality in 2004. Yet, the State of Rhode Island does not recognize their marriages because it has chosen to place one set of religious values above another. Bishop Tobin and Rick Warren have every right to deny marriage within their own religious institutions, but why should they have say over my religious institution.

The Unitarian Universalist Church is hardly a fringe religion. It was the religion of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, of Susan B. Anthony and Clara Barton, and of Ralph Waldo Emerson and John Dewey. This year, Randy Pausch, a Unitarian Universalist, who gave his famous "last lecture" at Carnegie Mellon University, was voted beliefnet's Most Inspirational Person of the year award. Unitarians and Universalists have shaped the political, social, and cultural life in the United States since its inception.

In fact, the constutution of the United States is imbued with the core values of Unitarian Universalsim. Barack Obama referred to UU principles in his "A More Perfect Union" speech; "Of course, the answer to the slavery question was already embedded within our Constitution - a Constitution that had at its very core the ideal of equal citizenship under the law; a Constitution that promised its people liberty, and justice, and a union that could be and should be perfected over time." Unitarian Universalists have both an abiding call to justice and equality, and to the belief that we can improve over time, that we are never perfected.

So why doesn't the State of Rhode Island honor my religious values and principles? Why doesn't the state of Rhode Island allow all religious institutions to marry whomever they choose? Let the State of Rhode Island give everyone civil unions, and let Rhode Island's churches marry whichever couples they choose. Let Rhode Island truly be the bastion of religious freedom it was founded to be.