Dawning Hope:
The
Supreme Court
and
the Case of Lewis v. Harris
By
John Shelby Spong, ctaww.org from the Web, July 28, 2006
The Supreme Court of
the State of New Jersey will sometime in the next few months
hand down its ruling in the case of Lewis v. Harris.
The final arguments from the attorneys for the plaintiff and the
state have already been heard. All that remains is for the
members of the Court to engage in their own deliberations, to
vote and to announce their decision.
This case was filed more than three years ago by seven gay and
lesbian couples of New Jersey, who have been living in faithful,
committed and loving partnerships that range from 13 to 34 years
in duration. They are asking in this suit for the State to
recognize their relationships as marriages and to sanction them,
thus giving them the same rights and privileges enjoyed by
heterosexual couples, including equal benefits under the tax
codes, full spousal coverage in insurance programs, and equal
visitation rights and authority in all circumstances of
sickness, accidents and death.
It has been my privilege to know two of these seven couples
quite well. I respect their integrity, I honor their
partnerships and I yearn for the High Court of this State to put
its legal stamp of approval on their commitments to each other.
Even more, I want this Court to speak for the people of New
Jersey. It would mark one more time in our history when
this State strikes a blow for justice and inclusion in the long
human struggle to make the promise of our State Constitution to
provide our citizens with equal protection under the law a
reality.
Because I feel so deeply about this matter, I have taken the
unusual step of becoming amicus curiae, filing a brief
with the Court in support of the petition of these seven
couples. I wanted the members of the Supreme Court to know
that New Jersey’s retired Episcopal Bishop is ready to welcome
their positive decision. I do not believe I am alone in
this.
I am encouraged about the prospects for this case. The
questions asked by the justices during final arguments seemed to
me to offer sufficient reason to anticipate a positive decision.
The State of New Jersey is a place where a consensus has already
been formed in favor of extending basic human rights to all of
our citizens. This case has been in the legal process
since 2002, winding its way step by step to this last stop with
the Supreme Court. The time for a decision has come.
I thus have great expectation for a positive decision.
This decision is a deeply personal one for me. I grew up
as homophobic as anyone I know. It was healthy, whole and
indeed wonderful gay and lesbian people who by the beauty and
integrity of their lives, forced me to reassess and finally to
abandon my ill-informed prejudices. On the day that I
retired as the Bishop of Newark, I had 35 openly gay and lesbian
clergy serving churches in my Diocese. Thirty-one of those
clergy lived with their partners, once again quite openly.
Our Diocesan Convention supported the issues brought to us by
our homosexual members with huge majority votes. Gay and
lesbian clergy were elected by this Convention time after time
to the highest offices a Diocese can bestow upon a priest.
Never once in my 24-year career as a bishop did I have a
complaint about sexual misconduct on the part of any of our gay
or lesbian clergy. I cannot make that statement about our
heterosexual clergy.
Our stance as a Diocese also brought tremendous numbers of gay
and lesbian lay people out of their closets of fear and into
significant roles of leadership in the life of the Diocese.
At this moment a gay attorney is the president of our Standing
Committee, a gay university professor is the chair of the
committee to nominate candidates for the office of the tenth
Bishop of Newark, who will be elected in September and who will
then become my successor twice removed. These people were
chosen for these positions for no other reason than that they
were competent and devoted Christians. I no longer believe
it is possible for any part of the institutional church to claim
to be ‘the body of Christ,’ if it is not open to all of the
variations that exist in the human family. For me that is
not being liberal, it is simply being Christian! I do not
think it is coincidental that two of the seven couples in this
lawsuit are part of the Episcopal Church in the Diocese of
Newark. Both of these couples are people I admire.
That is why I have chosen to stand with them in this case.
The first is a lesbian couple; active lay people in one of the
churches I was privileged to serve as bishop. These women,
who have been a couple as long as I have known them, have
children who are reaching toward the teenage years. Their
parish priest is one of our finest; an open, sensitive and
courageous man, whose church signboard states overtly, that in
this house of worship all gay, lesbian, and transgender people
are welcome. That welcome is real. The homosexual
members of that church are not merely tolerated; their presence
is enthusiastically celebrated. Indeed this wonderfully
diverse and open congregation charters buses on ‘Gay Pride’ day
so that its straight members can join its gay members marching
together in the ‘Pride’ parade down 5th Avenue in New York City.
