The Vine: May 27, 2015
A good friend of mine was recently in a difficult situation where he was unsure how to respond.
After talking about it with him for a while, I also struggled to figure out the best response, and thought it was the type of question you might have a good answer for.
My friend is gay and in a committed relationship. He and his boyfriend will likely get married in the next few years. My friend and his boyfriend traveled to Chicago for a wedding of one of the boyfriend’s graduate-school friends. The wedding took place in a Methodist church, which apparently is the only main-line protestant denominations that still does not support gay marriage. During the relatively long wedding ceremony, the minister mentioned / referenced / talked about the fact that marriage is an institution between a man and a woman 18 SEPARATE TIMES!!! My friend sat there getting angrier and angrier. He said he was sitting in the middle of the pew with three people on each side, or else he might have gotten up and left.
I was outraged on his behalf, and admired his restraint at not leaving. But it did raise the question — how should he deal with this in the future. He has other weddings to attend — should he ask the bride or groom ahead of time what the church’s stand on gay marriage is? Should he research this himself and decline to attend ceremonies at churches that don’t support gay marriage, and attend only the reception? What about situations where the ceremony won’t take place in a church, and thus it may be hard to know in advance whether the minister is planning a ceremony that might be bigoted in this way?
Anyway, your thoughts (and the feedback of Tomato Nation) would be appreciated!
Emily
Dear Emily,
Asking the bride/groom ahead of time: no. Decline to attend ceremonies: no. Trying to guess in advance whether an officiant is going to fail to support gay marriage in so many words: no.
With the understanding that the situation isn’t an exact analog, I have attended many weddings and other life-event functions in Catholic churches. Occasionally it is a full mass with communion. That is a long day at the office for this married-in-seven-minutes-in-the-yard “graduate” of a UCC-American Baptist dual-charter post-hippie congregation that voted on the open-and-affirming question about eight seconds after the national councils put it on the table, and passed it by a huge margin. Add to that the fact that the Catholic church has a history of open hostility towards such things as divorce, reproductive choice of any flavor, homosexuality, ladies becoming priests, not molesting children, and not collaborating with genocidal fascists. The current pope seems determined not to have time for much of that shit, which is great. More to the point, my friends who count themselves as Catholics are not responsible for doctrine, and/or may have bowed to familial pressure to have the ceremony in a traditional “home” environment, and in any case are not really trying to send or approve any message beyond “we’re getting married today, we’d love you to come.” So, I am not about to purchase a foam finger with “Go Catholicism” on it. But on a wedding day not my own, it’s not about what I’m…not about.
“We’re getting married today.” Not “you’re attending a wedding today.” As important as the congregation can be in wedding ceremonies, agreeing to witness and support the union sworn before them, it isn’t about the congregation, or any one congregant. This isn’t to say that my lack of use for Vatican policy is on the same level as your friend feeling like he’s getting singled out. For all the obvious reasons, it is not. But: your friend wasn’t getting singled out. It must feel, at this wedding-season time of year, like he is sometimes, especially with his own wedding a few years out — like he’s always the tightlipped guest and never the beaming groom. It must feel like The Song of Solomon is an instrument of torture designed and whetted for his eardrum. He isn’t; it isn’t; it’s just the standard ceremony shit some brides and grooms don’t even hear because they’re all about auditioning bands, or it’s the groom’s minister uncle and the Reverend has his ways, or maybe the couple really is that backwards about inclusive language but I doubt it.
Your friend has every right to feel offended and fed up. I wouldn’t have blamed him for excusing himself after man-woman-or-GTFO mention #14 and pretending he needed to barf, because: seriously. Calm down, certain hets, jeez. At the same time, I think it’s worth his remembering what everyone is doing there, to wit: entering into, or witnessing as a community, the marriage of (as it happened) a man and a woman. You think the “Trumpet Voluntary” is tired? Me too; not the point. Reception food’s chintzy/no meat-free choices? Bummer; have another cocktail, not the point. A wedding that isn’t yours doesn’t actively include you in its sacred language? Didn’t include me either, or my man-spouse; not the point. The congregant’s role is to support the union, and if your friend foresees not feeling able to do that because of what he perceives as homophobic language in the ceremony, then he’s free to decline future invitations. Querying these invitations as to whether they meet his standards in that regard is, in my opinion, self-centered and inappropriate. These weddings aren’t about him, and he seems to find that alienating; maybe he should stay home until he can instead find that freeing.
Again: Friend can feel any way he needs to. Nobody likes to think they aren’t welcome, or didn’t rate a vetting of the marriage ceremony beforehand; I get that, and if he runs into other antediluvian situations like this, I think it’s just fine for him to decide he’s uncomfortable and not stay. I am pro-gay marriage, and pro-sensitivity to one’s guests regardless of pref. But if he’d asked me for my officiants’ PFLAG credentials in the run-up to my wedding, he’d have witnessed a marriage between his ass and my flatform.
