Run for the Hills

I'm on a listserv of GLBT Christians (well, maybe more than one), and one day someone posted this bit of verbal self-defense. I don't remember now if it was original with the poster or if it was something she had seen elsewhere.

But it went something like this: Someone starts railing about how GLBT folk are going to bring down fire from heaven, that God was going to send wrath and destruction upon whatever community the railer was defending from the evils of GLBT presence. So the GLBT person replies, "Then why aren't you running for the hills?" Sort of stops the railing short, but to follow up, we might ask, "If you've received a word from the Lord that wrath and fire are about to rain down upon us, why aren't you packing up like Lot and his family and getting the hell out of Sodom? Could it be that you don't believe your own threats?"

I think it's a pretty clever response.

And it brings up the question: What's the worst that can happen? What are we really afraid of, as a corporate body, that will happen if we start ordaining GLBT folk who are in committed same-sex relationships? What's the fear of holding marriage ceremonies in our worship spaces? What do we think will happen?

I don't say that opponents to this idea are expecting fire raining down from heaven. I suspect the fear is something much more subtle, and may simply be a fear of something unusual. I don't think anyone really believes that people will start demanding legal marriage status with their poodles (although people do make provisions for their pets in wills---something that gets contested in same-sex relationships, so maybe we already recognize a closer bond between people and their pets than we do between same-sex couples? I'm being---a little---facetious).

I've heard people ask, "what do we tell the children?" I say, "what do you tell children when a man and a woman get married?" I mean, the smallest kids get marriage without knowing the mechanics of it all, from legal responsibilities to bedroom activities. I think kids can understand, "most men marry women and most women marry men, but sometimes a man marries a man and sometimes a woman marries a woman." That's all the explanation that needs to be made, it seems to me. I certainly don't hope adults are explaining male-female marriage with descriptions of the honeymoon! Or even by outlining the legal ramifications of the marriage contract.

But back to the point of this post: What is really the fear? Angering God? Well, okay, I suppose if your God is an angry, punishing God, I can see that, but, you know, we seem to be less concerned about angering God when we trade in a perfectly good car for the latest model simply because we can afford the latest model---while hungry people live in the community. So why do we believe God is angrier about a woman marrying a woman than about hungry neighbors?

Why aren't we all running for the hills?