My Blessed Gay Marriage

I was a freshman in college in 1981 when I told my parents that I am gay. My father, a Presbyterian minister, mourned the fact that I would never marry, would never have children, would never be happy.

Already I had lived lifetimes of shame and anguish as a youth aware of his unacceptable sexuality, attempting to conform, bargaining with God for conversion--to being heterosexual. Later, during my years in seminary studying to be a minister like my dad, I returned to my shame and anguish and began to bargain with God once again.

And then, earlier this year, my father married me to Nick, my partner of 11 years. As I write this, I am caring for our three-month-old adopted baby girl named Alice (for my mother).

Our wedding was like an exorcism. It cast out our shame and replaced it with the recognition that we are capable of loving, that we are loved by God and our community, and that our love is good and God-filled. We needed bells. We needed fanfare. We needed a cheering crowd. We needed a wedding. And that's what God delivered.

It has not been easy to get to this point. When the world tells you from your first children's book that men and women, not men and men, marry, have children and find happiness, you take the world at its word. Sometimes I wonder how the human heart--my human heart--has had the strength to counter a world of wisdom with its own. I met Nick two years out of seminary. We fell in love right away. The conversion God offered me through loving Nick was one from shame to acceptance, from misery to happiness--the happiness that God promised when society did not.

And the conversion was painful. Still is. For 11 years, Nick and I, knowing we wanted to be together forever, fought with each other and in our hearts about whether or not we should marry. Commitment was challenging enough, but on top of it, we dreaded the thought of going before our family and friends and professing the love that still in most parts of the world "dares not speak its name."

We are two social guys. We couldn't just elope. We couldn't just invite a few close friends and family members. It's just not who we are, nor what we understand the purpose of a wedding to be. Either we were going to do this before church folks, colleagues, family and friends, or we weren't going to do it at all.

Given the pressure from straight society not to wed (not to mention the price tag the wedding was certain to carry), what made us do it?

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