Tags: etiquette friendships
14 times!?!? We GET IT. Oy. Also– I laughed/winced because we had Trumpet Voluntary at our wedding in April, but on strings. One person’s Trumpet Vol is another person’s Pachelbel! ;)
My parents had the TV; it’s a lovely piece. But these things, like weddings themselves, go in waves, and after the seventh “Ave Maria,” you’re like, someone, anyone use the Ramones, I will pay cash money for this.
…Shit, now I regret not using “Beat On The Brat” as my processional.
I don’t know much about a Methodist wedding ceremony, but I’m wondering if 18 mentions of heterosexual marriage are a sign of this particular minister’s beef about gay marriage, or somehow reflective of the bride and groom’s beliefs (which, if this couple are good friends of the bride and groom, one would hope not).
To use Sars’ Catholic example, two good friends of mine are Catholics who would without a doubt go for a Catholic wedding with full mass. Like most American Catholics, they ignore certain church teachings that make modern life impractical, such as the bans on premarital sex, artificial birth control, and unmarried couples living together. They are both very pro-gay marriage also. Needless to say, a wedding ceremony wouldn’t reflect those beliefs, but they do both consider themselves Catholic and it is a significant part of their identity. So I think if your friends are close to the bride or groom, it’s important to remember that official church doctrine often doesn’t reflect a couple personally, but instead that congregation, or part of the bride’s or groom’s family, or whoever else, and they’ve all agreed to disagree.
Of course, when I went to the wedding of a very conservative friend of mine and the minister droned about men being heads of their household, and my friend vowed to obey her husband, I still gnashed my teeth quietly.
We may have had the billionteenth recitation of 1 Corinthians 13 (what can I say; I’ve loved those verses since I was a kid) but we did mix things up and use indie tunes rather than the classics for our ceremony (processed to Iron & Wine, the National and Royal Teeth; recessed to Wilco).
Anyway, I think Sars is on point here: this falls into an “It sucks but it’s not about you” category, and hopefully as mores change and marriage becomes a more inclusive institution, such egregiously offensive ceremonies will become the exception, not the rule. Till then: sit on the aisle, for easy exit options in an emergency…?
Our recessional was Jack Black singing Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get it On”. It is still the thing people remember most about our wedding. Having sat through innumerable iterations of “women be subservient to the head of your household, the MAN” bullshit I do understand people who get super offended by stuff from the service. But I agree, not your day. I’m going to suggest the Ramones to my daughter if she ever gets married. Good call!
Many years ago, I attended the baptism of my goddaughter with my husband, who happens to be Jewish (relevant, I promise!). The welcoming of the child into the church was a little Jesus-y for my tastes, but whatever – if you want to believe I’ll tell the kid that Christ is love when in actuality I’m just going to take her out for ice cream, that’s fine.
Then we got into the sermon (this was during the regular Sunday church service). And, man, even more Jesus-riffic, as the minister went on and on about how hard it was for her to accept that Jesus loves everybody. EVERYBODY. “I had to realize – Jesus loves serial killers!” Can you guess where this is going? “I had to accept that Jesus even loves Hitler.”
At which point my husband started muttering, “Oh, my God, get me out of here, get me out get me out get me out get me out!”
But, you know, he stuck it out, smiled graciously, and drank a lot of wine afterwards. And now we regularly say to one another, “I love ya like Jesus loves Hitler!”
With full respect to all of you and the way you have prioritised friends over doctrine in these situations, I want to emphasise that none of the situations you have mentioned is on a par with the writer’s friend’s. Sars and others acknowledged this, and I appreciate that; but for me (lesbian) it’s actually a bit uncomfortable that everyone’s mentioning trope-y wedding things in response to a question about a situation that would not have just infuriated me but made me question my safety and my relationship with people who would knowingly bring me into an environment like that without at least a heads-up that shit might get weird.
i would agree that asking the couple in advance would be awkward and inappropriate. But I don’t think that it’s out of line for the writer’s friend to do some anonymous advance research if he’s going to a religious event. It may or may not have saved him from this particular situation, but forewarned is forearmed. (I do agree with the comment that this may say more about the specific priest than the institution as a whole, but there are a number of religions and even states/countries – hi, large swathes of Australia! – that require the ‘marriage is between a man and a woman’ language as part of the ceremony.)
Again, I’m all for putting aside one’s own feelings where possible when friends and family are having life events of this magnitude. But this goes well beyond that, and I personally didn’t feel that there was enough of a distinction being made here.
