This week the House Emerging Issues Committee of the Missouri Legislature failed to pass on Senate Joint Resolution 39.  This bill would place on the ballot a constitutional amendment to shield clergy, churches, and certain other businesses from government penalties and legal liability if they decline to participate in a same-sex wedding ceremony.   The authors of this bill frame it as protecting religious freedom.  In fact, were it to become law, it would protect the right to openly express contempt for certain persons under the guise of being an expression of “sincere religious beliefs.”

I am myself a Minister of the Gospel and am empowered by the State to sanctify marriages by signing a marriage license.  I have had couples come to me seeking my services at their wedding and I have had conversations in which we ultimately agreed that I would not do the service. But this was not because of my feelings about their lifestyle.  Most commonly it was because they showed me a lack of maturity in their relationship and I was willing to point this out to them.   As a result, they either decided not to wed, or to find someone who was not so frank with them to do the service.  But it was never because of who they were as persons.

Were I a baker I can easily imagine having to tell a couple that I couldn’t do their cake because I wasn’t skilled at what they wanted or because I was already too busy that weekend.  But what this bill seeks to protect is the right of a service provider to say to a person, “I will not serve you because I find some aspect of your being to be so odious and contemptible that I don’t want to have anything to do with you.”

While the bill itself doesn’t name any particular religion whose sincere beliefs would be preserved and protected, I do find a strong parallel in the Gospels to a sect called the Pharisees.  They were especially contemptuous of the behavior of one Jesus of Nazareth who had the troubling habit of partying with sinners and tax collectors.  While the contempt they showed for him is not something most people celebrate today, I can certainly see the importance of not discriminating against those who hold such views.  On the other hand, I don’t understand why it is necessary to protect those practices in the State Constitution.  It seems to me that we are better served by urging ourselves in the direction of greater maturity and health rather than protecting the rights of those who are less self-aware.

Many years ago I was in a meeting for my denomination, the United Church of Christ, as we were considering whether to ordain persons who were openly and actively gay.  Seated next to me was an anxious young man who spoke up against the resolution stating that, “We all have urges that we need to have help resisting.”  He believed he had to resist his own feelings of attraction to other men.  His fear of those feelings had led him to be contemptuous of himself and to ask the larger community to join him in that contempt.  How sad.

While I have compassion for the Pharisees, I don’t believe we are wise to enshrine such self-hatred into State law.

Rev. Dr. Mark Lee Robinson

Thursday, April 28, 2016