Today feels grim. So much hatred pouring out in my newsfeed. Ironically it’s all directed in the name of tolerance, progress, and love.
Love. I don’t think that word means what they think it means.
I wasn’t planning on writing anything at all today, and honestly, I feel too emotional to touch it just yet. Luckily I came across this beautiful, charitable, and deeply true piece by Mary, who blogs at Let Love Be Sincere and is also pregnant with her 4th sweet baby. Mary and her husband, Aaron, are raising their beautiful bi-racial family outside of Detroit, and will soon be adding a little estrogen to the mix. And, ah, they have a little firsthand experience with what actual intolerance looks like. Thanks for sharing your story today, Mary.
This is what my husband wrote on Facebook a few moments ago…
“This decision does not affect me personally as an individual. The way that is does affect me is being a Catholic father raising 4 children in the 21st century. What does today’s decision mean in terms of the world my 4 children will be raised in, one different than the one I came up in?
One of the best things that God gave us is free will, a very powerful gift. However, that gift came with boundaries. To me, I think that the message to my children is that there is the Law of God and the Law of Man. Previously, the two intersected and there wasn’t much of a difference.
Now, they are farther and farther apart from each other and that gap appears to continually increase. One is static and won’t ever change for our benefit and the other is relative and changes with the culture. Today’s decision is a large victory for the Law of Man. It allows people to make their own choices as they see fit for them. I don’t have a problem with that.
My hope is that the Law of Man stays away from the Law of God. My hope is that people do not try to now go into churches and demand that churches marry same-sex couples. Much like churches respect the legal system, even though they may not agree we need to keep the legal system outside of churches whether they agree or not.” – Aaron Wilkerson
My husband is and will probably always be the smartest men I know … and his words perfectly articulate how I and so many others feel about the Supreme Court’s decision today. I didn’t have a strong opinion on what SCOTUS would do; if anything, I knew things would swing this way. But as so many people celebrate, I find myself terribly worried.
I am worried for my children. I hope that the many people who are celebrating today will remember to respect our family’s decision to define the Sacrament of Marriage as different from Legal Marriage. Truth be told, I am not confident that will be the case, and that scares me, for my children … more than I can articulate.
After I heard the Supreme Court decision, my eldest was having a meltdown (someone is always having a meltdown around here.)
So I held him in my arms and rocked him, it was a perfect moment. He was looking up at me and I was looking at him and we were quiet.
It lasted about five minutes, which, at his age, is a lot. As I held him, looking into his eyes, I found myself almost moved to tears with anxiety about how I will raise him in this world. Raise him to know his faith, and to live his faith.
Raise him to stick to his convictions and to our Faith’s understanding of marriage, and sexuality… raise him to always treat people with love and respect, even if they see things differently than we do.
But then I see my Facebook newsfeed flooded with words like bigot, others in an almost hysterical frenzy to describe people like me, people who don’t really care what the government decides to do, but who want to make sure my faith will always be permitted to hold to it’s convictions surrounding traditional sexuality and nature. And I worry, such very real worry, that even his very life could be at risk for holding to those views in a matter of time.
Reactionary? Maybe. But how I’m feeling? Certainly.
And I do think, in case you are wondering, of my gay friends, some of them with children, who are probably looking at their children today, gazing into their eyes and feeling a hope for them that they have never been able to feel before. I know that my worry to them seems silly, as they soak in the joy of what they see as an advancement of culture today.
So, I guess, like Aaron, I just have to hope that maybe this country of ours will at this point in history actually live the words of Christ correctly, the words to “Render unto to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s”- Mark 12
The fear is that it never really works out that way, historically.
Maybe this time will be different.
And so, today, I will continue to pray for love to be more prevalent in the world: real love, good love, love based on sacrifice, the denial of self … the only love that has ever really brought about authentic happiness. His love.
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