I agree, mentioning something to the couple getting married might not be the best idea. That said, maybe it might shake something loose! When I got married, the lone string my parents attached to the money they gave us was that we be married by the Episcopalian priest I grew up with. We were going to do that anyway, so I quickly agreed. During our pre-wedding meetings, I specifically asked him to nix both the “man and woman” language, because I don’t agree with it, and the “love and obey,” because I’m stubborn and not terribly obedient. He had no problem with that, and agreed to change the language.
He decided to incorporate this conversation into the ceremony, and all of the guests at our wedding got a giggle at my expense. I regret nothing.
We also walked in to Billy Bragg, and recessed to the Pogues.
A dear friend of mine has a father who absolutely insisted that she married by a Christian minister. He wasn’t picky about what kind, but actually threatened not to attend if it wasn’t a religious ceremony. Think an old white tea party member from the South.
So she found a lesbian UU minister who talked about Jesus and his would have felt about global warming and poverty in the US.
Sometimes, you compromise.
Yoshi pointed out the same thing I was going to say: While the sheer number of mentions is way over-the-top and may be the priest’s personal thing, some states do require that language in the wedding ceremony. I would never have known that except that when I got married two years ago I spent a lot of time on Offbeat Bride’s message forum and people were really trying to get around state law for the language.
I got married in the Pacific Northwest in a hippy liberal UCC congregations where it’s totally normal for the minister/choir director to start sentences with the phrase “What do the experimental physicists in the room think?” So I know we didn’t have any of that bullshit language (And if we had been required to, I would have called the ACLU before I could leave the courthouse from picking up the marriage license). The number of times the LW’s boyfriend’s friend’s priest said it is waaaay over the top, but it’s not something people can ALWAYS avoid — to my knowledge, in some states, even if the person doing the ceremony isn’t a priest, you have to read the state’s definition of marriage. So people might not always have a choice about having the “one man, one woman” bullshit mentioned. I don’t know if any of that has changed since the courts started overturning all the gay marriage bans.
In my observation the couple doesn’t always have control (or forewarning!) of what a Very Religious Officiant will do or say in the ceremony, especially those in the conservative sect in which I grew up or Catholic priests. In such a case, talking to the couple beforehand might not help, both because they may not be able to control the ceremony (short of firing the officiant at the last minute and maybe changing venues, which may be worth it if the officiant is going to make the guests feel affirmatively unwelcome and unsafe), and because they might not actually know he’s going to say the offensive thing. I’ve seen weddings go unexpectedly off the rails this way. This is why I chose to be married by a secular judge who generally respected the couple’s wishes, even though I know several religious officiants who were eager and available. Thanks, but no.
I don’t think this was an issue with the denomination so much as this particular minister. Like Sars said, the bride and groom probably had no idea what he was going to say, and it’s unfair to put the responsibility for that on them and to judge everyone, or at least every clergy member, in a denomination based on doctrine that not everyone agrees with. I’m not Methodist, but my understanding is that there’s recently been a lot of debate within that church about same-sex marriage, with many people arguing passionately in favor. So researching denominations won’t really tell you anything about the person who’ll be performing the ceremony. Even in the Catholic church, there are priests who support same-sex marriage.
mcm I love that you and your husband have made a funny story out of that HORRIFYING one!
Yoshi, I’m with you. I don’t expect someone else’s ceremony to be about me or my tastes, just as Sars says — but that’s different than the minister going out of his way (during an opposite-sex wedding!) to insist EIGHTEEN TIMES that this beautiful and sacred bond of love is specifically Not For Gays. (There may well be states where you have to say it, but I do not believe that any state requires it be repeated 18 times. With any luck, after next month, those definitions of marriage will all be found unconstitutional, and that particular variety of state-mandated bullshit will die a quick and painful death.)
With that kind of off-topic political rhetoric flying around, I might walk out and go take a quiet stroll around the church grounds myself, honestly, and I’m straight. I think it’d be completely reasonable for the friend to do a little research on any next churches where he’ll be attending weddings, and stake out a spot on the aisle of any that look to have ugliness baked into their beliefs, just in case the minister goes off on a BUT NOT YOU, BUDDY tangent.
Yoshi – it irritates a lot of Australians that it’s a requirement of federal law that the ceremony state that “marriage is between a man and a woman”. It wasn’t in place when I got married (thank God), but the most recent wedding I went to the celebrant said “and now I get to the legal part. The wedded couple would all like you to drown out the part about ‘man and woman’ while I say it as they disagree totally, so please sing along to “All You Need Is Love” while I go through that bit.”
So we did. Hopefully it’ll get taken out again soon.
I agree that it’s not unreasonable to do a bit of research – the difficulty can be that official doctrine may or may not be representative of the congregation where the marriage is being held. Still, most congregations have websites these days which can give a bit of a heads up. And I guess if all else fails try and sit at the back on the edge of the row so you can go out if you really need to.
