From Race to Sexual Orientation: API Perspectives on Marriage Equality
By Rev. Deborah Lee
June 15, 2006

As a minister one of the things I am authorized to do is to marry people, to sign the marriage certificates issued by the State of California.  There is a wonderful aspect to being a part of weddings- to be a part of people’s lives- when they are most vulnerable, most open.  To witness as people express their desire to commit to the unknown, a lifelong project of loving and relating to a changing person while you are a changing person. In a nutshell I call it-finding someone to jump off a cliff with you.  I have always had a feminist critique of marriage, and  never thought I would actually get married, much less officiate at weddings.  As someone who believes in the equality and dignity of all persons, It is difficult to easily overlook the history of marriage and its disturbing roots in the property ownership of women. Many of the traditional marriage rituals and symbols still express these historical roots. I am opposed to the expectation that marriage is the end point for all relationships.  I am opposed to the compulsory and notion of marriage --that people should marry, if you are a certain age, if you are pregnant,  and if not, something must be wrong with you. I have recently heard about a new format for Marriage Counseling that couples do with a minister before they get married -which I am eager to try. In the first session the minister gets to know the couple. In the second session the minister tries to talk the couple out of getting married.  Perhaps if each heterosexual couples had to fight to convince others they should be allowed to marry, marriage would have a better success rate.  Instead most heterosexual couples marry without much thought to the social capital, cultural recognition, and 1000 legal, economic and political benefits they obtain.  Marriage is a privileging institution in our society.  In ancient societies, one did not survive outside of marriage.  Needless to say, the denial of same gender marriage rights further adds to my own ambivalence about performing marriages.
My role, on the panel, is to speak and address religious dimensions not only because the tremendous influence Christianity has on public policy in his country, but also because Christianity is important in the lives of a significant number of API in this country.  Out of 12.5 million APIs, 43% report to be Christian.  Many Asian and Pacific Islander ethnic groups tend to be more Conservative in their brand of Christianity- either because they have inherited Christianity from the missionaries- or because they there is a convenient cultural convergence between API traditional cultural values and conservative Christianity.
The beginning of this month, George Bush gave his weekly radio address. In that address he called marriage “cannot be cut off from its cultural, religious and natural roots.”  Calling marriage the “most enduring and important human institution.”  (NYT 6/4/2006)
I would like to spend the rest of my talk, exploring, the “cultural, religious and natural roots.” We’ll even get to the “enduring” part.
I think it is really useful to untangle- civil and legal understanding of marriage from the religious.  Though today many people, even non-Christians, think that for a wedding to be real, it must be a proper church wedding with a minister, for the first 1200 years of Christianity marriage, there was no such thing as a church wedding.  Marriage was not even considered to be a sacrament, or a sacred religious act in a person’s life- to be celebrated in religious context.   Today it is only considered to be a holy sacrament in Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, some branches of Anglican Union.
My own denominational roots, UCC, originate way back with the early Congregationalists who came to this continent, the Pilgrims and Puritans.  They were deeply religious people, seeking religious freedom- separation of church and state, and whose members were active in writing the Declaration of Independence and the structure of our current government. In the 16th and 17th centuries, here in early America, marriage was only considered to be a legal concept. The Christian Puritans did not allow marriages to take place in the church.  Ministers through the 17th 18th centuries refused to attend, and perform, marriages. They argued that there was no biblical basis for performing marriages which were considered to be too worldly for religious involvement. Marriage was realm of civil government. – where it still is today.  It was the civil authorities who decide who can marry, who cannot, who can end a marriage, how much one must pay in case of divorce.
It is surprising to see these origins given the current climate where Christianity  is used to justify and rationalize governmental laws which establish two classes of citizens- opposite gender couples who can marry and same gender couples who cannot.  But in other ways it is not too surprising.  Christianity and the Bible often used to justify inequality, hierarchy, privilege.  The Bible has been used to justify the subordination and inferiority of women.  It has often been used to justify the inequality and less than full humanity of people of darker skin- in order to enslave them, colonize them, and steal their land.  So it is not surprising that once again the bible would be invoked to justify the less than full humanity of same gender loving people. 