This lesbian couple has also been an inspiration to this
congregation. When their child was baptized some years ago
in that Church, the entire congregation gathered to be the
welcoming community. It was quite poignant to me that
during the closing arguments before the New Jersey Supreme
Court, one of the members of this particular couple told the
justices that it was her hope that she and her partner “could
get married before our children do.” I join them in that
hope.
The partners who form the other couple I know even better, for
one of them was and is a priest in our Diocese. His
partner is an Episcopal priest in the Diocese of New York.
Both serve with distinction in two different Episcopal Churches,
separated only by the Hudson River. Beyond having had this
professional relationship with them, these two people are also
close personal friends both to me and to my wife. The four
of us have shared meals together on five or six occasions since
my retirement, sometimes in our home and sometimes in theirs.
When I was still the active bishop this priest was one of the
most effective ordained leaders of our Diocese. He was and
still is an extraordinary clergyman, well loved by his
congregation that deeply appreciates his sensitive and
enthusiastic ministry. He lives his life quietly but quite
openly and enjoys the admiration of all who know him. He
is respected in his community, writing a well-read and popular
weekly column in his local newspaper. He has served on the
Board of Trustees at the major hospital in his area, giving much
of his time to that facility. Doctors and nurses alike, as
well as the administrative staff and trustees hold him in high
esteem. He is active in the civic life of his larger
region and state, including doing volunteer work on the
telephones for the Public Broadcasting System during their
annual fundraising drive. He has an infectious sense of
humor and is quite often the life of the party in a variety of
social settings. His partner is a dedicated urban priest
in New York City, whose church has helped to transform his
neighborhood. The Bishop of New York is as fond of him as
I am of his partner. These two priests have found in each
other a sustaining love that has made each of them more whole,
more giving and more alive.
The arguments against gay marriage are to me so strange,
revealing, as they do, deep levels of irrationality. The
State of New Jersey, in the defendant role in this case, has
argued that marriage is by definition between one man and one
woman. However, there were times in American history when
that was not all it took. It was not until 1967 that the
Supreme Court of the United States ruled that all state laws
prohibiting racially mixed marriage were invalid. There
were also times in history when the words one man and one woman
did not imply equality since the woman did not enjoy the same
rights in that marriage as the man. Now the State of New
Jersey is actually arguing that gay marriage will somehow
compromise this historically already compromised institution.
This defense is an example of how entrenched interests always
grasp at irrational straws to buttress their dying prejudices.
The executive director of the league of American Families, John
Tomicki, opposing the petition of these couples, said before the
proceedings, “We hope the Court will resist the temptation to
legislate from the bench.” That is a tired argument and
was used to try to stop the Supreme Court from both declaring
segregation illegal and supporting the rights of women to equal
treatment. “Legislating” is an interesting code word.
New Jersey’s Assistant Attorney General, Patrick De Almeida,
took the same line in his closing statement, basing his entire
case on the argument that this is an issue that should be
decided not by the courts but by the legislature. Since
when, I wonder, have basic human rights been granted by the vote
of the legislature, rather than by the guarantee of the
Constitution? What this argument seems to be based on is
the hope that there is sufficient homophobia still existing in
the people of this State to defeat equality for homosexual
people through a legislative process. If that is true then
no person would ever be safe from the tyranny of the majority.
This pitiful argument is a tacit admission that justice for gay
and lesbian people is right but it might not yet be sufficiently
popular to be passed by a vote in the legislature.
Clearly, under our State Constitution, it is the Court’s duty to
make this decision. If inequality before the law is the
plight or the reality of any citizen of this state, then the
Supreme Court must act to remove the barrier. I believe
this Court will act and when it does I will be very proud of my
adopted and now much loved state.
(Other “recent articles” by Bishop Spong can be found at
www.ctaww.org)
GayPasg Note:
The following two books by Bishop Spong have been very helpful
to us with our keeping loaner copies:
1988 -- Living in Sin? A Bishop Rethinks Human Sexuality,
ISBN 0060675071
1991 -- Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism: A Bishop
Rethinks the Meaning of Scripture, ISBN 0060675187
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