I remember one Catholic mass/wedding I attended where the homily was all about the evils of abortion. Which: okay, that’s that crowd’s jam, but, at a wedding, where presumably the couple was all set to go forth and multiply? Many eyes were rolled, with vigor and at length. And in discussions with the family of the couple afterward, many more eyes were rolled, accompanied by many more cocktails proffered and accepted.
If trapped in a pew unable to cough my way out, I’d content myself with a one-finger salute raised forcefully if discreetly behind the pew-back in front of me.
Isn: I love that celebrant’s (and couple’s) approach! That made me laugh.
Also making me laugh: (from attica) “many eyes were rolled, with vigor and at length”
Also with Yoshi here, though the possibility of Bigot Minister just going completely off-script is maybe a mitigating factor. (And honestly, in that case, I think it’s the bride or groom’s responsibility as friends to explain that and apologize *profusely* afterwards. You can’t vaudville-hook the asshole off stage mid-sermon, but you at least owe your friends an “I am so fucking sorry, I had no idea.”)
I mean, I’ve sat through a couple of ridiculous sermons.* Sometimes the guy busts out with “every non-Catholic marriage is doomed to divorce because Jesus isn’t a part of it”** or actually reads the wives-be-subject-to-your-husbands bit of Paul; you exchange Meaningfully Sarcastic looks with everyone around you and make it a fun story next time you’re drinking.
But if I was invited to a wedding and didn’t know the church, I might look into it, and if I found that it had anti-gay/anti-woman/etc stuff right up front, I would probably decline, and I might let my friends know why. (“I’m sorry, but based on XYZ, I don’t think I’d be comfortable in that environment.”) Because if they’re my friends…why are they using this church?
(I make a vague exception for Catholicism, because it’s huge and splintered in many ways. But I also understand that someone else might not, and I’d be behind them if they did the same.)
*Including one that wasn’t offensive per se, but where the priest said that if we had more love in the world, there wouldn’t be tsunamis, and I had to practically devour my own lower lip to keep from cracking up.
**For serious, the Jesus threesome. Also “[Cousin] and [Bride] are going to heaven, and they’re taking you all with them!” which…actually kind of disturbing, dude.
To clarify on my last sentence: not so much that my friends should bow to my wishes, but…if they’re my friends, presumably they’re not bigots, so why are they asking a bigoted church to represent them on such an important day? It’s not about my wishes, but if you can’t stand up to your folks enough to tell them you don’t want to tacitly endorse homophobia, then maybe you’re not the person I thought you were.
This got kinda long.
I now have some weddings in my husbands family that I will not attend nor let my daughters attend.
Several of his family members belong (converted as adults, sigh) to a church that practices a version of Christianity that really strongly is all about the wife submit yourself doctrine. I had been to that church as a meeting place with his family several times, even to more normal weddings.
But then I went to see my 18 year old niece married there. I listened to the pastor going into basically a description of how nice it is nowadays that a woman is given the choice of which man to completely follow for the rest of her days, how much more simple it was when fathers met with other families to set things up, deciding these things for their daughters…and then the suggestion that just to make the home more comfortable the husband should consider (no, he literally said this) letting her choose what TV to watch sometimes.
The bride had the most draconian vows I have ever heard. The groom literally had none.
I was horrified, and disgusted that my in-laws were part of this, and were happy being a part of letting their 18 year old sell herself into slavery. But I was even more horrified that my girls were there seeing this and seeing people they love behave as if this were okay.
We left as soon as the ceremony was over, no reception, no nothing. We will not be returning to that location. We will not be letting my daughters stay in the houses of those relatives. To their credit, the non-crazy members of husband’s family were waiting for and hoping that I would start throwing shoes or something.
When the next daughter in that family marries, I expect that Peter will go, and I support that, you love the people in your family regardless of a lot of stupidity. I will not, and my girls will not. I won’t because I don’t have the relationship to that requires that, the girls will not because impressionable.
I think in Emily’s friend’s shoes I would go, or not go based on the friendship, but I would not necessarily put a +1 through that, and I would not take any kids.
“it’s actually a bit uncomfortable that everyone’s mentioning trope-y wedding things in response to a question about a situation that would not have just infuriated me but made me question my safety and my relationship with people who would knowingly bring me into an environment like that without at least a heads-up that shit might get weird. ”
Oh, come on. Coming from a gay man, let’s dial back the drama. Question your safety?
Ferretrick: I’m not being dramatic, and I don’t like being dismissed like that. Depending on the feel of the room when those statements were made, yes, I think it is entirely possible that I would question my safety. If you feel otherwise, that’s entirely fine – your life experience and my life experience are different in many more ways than this, I’m sure – but that’s no reason to make a snide comment about ‘dial[ing] back the drama’.