            It is also not surprising that there is contention over the legal right to marry given its racial history in the U.S.  Within the last half century as a person of color in the U.S., the government legally determined where you could live, what kind of job you could have, what kind of access to healthcare and education.  They also sought to determine whom you could marry.  African American slaves were not allowed to marry. Chinese women were excluded from entering this country for 60 years as a way to prevent Chinese men from marrying, having children, normalizing family life and establishing communities.  In the absence of any Chinese females, Asian men were also legally forbidden to marry Whites.   A Chinese female citizen, born here in the U.S. who married a Chinese or other immigrant would lose her citizenship status.  Denying us rights of marriage and family were ways of preventing our cultural reproduction, keeping us marginal, keeping us “other.”
            Though Bush, claims that marriage has been an enduring institution, it has been enduring in name only.  In what marriage actually is or means has changed and varied extensively through time and culture.  For example.  Recent anti-gay marriage events in the last year- which rallied around 4,000 Asian American Christians in San Francisco, many carried a poster defining marriage as : “One Man + One Woman= Marriage.”  Well- it hasn’t always been like that. Not in Asian history and not in many parts of the world including the cultures from where the Bible emerges.  My own grandfather from Hong Kong, legally had two wives (one of them my grandmother) at the same time. Grandpa, by the way, was also a Presbyterian. Today, when most of us talk about marriage, we are talking about something very specific to our culture and our time. One based in love, mutuality, respect and the free choice of individuals to marry whom they choose.  This has very little resemblance to the concept of marriage in the Biblical cultural context.
The primary definition and acceptable practice of marriage in the Bible is polygamy- that is, one man and many wives.  For example, King Soloman, himself had 700 wives. Plus 300 concubines. In those days, if my husband died, my brother in law had-to-marry me, and add me on as one of his wives.  In a society where women had no status and economic means of their own, this ensured the survival and care of women. 
Marriage was an arranged exchange of property, the wife.   It was a financial arrangement between 2 families, for economic profit, to build alliances, build empires.  The purpose of marriage was to procreate and continue the lineage.  (You may notice how there is a convergence with Confucian values.)  As women were seen as property- nothing was thought to be wrong with spousal rape, or being put to death if under suspicion of lost virginity or adultery. Patriarchy shaped understanding of gender roles, women were to be submissive to their husbands.  It had nothing to do with the women’s will, partner choice or love. 
            This understanding of marriage is important as context when we read a passage in the bible.  You cannot merely translate words without translating cultural concepts.  So let’s get to the Bible. The Bible does not mention any direct prohibition of same- gender marriage.  It is not even mentioned. With the conspicuous absence of any mention, we can safely conclude that it was not a topic of great importance. 100 times more verses about the poor and issues of economic justice. 
In the New Testament, Jesus says nothing about same sex marriage or homosexuality.  But he is clear that marriage- even the patriarchal cultural form of it- is certainly NOT the ideal.  Both Jesus and Paul (responsible for several letters in the Bible)- the sexual ideal was to remain celibate.  Both of them practiced this--neither of them married or had any children.  Jesus says - Matthew 19:10-12, “better to be a Eunuch for the Kingdom of God.  Best to be celibate.  (As a minister and mother of two children, trying to also serve God, can understand that- I would be available many more hours.  Distraction and labor issue.)  Indeed women in the early 1st century of Christianity truly were co-equals, exercised great leadership and ministry- probably because they heeded the message to avoid marriage- so could be seen as social equals and not as somebody’s wife.  Marriage was OK, but only for those who were weak in lust- could marry- if they absolutely had to.
