OHIO PULLS AWAY THE WELCOME MAT

The Sunday after the election was like any other morning at Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ in Cleveland’s Tremont neighborhood.

The choir director cheerfully led us in a Latin chant. Another member urged us to dig deep so that poor children in the neighborhood will have a Christmas. Pastor Kate Huey preached about stewardship as a way to let our light shine.

The mood turned, though, when head pastor Laurie Hafner talked about the passage of Ohio’s Issue 1.

This amendment, which had the support of many priests and pastors, is the harshest such legislation of its kind in the country. It bans gay marriages and all civil unions and strips health benefits to unmarried couples—gay or straight—at public colleges, including Cleveland State and Ohio State.

In word and deed, Ohio told thousands of gay and lesbian couples that they, and their kind of love, aren’t welcome here.

Pastor Laurie asked everyone in the congregation who was affected by Issue 1 to stand.

Silently, more than fifty rose to their feet.

Pastor Kate stood. So did the choir director, and the man leading the children’s Christmas drive. The doctor who has dedicated his life to caring for the poor stood, too, as did many church volunteers who always greet me by name.

And there was Jackie, dear Jackie, one of my oldest friends, who called me the day after the election, unable to summon one ounce of her usual fire.

“I’m scared, Con,” she told me. “I’m honestly scared.”

One after another, the gay members of our congregation stood. They didn’t look angry or defiant. They looked abandoned.

Many of us still sitting in the pews began to weep.

Pastor Laurie, her own voice breaking, rattled off the many ways our gay members enrich our lives. Then she made a promise that brought the entire congregation to its feet.

“We promise again, this day, to each and every member of this community of faith: You have our love and support,” she said. “We promise never to take it back.”

William Sloane Coffin wrote, “God dwells with those in America who feel geographically at home and spiritually in exile.” That is my prayer.

We keep hearing that Issue 1 supporters voted on “moral values.” Well, I took my values to the polls, too, and they are grounded in my own Christian upbringing. My mother’s only bumper sticker read, MY BOSS IS A JEWISH CARPENTER. She told anyone who’d listen that she was born again, and her rule for us was simple: “Love anyone God loves,” she’d say. “That’d be everyone, no exceptions.”

Days before my mother died, she grabbed my hand and assured me she was ready to meet Jesus. Were she alive today, she would not have voted for Issue 1.

“No exceptions,” she would have said.

I learned from my mother that those who are most secure in their faith feel no need to hammer others with their certainty. The walk of faith begins and ends with the journey within, and that’s a path fraught with mystery and best guesses. My own faith makes me neither right nor righteous because it demands so much of me that I am still trying to find. Empathy, forgiveness, compassion—I never have enough.

Mom would say that’s okay. As I’ve said before, she taught me that being a Christian meant fixing ourselves and helping others, not the other way around. It’s a lifetime of work—for me, anyway, especially as I try to find a gentle way to respond to those who supported this hateful amendment that rewards only some kinds of love and punishes others. The God I know insists I try, but I do struggle.

Issue 1 advocates insist that gays pose a threat to traditional marriage. A curious claim, when the Bible Belt has the highest rate of divorce in the country and Massachusetts, where gay marriage is legal, has the absolute lowest.

The only threat I feel from gays is that so many of these kind and talented members of our community will now leave us.

Who am I to ask them to stay?