Sunday, October 30, 2022
I took my seat in my usual pew of the historic church, hoping I would finally feel the Spirit move me with an awe and reverence for the history of the place. I’m moved to tears in almost any house of worship, but especially those like this one that have witnessed so much history unfold—where world leaders humbled themselves before their Creator while ordinary people across time took part in timeless rituals marking the stages of our lives. But after over a year of coming to this place, where I thought God had called me, I never felt particularly moved by it. On that crisp October morning, I was ready for the Holy Spirit to finally come at me with His best shot.
As Bishop Gene Robinson looked around the small and simple space from the pulpit, I felt embarrassed by our failure to fill the pews for his “victory lap.” The small crowd that day, much like his small stature and soft voice, seemed to belie the importance of this occasion. Whatever one thinks of the retired bishop, most would agree he played a truly historic role. The man about to preach to this small gathering had arguably shaped history for this church more than any other person in recent memory. He not only changed the Episcopal Church—he precipitated a movement that would allow me to marry the handsome man in the clerical collar seated by the altar and below the pulpit where the bishop was about to deliver his homily.
The Right Reverend Bishop Gene Robinson took his place on the stage of history in 2003 with his election as Bishop of the Diocese of New Hampshire. However, the notice people took of this historic event was not for the reasons we remember today. As I looked back at the coverage of this obscure prelate from a small state, I realized how the conversation at the time was less about the dignity of gays and our relationships and more about the collision between religion and modern-day culture. We now recognize it as a watershed moment for marriage equality.
Among the many ironies along the road to marriage equality, perhaps the most poignant is how important the church was in paving it. After all, the church had condemned homosexuality as an abomination for centuries, declared AIDS to be God’s righteous judgment, and fought hardest to prevent recognition of our relationships. And yet, we still do not fully appreciate how significant the election of a gay priest to the episcopacy of one of America’s oldest and most established churches was in making same-sex marriage a reality.
There was something about that kind, gentle, and almost earnest man drowning in his vestments that not only elicited empathy but even a glimmer of hope that perhaps this was the role model and community I had always sought. The most famous gay figures I, and most Americans, knew at the time were either of the perpetually closeted variety— caricatures of their own lack of self-awareness, or the more radical subversive types who seemed to delight in finding new ways to offend as many people as ostentatiously as possible. When Gene Robinson accepted his new role with grace and humility while also bravely refusing to deny the person he loved, I remember feeling truly proud; I wanted to shout from the rooftops: “This is who we are—this, too, is what it means to be gay!”
For many gay men and women, the desire was simple and deeply human: to have our relationships treated with dignity and respect. For much of my life, I never felt different in that essential, human desire—to fall in love and share my life with another. What could be more human than that? After finding that person at the unusually young age of 21, I would spend the next seventeen years never feeling ashamed of being gay. The only shame I ever felt was when I betrayed his trust by having sex with others and when I eventually left him to “discover myself.” As shocking as it may sound, I am grateful for that shame. I was a better person for it.
I never, however, felt ashamed of being gay. I was sometimes overly self-conscious and not always as forthright about my sexuality as circumstances demanded, but when it came to the heart of the matter—my love for my partner—I held onto a fierce and abiding pride. That pride, for me, was the same as the pride any spouse feels for the person they have vowed to cherish and protect. This is what “gay pride” has always meant to me. When Gene Robinson refused to hide his love, as so many before him had been forced to do, he wasn’t only standing up for himself—he was standing up for the person he loved. His brave yet profoundly humble act of honesty inspired me more than I realized at the time.
How much he inspired the true heroes of the marriage equality fight is impossible to say. But over the coming years, almost every family across America would come to meet these heroes—the millions upon millions of gay men and women who came out of the closet. For many of these heroes, they weren’t coming out to reveal the prurient details of their sexual fantasies; they were revealing the people they loved or, at the very least, the love they hoped to one day find. Although far too many faced ostracism, rejection, and even violence by the people they should have trusted most, the cumulative effect of so many brave men and women touching every town, every church, and every family across the country explains the most rapid and dramatic shift in public opinion on any social issue since public opinion polling began.
This was the real revolution. It wasn’t courtroom battles or legislative victories that changed America’s view of same-sex marriage. It was the moment when every town, every church, and every family came to know someone who was gay and recognized the same yearning for love and commitment they saw in themselves.
The “Great Coming Out” of the Aughts was not a concerted drive to advance civil rights or social justice—nor was it a strategic campaign to assert our grievances or to accuse others of trampling on our rights. Rather, it was fundamentally an act of bearing witness. At its core, it was our collective need to honor the relationships we had nurtured or longed for—a quiet, heartfelt declaration that our capacity to love and be loved wasn’t a subversive anomaly but rather the very essence of our shared humanity.