When people are invoking vague and sweeping biblical values to justify the denial of same sex marriage they are often extrapolating biblical references to what is considered to be homosexuality.  At the most generous count there might be 12 verses, some possible allusion to same sex sexual activity.  Out of the 12 it is commonly agreed upon, that there are four verses explicitly related to homo-erotic sexuality.  Once again- what we think of as homosexual relationship, sexual orientation- not at all what people understood in the ancient Mediterranean cultures. The very understanding of sexuality itself was quite different.  Sexuality only defined in dominance and submission. Reflecting the rigidly hierarchical order of society in those times. It was immoral and punishable to have sex with an equal.  One could only have sexual relations with a woman, child, foreigner or slave man of lower social status than you.  Sexuality was (and still is) often used in war, and conquest as away to express political dominance over other people.  The biblical context of male- to-male sexual relationships (no mention of women)- refers to sexuality used to express power over (sexually abuse) other men. If you read carefully the stories of Sodom and Gomorrah, what is being condemned by God is the in-hospitality of the men of Sodom who sought to express power over, to rape, and humiliate foreign visitors to the city.  The story has nothing to do with loving or mutual, relationships between two people of the same gender.
We cannot talk about what the Bible says about homo-erotic activity without talking about what it says about women as property, violence against women, rape as a tool of war, sexuality and power.  That is what the biblical text refers to. 
Two other verses in Leviticus refer to Purity Codes for the people of Israel, codes which establish what is considered to be clean and unclean.  These laws for the Jewish people were written at a time of return from being captured and exiled in a far off land.  They were very preoccupied with self-preservation of their people, self identity, setting them apart from the other cultural groups around them.  There is much more in these codes about food laws referring to animal blood, mixing of grains and fibers.  Some of these still practiced by orthodox Jews, today, but no others do we seek to impose on religious grounds to non-Jews or through the Constitution.  The verse which reject any same sex male intercourse, that is to refrain from Jews dishonoring other Jewish males (by treating them as women) was one of these  identity markers for their group that set them apart from their Cannanite neighbors where such practices were commonplace. 
In Romans, the one verse from Paul is concerned very much with preserving gender role boundaries. It links gender roles with what is natural.  Same sex- sexual relationships were common in the Roman and Greek society in which he lived.  It did not fit with Paul’s cultural norm of what was natural.  Like George Bush, Paul uses the “what’s nature or natural” argument.  I am always very leary of what people attribute to nature, or natural.  First, as humans we know very little about what is nature. It is hard for us to not be blinded by our own anthropomorphism.  We forget that it was unnatural for women to wear pants, to run, to play basketball and cross mid-court.  Paul’s issue with the blurring of  the lines between men and women, however, does strikes a chord with API communities and cultures. Sometimes I meet API Christians, who have come to the point of accepting homosexuality.  But gay marriage – produces cognitive dissonance.  It challenges, and turns upside down their notion of marriage which is based in patriarchy. To put it simply, one pastor asked me,  “If two gay men marry, who will be the wife?”  Our cultural gender roles are so entrenched.  Same gender marriage forces us to examine our own cultural constructs of marriage.
            What others may fear- perhaps may actually be a redeeming aspect of marriage. If same gender marriages can redefine the gender roles, change the symbols, change the images, marriage might be redeemed for me.  If we once again separated the legal understanding of marriage and ensured that the benefits currently given to married people would be afforded to all people without regard to marital status, marriage might be redeemed for me.  If more of the churches (some do), would equally honor and celebrate the commitment and relationship of any two people who wish to jump off a cliff together, then marriage might be redeemed for me.  The Bible is full of lots of terrible things, but it also has stories about beautiful, loving relationship that are redemptive, transforming and healing:  David and Jonathan, Ruth and Naomi, Jesus and women and men disciples.  God acts through these models of relationships. The church and society should also celebrate all kinds of relationships that support and affirm our journeys.  When that happens, marriage will be redeemed for me.