Family and Marriage Comments

This is a personal response to concerns about Affirming, and how it affects "the family". These comments may be common sense to some, and a stretch to others.

I’m not trying to address opinions about a specific political issue here, and I certainly don’t know what the right way is to do family and marriage in our changing times. I just want to make some observations from the trenches of marriage and family life.

The family lives we were raised to aspire to – to say nothing of the ones we actually lead – would have been unimaginable to the people of the Middle East of 2 – 3 thousand years ago, when the Bible was first written down. As their lives are unimaginable to us.

In the Old Testament, a marriage was sometimes between one man and one woman, but more often than not, we read that it’s between one man and several women (in King Solomon’s case, 700 women, not including concubines…) Here are some examples:

Deuteronomy 21:15 If a man have two wives, one beloved, and another hated, and they have born him children, both the beloved and the hated; and if the firstborn son be hers that was hated: Then it shall be, when he maketh his sons to inherit that which he hath, that he may not make the son of the beloved firstborn before the son of the hated, which is indeed the firstborn:

Exodus 21 Now these are the judgments which thou shalt set before them….If he take him another wife; her food, her raiment, and her duty of marriage, shall he not diminish.

Moving forward to the time of Paul and the Gospels, things were different from the old testament, but still not the same as today; slavery was an unquestioned part of life, for example, and then there was that rule about how if your husband dies you have to marry his brother – women, did you ever look at your husband’s brother and think “he’s a nice guy, but -”

Are there enduring principals that we can take right from the 5th century BC to the 21st century AD? Yes; and here they are, I’m looking mostly in the Gospels and the Prophets: however we structure family life, we are to do it with love, and do it with justice – so that everyone is looked after, and no one is harmed.

In this time and place, it has become very difficult to keep relationships and families and communities together, we all know that. And raising children is one of the most challenging things anyone can do.

I can certainly testify to that, and there are people here, whether you know about them or not, who have showed absolutely unbelievable sacrifices, courage, strength and creativity as parents – to their biological children and to others who needed them. One of our patron saints here at HUC is Emily Follensbee a mother who worked tirelessly to ensure that there would be educational services for special needs children. Supporting that kind of effort for service to children is a heritage I am proud to be part of & to continue.

Here’s a question. Are the parents of this society well-served by a view of themselves as the only responsible people, with the assumption that everyone else is all about immediate gratification? Is making an exclusive status for parents the best way to support children? Myself, as a parent, I found that view made me feel rather lonely. And when I saw how my divorced and childless friend loved being with my children every Christmas and lots of their birthdays, how important her presence was to them, when I saw how lovingly and in what detail my never-married cousin cared for his parents, my aunt and uncle, during their old age and final illness, I felt much much less lonely in this business of family.

We really are all in this together. I think we need to be able to support each kind of tie that binds, and have the confidence that we truly have something to offer one another despite considering ourselves to be in different social categories. I’d like to think an Affirming Statement can guide us in that direction.

An Affirming statement can also remind us all to show support, not judgment, to families that are struggling. Where are kids – and grownups - going to find support in bad times and inspiration for the future? There’s only one thing I’m sure of – it won’t be where you expect it. If this church has lots of people that kids & parents might not meet on the soccer field, it has lots of potentially inspiring, supportive people they might not otherwise have known. Some of you already have that figured out, and serve as reading volunteers in the schools and children’s choir leaders and Sunday School teachers – and what a gift that is. As a parent and community member, I’m grateful for that gift. I just hope everyone here considers the possibility that they might just be that inspiring person that a child or teen needs to encounter.

One last thing.

It is my hope that an Affirming Statement can remind us all to concentrate on the crucial business of making sure no one is harmed, everyone is cared for, and that everyone knows what it is to be loved. An Affirming Statement can remind struggling families (and sooner or later, that would be all of us) that it is for God alone to judge them. Often we’re worrying about things that aren’t so important after all, and often, we have more going for us than we realize.

Here’s Isaiah: “he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young.”


Notes:

James Alison is a Catholic theologian who can be tough going sometimes, but if you like reading systematic theology, he’s very interesting. He has said that one of the worst forms of oppression that GLBT people face is to be told that they simply cannot be moral; believing this lie has led to much tragedy. Here’s one of the more accessible excerpts from one of his great articles:


It has been, as some cultural commentators have begun to notice [2], the particular strength of the Catholic family, and the family in majority Catholic cultures, that it has proved relatively resilient in the face of hierarchical attempts to shore up systems of goodness [Alison uses this term to mean the social systems of defining goodness, often for oppressive purposes] ,and has typically opted for the hard work of learning how to love its gay and lesbian offspring over time, including being pleased with and protective of the legal protections which their offspring and siblings are beginning to receive, rather than go along with the easy morality of absolute definitions and consequent hatred and separations which the system of goodness has sought to reinforce.

The same pattern can be seen with the question concerning the proper shape in the public sphere of same-sex coupledom. There is the political battle, concerning access to civil marriage and its rights and responsibilities, and there is the real vocational battle which goes along with, underneath, and beyond that, which can only be dwelt in over time by those undergoing it. This looks something like: “What on earth is the shape of healthy socialization into the possibility of courtship, of adolescence lived at the same time as my heterosexual peers instead of put off until much later? What forms are to be taken by adolescent hopes, fears and dates shared with family and friends instead of hidden or skirted around out of a surfeit of delicacy, shame and fear? What is it going to look like as those who “just are that way” become able, from their childhood on, to aspire uninterruptedly to a shared life with a same sex partner without having to go through the huge psychological battles of wondering whether this would ever be possible, whether such happiness was even imaginable at all, and thus without the scars of a long battle with impossibility being etched into their soul?

Even more than this: what sort of gift to family, Church and society are same-sex couples going to be? What sort of sign of divine blessing and creativity are they going to be? In what ways are gay and straight couples and families going to be “for” each other in the future, beyond the little hints offered by “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” of a heretofore unimagined outpouring of fabulosity and fashion sense among straight males? It seems that gay couples find themselves having to create, imagine, and negotiate every area of their togetherness, because they cannot rely on some tradition of what seems “natural”.

Just so, might not such couples be found to have something to offer those for whom the very fact of the apparent naturalness of their heterosexual togetherness actually makes it more difficult for them to become viable creators of coupledom and family? This seems to be happening as it becomes clearer all over the world how much less “nature” has to do with forming the basis of opposite-sex coupling than was thought to be the case, and how much more it is shifting patterns of power, desire and money, that are at work. It will, I suspect, be only over time that, by dwelling in the place of shame [this is another specific term used by Alison, to refer to a social definition] without reactivity, and without resentment, letting go of superficial bids for approval and short-term solutions, that we will begin to glimpse the shape of our vocations to create living signs for each other in this sphere.

© James Alison. London, Oaxaca, San Jose and Omaha, August – September 2005.