The Real Tragedy

Yesterday the General Convention approved liturgies for same-sex blessings. While same-sex blessings have been happening in plenty of dioceses as a "generous pastoral response" by certain Bishops, this is an official liturgy that has been created and authorized for this exact purpose.

So, of course, the usual predictable people freaked out.

Almost every Bishop who voted against the measure (and there were only about 40 or so, so it was pretty easy to read all those responses on Episcopal Cafe) mentioned something about not wanting to piss people off in their statements before the House. Almost all of them said something like, "We don't want to upset the rest of the Communion," or "We can't lose any more friends," or "Some of the other Christians will be mad at us."

You know, perhaps this is going to make me sound young and silly, but I've gotta say it: either marrying same-sex couples is the right thing to do, or it's not. It doesn't matter what other people think. Either it's right, or it's wrong. And the majority of the people in our Church (and perhaps even a number of the people who ended up voting against the blessings) know, deep down in their hearts, that's it's the right thing to do.

I'm struggling to find the part in the Gospels where Jesus says, "Well, this is the right thing to do, but let's not tell anyone else because it'll make them upset." Actually, Jesus was pretty good at pissing people off by doing the right thing.

Let's be more like Jesus, m'kay?

And of course, once the resolution passed, South Carolina got all blustery and left the convention. I guess I was raised differently; where I'm from, taking your ball and going home when other people don't do what you want them to do is childish and irresponsible. It's especially annoying to me when this happens because it seems to me that the majority of the Church actually wants to call these ceremonies marriages; we only used "blessings" as a concession to the anti-gay folks. There was give and take, and ultimately, about 75% of the church said "Yes, we want this." Sorry, but that's how being a member of an organization works. There were concessions, there was slow and deliberate movement, and still, just because they didn't get exactly what they wanted, they're going to go home and pout.

I think that's sad, and if I lived in that diocese, I'd be pretty embarrassed at how my representatives were acting.

And that reminds me of something Gene Robinson was saying when I saw him at convention. He was talking about how sad it made him that a few dioceses in the Episcopal Church had broken away when he was consecrated as the first openly gay Bishop. "The tragedy isn't that we disagree with each other," he told us. "The tragedy is when we leave the table."

If you leave the table, you're not hurting anyone but yourself. You're not silencing anyone's voice but your own. You're only making yourself look petulant. It makes sense when seven-year-olds don't realize this, but grown men and women? Bishops in Christ's holy and apostolic Church?

Now that's a tragedy.