I wouldn’t have blamed Friend even a little if he’d nudged his way out of the pew after Horrible Anti-Gay diatribe #10. Fake a quiet coughing fit, look apologetic to whomever is sitting next to you, and quickly make your exit. Then let people assume you’re being polite and not disturbing the service with your sudden attack of bronchitis or whatever.
Also, I’d hesitate to immediately judge the couple on their choice of church venue. Parents, grandparents, future in-laws, etc. — the pressure can be enormous to appease family. My dad was in the ICU a few months before my wedding, and asked that I get married in the Catholic church. I had to explain to him that we already had a (non-church) venue and officiant. He recovered, and he loved our wedding and our officiant. But if it had happened earlier in our planning, I can see where I might have caved. My friends would have assumed I’d lost my mind, or been replaced by an alien that looked just like me. But… ICU, tubes everywhere, machines beeping, priest getting called. You know? You don’t sit by your dad’s potential deathbed and take a political stand against his faith. I know that’s an extreme example, but over the course of wedding planning, things can get a little nutty even when a parent isn’t sick.
Hopefully the couple in this case were just as horrified as Friend was while some whack-job was making a mess of their service with a political diatribe. If not, then go ahead and reevaluate that friendship.
Just adding another voice to the chorus in reassurance that what the minister said probably (hopefully!) has nothing to do with how the couple feel and in fact they may have had no idea he was going to go off in that direction. At a friend’s wedding at least 10 years ago, the minister went off on a similar tangent and the groom apologized to a large group of friends and said he had no idea what the minister was going to say and was in fact fighting the urge to sock him in the jaw himself. They got married in the church his wife had attended when she was young and didn’t realize the political undercurrents since they both lived out of the area and were not regular church-goers.
Look, if you want to do a little research into the church someone is being married at to make sure you’re not going to have to compromise your personal beliefs/need to stab yourself to get through the ceremony, fine. There’s a lot of info out there these days, and if you want to try and predict what might be said based on the church the ceremony’s being held at/officiant selected…go ahead.
but don’t drop any of this on the couple. You don’t know what compromises they may have made because of family/tradition issues that might be causing them all kinds of aggro already, and if they’re friends of either you or your other half don’t drop any more on them.
The situation above was pretty massively over the top, but I’d bet all the money in my pockets against all the money in yours that the happy couple in question had no idea what the homily was going to be about, and had no say over the content. You would have been totally within your rights to fake a stomach cramp and get the fuck out of there after that shit started up, but grilling engaged couples on the choice of officiant and content of homilies is just not on. Right now, douchebag minister is the bigoted clown who smeared his issues all over someone’s else event but as soon as you start getting up in a couple’s face to see whether the ceremony is going to fit in your wheelhouse is where you end up his his realm.
I totally get feeling singled out here. I totally get how mean-spirited and cruel this may have felt. But you never want to make someone’s else’ wedding about you. Go ahead and do a little digging if it’s nagging at you, but realize that you may not find the answers you want. I’ve seen Catholic priests give warm, loving and inclusive blessings at churches I never would have thought possible and the reverse at a church I had been told was so wonderfully progressive.
(I think the craziest one I ever attended was the one where there were actual Admonishments To The Bride. A lot of them. In detail. None for the groom, btw. But it was her family’s church and that where they decided to be, so we tried hard not to roll our eyes and made jokes about it afterwards at the bar, where we repaired to before the reception, which was dry, despite being at a hotel. Not my style of a wedding at all, but my friends are happy, so…)
OP, I thought (if OK with Sars) the below might give your friend some comfort. It’s a really nice statement from a Methodist church about their support for same-sex marriage. Anyway, my point is this: there are sucky people in all walks of life; those clinging to a “tradition” that ensured them absolutely nothing, and pretending that “family values” are equivalent with “righteousness of everyone who looks and acts like me”. But there are those in all faiths who are working for equality. Hopefully your friend doesn’t have to sit through another upsetting ceremony ever again.
http://greenstreetchurch.org/public-statement-weddings-green-street-united-methodist-church/
I don’t see anything wrong with asking the marrying couple what the venue is (or maybe that information is right there in the invitation) and doing a quick search on their affiliations. Could be that the church website will show up with yucky slogan and that would tell me to decline the invitation.
“Ferretrick: I’m not being dramatic, and I don’t like being dismissed like that. Depending on the feel of the room when those statements were made, yes, I think it is entirely possible that I would question my safety. If you feel otherwise, that’s entirely fine – your life experience and my life experience are different in many more ways than this, I’m sure – but that’s no reason to make a snide comment about ‘dial[ing] back the drama’.”
