Sermon at The Church of the Holy Apostles, New York City
June 29, 2008, The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, Year A
Gay Pride Sunday
The Reverend Peter Carey
Genesis 22:1-14
Psalm 13
Romans 6:12-23
Matthew 10:40-42

     In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

     Today is Gay Pride Sunday.

     Pride? Isn’t pride the thing that “goeth before a fall?” Isn’t pride one of the “seven deadly sins” -- in fact, isn't it one of the real biggies? After all, it’s the one that leads the list.

     There’s pride. Then there’s covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy and sloth. But pride has “pride of place”, if you’ll excuse the pun. It’s at the top of the list!

     So yes, pride is a major, big-time sin, and it’s a really boring one when you encounter it. There’s practically nothing more tedious than someone who’s full of themselves; someone who’s arrogant or thinks only of him- or herself; who thinks the world revolves around them.

     You know the old joke: “Enough about me and my book! How did YOU like my book?”

     So no, that’s not the kind of pride we’re celebrating today, but rather the good kind, the kind of pride we WANT in our lives, the kind of pride... well, the kind of pride we can be proud of!

     It’s the feeling of satisfaction we get from a job well done. It’s the recognition that we’ve done the right thing or that someone else has done the right thing or made the right decision. It’s the sense of having been a “good and faithful servant” or of having met the challenge, of having born the heat of the day. The sense that we or someone else has worked their heart out. Sometimes it’s just the knowledge that we stood up for what we believed in.

     In short, it’s what we mean when we say to someone, “I’m so proud of you!”

     This morning I have a very good example of the kind of pride I’m talking about because for the past month or so we’ve been celebrating the pride we feel in the achievement of Bill Greenlaw. So I think we all know exactly what we mean when we say, “Bill, we are so proud of you. So proud of who you are and of what you’ve accomplished.”

     THAT’S the kind of pride we’re talking about.

     However, the particular focus of our pride today, our good pride, is the LGBT community.

      So it’s pride in a community, not pride in our own personal achievements that we celebrate today, but a collective pride. It’s Gay Pride Sunday after all and that, it seems to me, means that we celebrate in some special way on this one particular Sunday in June the accomplishments of a particular group of people.

     When we stop to think about it, that particular community has a lot to be proud of and those who know that group of people and those who love them and those who support them most certainly share in that pride. And in just the same way that everybody’s Irish on St. Patrick’s Day, well, everybody (at least everybody here) is gay on Gay Pride Sunday.

     The list of achievements of the gay community stretches from here to Castro Street and back again, but I’d like to mention three reasons for gay pride this morning.

     The first reason to feel pride is also in a way the saddest.

     We can hardly even talk about gay pride without talking about the AIDS epidemic.

     In many ways, the AIDS epidemic was the “dark night of the soul” for the gay community. It tested that community to the limit. And generally speaking, the community met the challenge. With very few resources and with virtually no institutions in place to enjoin the battle, the gay community had to wage a Herculean struggle against ignorance and prejudice. It had to educate itself and the public on the meaning of responsible sex. It had to fight for government funding. It had to take to the streets to engage in civil disobedience to draw attention to what was going on. (Remember that in 1982 the New York Times would not even use the word “gay” in its pages and the fact that some male “homo-sexuals” were dying wasn’t even considered newsworthy.)

     At the same time, during those years, the community had to care for the sick, to fight with hospitals for the right to sit at the bedside of dying lovers; to bury the dead, to console those left behind. And yet, despite these unbearable burdens and overwhelming odds, the gay community -- generally speaking -- did what it had to do.

     Now when I say “gay community” I mean gay women too, who stood shoulder to shoulder with the men. And when I say “community” I also include the thousands upon thousands of straight people who were there for their gay friends--doctors and nurses, clergy, social workers and colleagues and fellow parishioners and simply their next door neighbors who just did the right thing.

     Are we entitled on this Sunday morning to be proud of what that generation of men and women did? Yes, I think so. May God spare us from ever having to do it again, but yes, I think today, on this Gay Pride Sunday, we are entitled to be proud of the work that was done and continues to be done, even as we remember those who died.

     But there are other reasons to be proud this Sunday morning, but one that I’d particularly like to single out is one that has affected me personally, although it really affects all of us. It is the pride we feel for what has been achieved so far in the struggle for marriage equality. That struggle is obviously still going on and is far from over, but real progress has been made. In fact, it’s only because of that struggle and because of that progress that marriage even became an option for me and my partner and for so many others.

     A year ago my partner David and I were married in a civil ceremony in Canada and this year the Appelate Court of the State of New York rendered a decision that made our marriage valid in this state.


     I never, ever thought I would live to see the day. Never. Am I proud? You bet I am. Again, not for any achievement of my own, but for the achievement of the people who have fought and who continue to fight for the civil and religious rights of gay people. I’m proud of ALL those who have supported us and stood with us and who have voted for marriage equality when they had the chance.

     Of course not every gay person wants to be married. And there are plenty of gay people who are single, so we need to be clear on this: the point of gay marriage and the reason we want it is not to hold up some ideal form of life for gay people, but for gay people to have the same rights, the same options, the same opportunites, as their heterosexual fiends and neighbors. THAT’s why marriage equality is important to all of us.

     As far as those who are opposed to marriage equality, I really have only one bit of advice for them. Read the polls about what young people think of gay marriage and try to get beyond your prejudice, because it’s coming soon to a theatre near you. I saw a funny T-shirt last week that gave some advice about gay marriage to those who are opposed to it. The T-shirt said: “Opposed to gay marriage? Well then don’t marry one!”

     There is one last example I’d like to hold up before you this morning about gay pride. Some of you may not agree with this, but it’s how I see it.

     I think we can be proud of what gay people and their friends have done inside the religious institutions of our country in particular and of the world in general.

     Yes, it is true: the churches and the synogogues and the mosques are still among the main institutions that support homophobia and promote and legitimize the oppression of gay people, but again, progress has been made. We are not going to throw the baby out with the bath water. We’re going to change the church, not leave it.

     The pattern of progress has often been two steps forward, one step backward. Sometimes even two steps forward, two steps backward, but still the stuggle goes on, consciousness is being raised and consciences are being changed, fundamentalist interpretations of the Scriptures are challenged, unions are blessed, religious bigotry is named for what it is.

     Our own church is a good case in point. Yes, sometimes we want to tear our hair out with frustration over what’s going on in the Anglican Communion (or at least I’d tear my hair out if I had any) but still, the fact remains our church did call an openly gay bishop. He may be the first, but he won’t be the last and the truth of the matter is that thousands of Episcopal congregations all across our country live out on a daily basis the idea that “in THIS church, there are NO OUTSIDERS.”

     The struggle for full inclusion in the life of the church doesn’t have as much to do with whether we have gay priests and bishops or even whether gay unions are blessed by the church. What it basically has it does with is who God is, how universal God’s love is. It has to do with how open God’s arms are. It has to do with who is included in God’s embrace. It has to do with whether God accepts us just exactly as we are and just as he made us.

     I think we know what sort of God we believe in and I think we can be proud of that God and I think that that God is proud of us.

     Happy Gay Pride Sunday to you all!

Amen.

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