When Gay Rights Clash With Religious Freedom
In this essay for the New York Times, Tish Harrison Warren reflects on the progression of legislation around LGBTQ+ rights and the impact it has on both Christians and those in the LGBTQ+ community. “Pluralism is not the same as relativism” Warren explains. “…We don’t have to pretend that there is no right or wrong or that beliefs don’t matter. It is instead a commitment to form a society where individuals and groups who hold profoundly different and mutually opposed beliefs are welcome at the table of public life. It is rooted in love of neighbor and asks us to extend the same freedoms to others that we ourselves want to enjoy. Without a commitment to pluralism, we are left with a society that either forces conformity or splinters and falls apart.”
You can read the full article here.
[Pluralism] is rooted in love of neighbor and asks us to extend the same freedoms to others that we ourselves want to enjoy
Tish Harrison Warren
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The day the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges ruling came down in 2015, establishing a constitutional right to same-sex marriage, I called one of my dearest, oldest friends, a fellow writer, who is gay, married and lives in Oklahoma. Our conversation was over two hours long and one of the most vulnerable, loving talks we have ever had. I said to him, “Tell me every way this ruling makes your life better.”
One story he told sticks in my memory. A few months before, his husband, Brian, went to the emergency room with a serious cardiac condition. My friend told me that on the way to the hospital, amid this horrifically scary situation, one other fear whispered in the back of his mind. He was going to a Catholic hospital. What if the hospital policies didn’t permit him to be with Brian in the E.R. or the I.C.U.? This ruling, he told me, lessened that fear.
I want my friend and all people to be able to have this assurance in times of crisis, and we need laws ensuring that’s the case. My friend knows that though I respect secular same-sex marriage, I am a priest in a denomination that understands holy matrimony to be the spiritual and sexual union of a man and a woman and that I would not preside over a same-sex wedding.
Near the end of our conversation, I said, “I will genuinely celebrate with you that you have less to fear. And will you promise to write on my behalf if my church or my kids’ Christian school ever loses its tax-exempt status over opposition to gay marriage?” He laughed and said he would.
About Tish Harrison Warren
Tish is a priest in the Anglican Church in North America. She is the author of the award-winning books Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life and Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work, or Watch, or Weep. Her articles and essays have appeared in Religion News Service, Christianity Today, Comment Magazine, The Point Magazine, The New York Times, and elsewhere. For over a decade, Tish has worked in ministry settings as a campus minister with InterVarsity Graduate and Faculty Ministries, as an associate rector, and with addicts and those in poverty through various churches and non-profit organizations. She is a founding member of The Pelican Project and a Senior Fellow with the Trinity Forum.