But these are your friends who have invited you to their wedding? It’s uncomfortable, sure. It’s uncomfortable even for straight people who don’t believe that marriage is between a man and a woman. It’s also uncomfortable when the officiant talks about woman being subservient or going forth and multiplying. Wouldn’t you know if your friends are such bigots that your safety is in jeopardy? I could see being shocked that your friends are bigots and are anti-gay marriage, but for you to be in an unsafe position?
Like others have said, this may be more a reflection of the officiant, than the couple. I had a friend who didn’t think to talk to the officiant about things like that and was horrified when he mentioned marriage being between a man and a woman. At least he didn’t do it 18 times though!
JT: Again, as this is all hypothetical, it’s hard to say one way or the other, but I have been to a number of weddings and other celebrations for friends whose families I don’t know at all; if that were the case and I were suddenly hearing a series of very personal jabs from the priest, and (again, hypothetically) the people around me appeared to agree? Yes, I would be concerned. I would certainly question whether or not it would be safe for me to be there with my wife (if she were with me) or to answer honestly any questions about my life by people who assumed I was straight (which is most people). It wouldn’t be the first time that someone I trusted put me in what turned out to be an unsafe space. And while I may or may not feel that it was the couple’s fault or responsibility, that doesn’t change the fact that… hey, here I am in a room full of people who object to my basic rights. Huh.
I should clarify – and I’m sorry if this was unclear earlier – that by safety I didn’t strictly mean physical safely, though that is always a concern. I was also referring to psychological safety, e.g., feeling like I can speak honestly about my life without fearing that I’m going to be treated poorly or on the receiving end of a lot of shitty homophobic comments. And that happens a lot more than I would like, even in my comparatively lefty bastion of Boston. In other parts of the country/world, it’s almost a given. If you’ve ever been in the situation of having to lie about something that big and pervasive because you’re not sure if it’s something you can ‘safely’ reveal, you’ll know that that is a real and valid concern. If you haven’t been in that position, it may seem like an easy and relatively stress-free thing to sit on for an afternoon, but… it’s a lot of lying/omitting, and on top of absolutely ruining the event for me, it’s exhausting and frankly enraging. To compare that to the experience of straight allies who disagree with homophobia on principle… nope. I appreciate your support with all my heart, and I depend on it to help make change happen,, but it is not the same, not at ALL the fucking same.
This is a tricky conversation for me to have (especially in the impersonal medium of online commenting) because it’s very hard to talk about my feelings here without coming off as a spoilsport big-A Activist who wants to make everyone’s lives about my shit. I don’t. But it is also hard to have to justify why this situation would be distressing to me on a different level than it would be for even the most passionate straight ally. (And JT, based on your reference to its effect on straight supporters I am assuming that you’re straight; I’m sorry if I misunderstood.)
A few other commenters have mentioned similar situations wherein the celebrant went rogue and the couple proceeded to apologise, or at least acknowledge it. If that were the situation, I would feel better, especially if other guests seemed atartled by the nonsense as well. But if that weren’t the case, I would feel at the very least like I would have to hide basic truths about myself and my life in order to protect myself and avoid uncomfortable confrontations at someone else’s event. That is miles above and beyond the standard-issue ‘don’t discuss religion or politics at the dinner table’ social contract rules that force all of us to choose our battles all the time. That is the point that I’m trying so hard to make, that the two situations are too different for the same rules to apply evenly to both.
Now that the wedding is over, has he had contact with the married couple? If they are close to them a quick, “what did you think of that sermon”? might be OK. I’m sorry your friend had to sit through it – any sermon that browbeats a sensitive topic 18 times in rapid succession would be hard to take.
I attended a funeral on my husband’s side of the family that devolved into a long diatribe about how today’s kids are rotten because they aren’t beaten enough (aka “disciplined”) like older generations. It was horrifying. The chapel was tiny and there was no way to get out without climbing over a dozen people, so I sat there and fumed.
OP here — still thinking about the responses, but I will say that i found the tone of Sars’ response a little off-putting, with comments like “These weddings aren’t about him, and he seems to find that alienating; maybe he should stay home until he can instead find that freeing.” I just really don’t see how my friend’s anger at the extremity of the bigotry expressed by the officiant (anger which he did not express to the couple, by the way) implies that my friend is somehow so self-centered he can’t deal with weddings “not being about him.” Similarly, I don’t really understand the “Decline to attend ceremonies: no” answer — I don’t understand why Sars would argue that it would be okay to leave if this is part of the ceremony, but somehow not okay to not attend ceremonies that are run by church denominations that explicitly do not support gay marriage…
To clarify: anger at the officiant is warranted and appropriate. Researching every invitation beforehand, and declining all of those that aren’t, say, UCC or have an open-and-affirming button on their websites…seems limiting, and like borrowing trouble, to me. It’s engaging with and defining these situations and events as fraught first and foremost, and my point when I say it isn’t about him is just that: the ceremony’s purpose is to marry the couple. The wedding’s purpose, taken entire, is to celebrate the marriage. If Friend doesn’t feel he can do that for couples who have chosen to marry in the conservatively wrongheaded congregations of their youth, okay; people have all kinds of reasons for declining wedding invitations — atheism, high dudgeon about cash bars, you name it. “Good reason to believe based on the number of crosses and doves on this envelope that this isn’t a friendly environment” is good enough for me, God knows.
