Religion, church, gays and the marriage debate
For the last month at St. Mark's UMC, the sermon series has been "Making Love Last a Lifetime." When Dr. Jenna announced it at the end of January, Karen and I kind of looked at each other like, "Great. We've found a church we like, and just when we were starting to feel comfortable, we have to spend a month listening to sermons reminding us about the equal rights we don't have." Not fun.
But the series has been really great. In spite of titles like "What Women Wish Men Knew About Women," Dr. Jenna has been quite good about using inclusive language and filling the sermons with content that are relevant to everyone, not just heterosexual married couples. I feel like Karen and I--and our relationship--have really benefited from hearing and thinking about the building blocks of a loving, committed, long-term relationship.
Which has gotten me thinking. One of the things that Dr. Jenna has mentioned more than once in her sermons, and something I'd also heard elsewhere but never thought about, is the fact that for couples who both attend worship, and especially who both attend the same worship, the chances of splitting up drop very dramatically. So I started to think about that statistic, and to relate it to me and Karen, to other couples we know, and to the gay marriage debate.
A lot of my TFA friends commented last year on the fact that Karen and I were the only pre-exisiting couple to survive the first year without breaking up at all, and most of them went on to attribute that to the fact that we're both women--female-oriented stereotypes (partly true, I admit) about emotion and committment. That might have something to do with it, but I really don't think it's the most important factor. I think it was more that we had a strong spiritual connection to each other, something much bigger and stronger and more reliable than just the physical stuff. And while I love my TFA friends to death, most of them don't have that. As educated, liberal people, the majority of them have kind of given up on religion--especially as it's become more and more dominated by the radical right.
I think the same sort of thing has happened, on a larger scale, to the gay community. As queers have begun to feel more and more ostracized by religion and religious leaders, many of us have just given up on being a part of a religious community. And that's really a shame, because I think it ends up being detrimental to relationships and makes people more likely to break up if they don't have that spiritual community and connection in common to fall back on in hard times. And with same-sex couples, all that could be feeding into the stereotype that gay marriage isn't worth having because gay couples just break up all the time anyway.
Obviously, those statistics about divorce rates and worship are talking about straight couples. But it's interesting to think about how it could be applied to gay couples. If more churches were more willing to open up their doors and welcome in gay and lesbian partners, maybe the marriage debate in this country wouldn't be a debate any longer.
But the series has been really great. In spite of titles like "What Women Wish Men Knew About Women," Dr. Jenna has been quite good about using inclusive language and filling the sermons with content that are relevant to everyone, not just heterosexual married couples. I feel like Karen and I--and our relationship--have really benefited from hearing and thinking about the building blocks of a loving, committed, long-term relationship.
Which has gotten me thinking. One of the things that Dr. Jenna has mentioned more than once in her sermons, and something I'd also heard elsewhere but never thought about, is the fact that for couples who both attend worship, and especially who both attend the same worship, the chances of splitting up drop very dramatically. So I started to think about that statistic, and to relate it to me and Karen, to other couples we know, and to the gay marriage debate.
A lot of my TFA friends commented last year on the fact that Karen and I were the only pre-exisiting couple to survive the first year without breaking up at all, and most of them went on to attribute that to the fact that we're both women--female-oriented stereotypes (partly true, I admit) about emotion and committment. That might have something to do with it, but I really don't think it's the most important factor. I think it was more that we had a strong spiritual connection to each other, something much bigger and stronger and more reliable than just the physical stuff. And while I love my TFA friends to death, most of them don't have that. As educated, liberal people, the majority of them have kind of given up on religion--especially as it's become more and more dominated by the radical right.
I think the same sort of thing has happened, on a larger scale, to the gay community. As queers have begun to feel more and more ostracized by religion and religious leaders, many of us have just given up on being a part of a religious community. And that's really a shame, because I think it ends up being detrimental to relationships and makes people more likely to break up if they don't have that spiritual community and connection in common to fall back on in hard times. And with same-sex couples, all that could be feeding into the stereotype that gay marriage isn't worth having because gay couples just break up all the time anyway.
Obviously, those statistics about divorce rates and worship are talking about straight couples. But it's interesting to think about how it could be applied to gay couples. If more churches were more willing to open up their doors and welcome in gay and lesbian partners, maybe the marriage debate in this country wouldn't be a debate any longer.