I’m not one to preach.
But last weekend I was called upon to perform a marriage out of love for two
young men, deeply in love.
Over that same long, holiday weekend, Kim Davis, the once-meek Kentucky
county clerk now hoisted to celebrity status by anti-gay-marriage crusaders and
a couple of 2016 presidential wannabes, spent five nights in jail for refusing
to issue marriage licenses – which is her job.
She sheathed her pen, pitting the supreme being vs. the Supreme Court’s
Obergefell v. Hodges ruling on June 26, which legalized gay marriage
nationwide.
If the irony of a marriage-license-wielding clerk in her fourth marriage
isn’t enough, or a court denizen breaking the law or even a citizen standing up
for religious liberty while denying others due process, then maybe it's time to
throw the good book at the good clerk.

Rowan County Clerk of Courts Kim Davis waves to a crowd of her supporters at
a rally in front of the Carter County Detention Center in Grayson, Ky., on Sept.
8, 2015. Davis was ordered to jail last week for contempt of court after
refusing a court order to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. (Photo:
Ty Wright, Getty Images)
I’m not a Christian. But one of the grooms I married was raised Catholic, so
I spent weeks thinking about how to weave God’s word into the ceremony. Mostly,
I focused on the love passages.
And here’s what I learned the Bible also has to say about:
• Judgment. From Matthew 7:1-3: “Judge not, that ye be not judged. ... And
why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not
the beam that is in thine own eye?”
• Equality. From Numbers 15:15: "For the assembly, there shall be one statute
for you and for the stranger who sojourns with you, a statute forever throughout
your generations. You and the sojourner shall be alike before the Lord."
As humans, it’s hard to avoid interpreting what we read through the filter of
our own beliefs. It’s easy to misinterpret.
Amid such excitement lately over Pope Francis’ seemingly progressive
pronouncements, an August survey by the Public Religion Research Institute and
Religion News Service found that nearly half of Americans who are in favor of
gay marriage mistakenly believe that the pope is, too.
They recall his “Who am I to judge …?” remarks as a breakthrough, especially
in contrast to the words of his predecessor, Benedict XVI, who wrote a decade
ago that homosexuality was “a strong tendency ordered toward an intrinsic moral
evil,” a “disorder.” Francis even used the less-clinical and English word “gay”
speaking in Italian, which made him seem more compassionate, while still
adhering to the church’s anti-gay doctrine.
The mother of one of the grooms I married Saturday elected not to witness the
blessed event because of her devout Catholic convictions.
I am not one to judge. She is a lovely woman who loves her son dearly. I only
pray she can live with no regrets.
Because if there’s one lesson my first gay wedding framed well, it's this:
Live and let love and eschew regret. Indeed, the ceremony went off with a hitch
— many hitches. The cake fell over. The sound system failed. The entire schedule
went kablooey as last-minute details were nailed into place.
Yet the joie de vivre expressed by the grooms and 60-plus merrymakers was
transcendent. A few relatives may not have been in attendance, but God was
surely there, in the light on everyone’s faces.
can only pray that Davis and her supporters will be thus illuminated. As I
said in my sermon: "I hope that someday all men who love men and women who love
women — and everyone in between — will no longer feel scorn and hostility from
certain corners of society."
For marriage, contrary to what some might think, is not about losing your
freedom. For some, it’s about exercising it.