But your letter does make it sound like, thanks to this officiant’s bigoted agenda, Friend’s perspective on weddings is now “how can I avoid being offended, disappointed, or preached at,” and I understand that reaction (to the extent a het lady can), but I think it’s misguided.
To clarify the “decline to attend ceremonies”: opinions on this vary, but the way I was raised, it’s tacky to cherry-pick the invitation. Accept or decline the whole thing. The reception is everyone’s reward for going to church on a Saturday (hee); no cutting straight to the champagne. Now, if you get lost [cough] en route to the church and just can’t get there in time for the joylessly -ist homily, hey, things happen and nobody’s going to interrogate you about it, but the RSVP isn’t where you split the difference there.
Emily, I think it’s a matter of knowing the couple vs. knowing the church. And the understanding that within a church there are priests/pastors whose views will vary from doctrine. So a progressive or evolving church may still have a pastor with some backward views and a Catholic church may have a priest with more progressive ones.
So even if Friend asked the couple about the church, it might not give him the info he needs. We’ve heard several examples where the couple was blindsided by unexpected rhetorical turns of their officiants.
Friend can investigate the church and avoid an outspokenly bigoted congregation. But this also becomes a matter of putting his (totally understandable) desire to avoid an offensive diatribe above his friendship with the couple — which of course is a choice he has every right to make. A lot may depend on the nature of the friendship. A co-worker who felt obliged to invite the whole department? Maybe not worth the potential aggro. A close childhood friend? Different story, perhaps, in terms of what Friend is willing to risk to celebrate with people he loves.
In my experience, no one but the minister knows ahead of time the content of the homily that will be delivered at the wedding. We had a great minister whose homily at our wedding unexpectedly left a lot to be desired–his whole point was, basically, you literally are one person now, not two. I had a few people say to me in the weeks after the wedding, “The hell was that about?” And this was in a progressive denomination.
Yoshi, I was saying that it’s uncomfortable for everyone involved (straight, gay, asexual), when officiants talk about marriage being between a man and woman strictly. I wasn’t comparing being in that situation as a gay person to being in that situation as a straight person. Saying it’s a shitty situation for everyone. And no, I’m not straight.
Thinking about this more, it’s pretty sad that simply saying, “hey, it’s even uncomfortable for straight people too.” means that I must be straight. Why go we need to throw out our straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transsexual, asexual, etc. credentials to have an opinion? Not every gay person has the same experience and opinion.
Researching every invitation beforehand, and declining all of those that aren’t, say, UCC or have an open-and-affirming button on their websites…seems limiting, and like borrowing trouble, to me.
Maybe? If OP’s friend decides to let stuff like that roll off his back in the name of supporting friends, that’s fine. But declining such invitations to avoid the bigotry isn’t making their wedding all about him, either. Imagine that instead of hammering the anti-gay message, the officiant had been saying nasty things about black people. Would you feel differently about someone wanting to boycott similar ceremonies? If yes, why?
JT: I have clearly stated several times that I am speaking from and about my own experiences and opinions. I am not trying to say that all LGB people have had the same experiences I have had. I fully understand that homophobia is an unpleasant and uncomfortable thing for straight allies too, and I have acknowledged that too. What I don’t understand is why you seem so unwilling to recognise that LGB people experience homophobia differently than straight allies do. This is not a matter of ‘throw[ing] out credentials’, it is a simple fact of reality: just as people of colour experience racism differently than white allies do, and women experience sexism differently than male allies do, and transgendered people experience transphobia differently than cis-gendered people do, and so on and so on for every marginalised group in society, so same-sex-attracted people experience homophobia differently than straight allies do. It is more personal because it is directed at me personally.
As a woman, it drives me crazy when men try to explain sexism to me, or tell me what I should or shouldn’t be offended by. As a lesbian, it drives me crazy when straight people do that. As a white person and a cis person and an able-bodied person and so on, I have learned from this and try very hard not to do that when I am listening to other people’s stories. I have learned that when someone tells me a story about their life that doesn’t gel with my experience of the world, that is not an opportunity for me to explain the situation back to them or tell them how they should feel or get mad that they’re not acknowledging that these bad things affect me too. Being a good ally means allowing people the time and space to talk about heir lives and their experiences, and recognising that just because I don’t run into the same challenges in the world doesn’t mean that those challenges don’t exist or that the person is being sensitive or dramatic or isn’t recognising that the world is hard for me too.