In revealing our authentic selves, we were making a humble request for assimilation. We wished for our love to be recognized on the same terms as that experienced by our straight brothers and sisters—the simple, universal human aspiration to fall in love, to create a family, and to share the seasons of life with a partner, growing old together in a bond defined by mutual commitment and fidelity.
These modest pleas, of course, faced fierce resistance. Even as our public declarations of love began to ripple through society, they were met with a backlash that underscored the deep cultural fault lines of our era. Although Bishop Robinson was not seeking a culture war, the culture war came nonetheless and continues to rage today. On one side, the evangelical right—steeped in a literal interpretation of sacred texts and longstanding doctrinal orthodoxy—viewed any deviation from heterosexual marriage as an existential threat to the moral order. On the other side, radical gay activists vehemently opposed the very notion of assimilation. These activists argued that the drive to conform to a heteronormative framework would erase “queerness.” Ironically, both sides insisted upon defining gay people by their sexual behavior, rather than by our shared need to love and be loved.
Over time, the language of the conversation began to evolve from a focus on assimilation to one of justice. In the early years, the appeal at the center of the conversation was simple: grant us access to the institution of marriage—a union defined by fidelity, monogamy, and the enduring commitment shared by heterosexual couples. However, over time, the language shifted toward addressing systemic inequities and social justice. The Episcopal Church, in particular, began to adopt the mantle of social justice, framing the struggle as part of a wider fight against discrimination and historical marginalization. In doing so, the conversation shifted from granting gay couples access to a stabilizing institution and entered the broader arena of civil rights and group identity. While this shift occurred with only the best of intentions, it also redirected focus away from the original promise of marriage equality—a promise centered on the personal, covenantal nature of marriage—and towards a debate about justice and rights.
Alongside the shift in emphasis from assimilation to social justice, was the rise of queer theology—a movement that sought to reinterpret Christian doctrines through the lens of sexual identity and liberation. This theology, which gained traction in seminaries over the past few decades, positioned sexual freedom as a central tenet of faith, reframing traditional Christian ethics around desire, autonomy, and self-expression. The result was a new generation of LGBTQ+ clergy in the Episcopal Church who saw monogamy not as a moral obligation, but as a vestige of heteronormative oppression.
The commitment to lifelong fidelity—once understood as a sanctifying discipline—was now viewed by some as an unrealistic, even harmful, expectation. In its place, the language of liberation took center stage: freedom from repression, freedom from imposed norms, freedom to define relationships on one's own terms. In seminaries that had once instilled in priests a sense of pastoral duty to uphold and strengthen marriage, many were now being encouraged to see marriage itself as a fluid and evolving institution, one that must adapt to modern understandings of identity and sexual expression rather than demand constraint or sacrifice. The very notion that marriage might require limitation—on one's desires, on one's impulses, on one's self—was increasingly seen as suspect. And so, as same-sex couples were welcomed into the Church’s blessing, the expectation of monogamy that traditionally defined marriage (and still remains mostly uncontroversial for heterosexual marriages) came to be seen as too dangerous to discuss for same-sex marriages.
I don’t recall a single thing from the sermon. I do, however, recall feeling nauseous and a desperate need to breathe in the cool autumn air before becoming sick. Before I could escape, I had to wait in line for the obligatory introduction and photo of the two gay priests of the church and their husbands, with the four of us standing beside the legendary bishop who had helped pave a path toward recognition of our love.
And yet, this day felt more like a funeral than a celebration. As I watched the recently divorced bishop, I realized that my own hopes and dreams of the previous five years of my marriage and joint ministry had not only died but had been betrayed—not only by a husband but by a movement and a church that screamed from the highest pulpits about injustice and equal rights and yet never spoke candidly about the obligations of the institution that seemed to be crumbling all around us from cynicism and neglect.
After the last picture was taken, I apologized for my hasty exit. As I stepped into the solemn quiet of the church graveyard, the full weight of betrayal settled over me—a betrayal both intimate and institutional, deeply cynical in refusing to confront the truth. My husband, the priest maintained with unwavering conviction that monogamy was neither required nor desired, while the church avoided the subject entirely. Bishop Robinson had inspired a dream I never thought would arrive in my lifetime. But when the miracle of same-sex marriage arrived, instead of gaining equal access to an institution defined by rules and tradition, my marriage became a trophy—a symbol of a victory for social justice I didn’t even know we were fighting for.
WATCH FOR NEXT WEEK’S ESSAY:
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