Again, I understand that homophobia is hurtful to straight allies as well as to LGB people. But no matter how unpleasant it is for you, it will never be a personal attack in the way that it is for an LGB person. This is not a matter of ‘credentials’ (which is just a new way of saying ‘playing the [x] card’, by the way), nor is it about my trying to universalise my experience. It is, and has been all along, just my trying to clarify that homophobia is experienced differently by LGB people than by straight people, even the most ardent straight allies. Because it… is. It’s at us, it’s about us. And if your goal is to be a good ally, which I hope it is, I think it’s important that you understand that challenging me over and over and emphasising over and over how much it hurts *you* and why don’t I recognise that, well… that’s not listening. That’s not helping to create a safe space. That’s saying that a straight person’s experience of homophobia is as hurtful and damaging as an LGB person’s experience of homophobia. And that’s not being an ally.
@cinderkeys, that’s clearly not what I meant. Bigotry is bigotry; I “feel” it should be avoided/not tolerated regardless of which nasty flavor is on the menu. I also feel that presuming beforehand that a congregation or officiant is going to be guilty of homophobic thought and speech is mostly going to make Friend bitter.
Bigotry that’s in evidence, like this officiant’s, is one thing; a wedding that hasn’t taken place yet is another. The former is unacceptable; the latter, I think you have to give people a chance to get it right. Granting, of course, that the getting of it wrong doesn’t affect this het lady as directly, but still.
Yoshi, I said I wasn’t straight. Not sure why you’re still calling me a straight ally and saying I couldn’t possibly understand. My point in saying that every lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, asexual, and straight person doesn’t have the same experience is to say that I shouldn’t have to qualify my comment with my orientation to have an opinion or to not be assumed that I am straight. That is actually really really upsetting and offensive. And no the credentials comment is not the same as playing the x card. It’s the my opinion is discounted and I’m assumed straight, unless I say I’m not. And even after I said I wasn’t, I get another long rant acting like I am? F that noise.
We clearly are not having the conversation you think we’re having 1) because I’m not saying what you’re saying I’m saying. And 2. You’re calling me a straight “ally” when I already said I am not straight. But keep it up. I’m clearly the problem. (Sigh.)
Again, I simply was saying its shitty for everyone. Not that straight people experience homophobia the same. No way at all did I say that. At all.
I made an innocent comment regarding the comment you made about your safety. I have that right to make that comment. I wasn’t saying that your experience was wrong. I just was questioning you being concerned with your safety. Not as an attack, but as a question. That’s allowed. I wasn’t explaining the situation back to you or telling you how you should feel. I actually barely commented, so that was all you reading into my few lines of comment.
But whatever apparently I’m straight! Who knew??
I think you have to give people a chance to get it right.
If it were me, I don’t think it would be possible to go into the situation without bracing for it. And if I could somehow make myself not brace for it, the impact of the bigotry would make me even more bitter.
Your approach isn’t wrong. I wouldn’t argue against pursuing it if that’s what LW’s friend wanted to do. But it isn’t the only right approach.
Emily, it sounds like you’re a good friend–and it’s great you’re trying to figure out how to help your friend. The one thing that I was thinking as I was reading your letter, Sars’s response, and the comments that follow is that this also feels like a situation where there could be a fine line between wanting to help your friend by helping him think through his options and telling your friend what you think he should do.
It’s great that you’ve written this letter to get more thoughts, but ultimately, your friend is the one who has to decide what he’s comfortable with and there’s a titch bit of “what should I tell him to do?” coming through here. My .02 is to resist the latter as much as you can. Listen, react to what he’s sharing with you, but I dunno–I’d try to do everything I could to encourage him to find out what he’ll be at peace with and just have his back with whatever that is. Let him figure that out, and just be there for him as he does.
I’m jumping in to this really late, but about 20 years ago, I was part of a dear friend’s wedding and she wanted me (a gay male, but only the “male” part is really relevant) on her side during the service. I knew her husband-to-be but not nearly as well. I didn’t know any of the groomsmen. They cleared it with the minister beforehand, he said he didn’t have a problem with it. At the church just before the ceremony, he informed her that I absolutely could not stand on the bride’s side. Her southern gentleman father actually went to her defense and berated the minister (privately) about his change of plans at the last minute. Finally, in the interest of keeping the peace, I told her “Look, I can just stand on the groom’s side. We all know that you wanted me on your side.” Then we berated the minister afterwards at the reception and drank a lot of champagne. Not the same, really, because most of the people attending had no idea this had transpired, but it really points out that you don’t know what the minister/priest/clergy is going to do – even if you clear it before hand.