Well, it’s Pride Month, and once again this year, my timeline is filled with performative, pearl-clutching, straight, professed Christians, outraged at the supposed rainbow-bedazzled queer assault on the institution of marriage.
This year, they’re even trying to meme-manifest a “Nuclear Family Month,” which is about as asinine an idea as advocating for “White History Month” every February. Of all the Conservative Christian commentary you’ll ever hear, this is among the most ridiculous: that LGBTQ people marrying somehow devalues a straight, heteronormative couple’s marriage, like a foreclosed house down the street driving down property values in the neighborhood.
Marriage isn’t a community exercise or a collective endeavor; it’s a lifelong agreement between two people before the Law and before friends and loved ones as witnesses. It is a legal document, not a spiritual covenant (unless that coupleclaims faith). The fact that we don’t get to superimpose our religious beliefs on anyone else’s partnership is only a problem for people who also believe they get to police other people’s bodies, bathrooms, and sexual activity.
The two people making their vows to one another are not beholden to anyone but their spouse in honoring, nurturing, or preserving that union after their wedding day. Married people don’t have a Board of Directors or a group of spousal shareholders to answer to here. They have their husband or wife, and the family they create together. They alone get to govern their agreement.
I’ve been married for 32 years now, and during all that time, exactly two people on the planet have had a direct impact on the strength and sanctity of my marriage. Every single day, my wife and I work together diligently to have a vital, honest, loving relationship, and we’re the only ones who can make that happen or keep it from happening—period. The idea that anyone else’s marriage affects ours is fairly ridiculous to both of us, and it should be to anyone fully invested in honoring their own marital vows.
Ultimately, this isn’t about theology; it’s about the fading fine art of minding your own damn business.
For years, I worked as a personal trainer in a boxing gym, and at first, many new clients came in worried about being embarrassed in front of other more fit, more experienced people. I assured them by reminding them that when those people are on the floor, they are so focused on what they’re doing and working so hard that they don’t have the time or energy to be concerned about anyone else; they’re just trying to survive.
It’s too bad more straight Christians don’t seem to give half as much time to attending to their own marriages as they do to overseeing others’. Maybe they wouldn’t be failing 42 percent of the time.
Interestingly, the same folks claiming that gay people are damaging marriage aren’t nearly as vocal about the rampant infidelity, abuse, and divorce out there in so many heterosexual Christian marriages. Magically, they don’t view those people as a threat to the Institution and are quite able to separate themselves from the greater married world when it suits them.
A Facebook acquaintance recently lamented the fact that “the queer agenda is tearing apart the family unit”. I wondered whose “family unit” he was referring to. I know it isn’t mine. My family unit is pretty spectacular and secure because it exists independently of those outside my house, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, or any other possible variable. I have authority and direct influence regarding only one family unit on the planet. That’s how this life works.
To all the perpetually outraged straight Christian couples out there this PRIDE Month, a few reminders for you:
Even if you believe that same-gender marriage is sinful or immoral, claiming that it does any sort of residual collateral damage to you or your spouse or your family says more about the fragility and possibly fraudulence of your relationship than it does about the LGBTQ community as a viable threat.
As much as you claim you want to protect the family unit, the reality is that queer people have family units, too: caring, imperfect, loving, flawed, beautiful ones. They daily navigate complicated relationships with siblings, parents, children, spouses, (and, even, In-Laws). They live lives together in deep community marked by all the compassion, frustration, intimacy, laughter, heartache, and richness that you share with your family.
If you can’t admit and respect that, and if you find yourself somehow threatened by any other person’s pursuit of happiness or expression of family, that’s likely a youproblem. There’s something incredibly troublesome when we as people of faith require others to believe what we believe, or worse, when we act as if their refusal to believe what we believe or practice what we practice in any way diminishes our faith experience or somehow taints our religion.
Straight Christians, when you got married, you didn’t make those flowery vows to all married people, before or since. You didn’t profess your undying love and commitment to an institution. You didn’t expectantly join the ranks of a club or fraternity or corporation. You didn’t get married to Marriage.
You pledged to a person, promising to love your spouse as faithfully, passionately, and completely as you could for the rest of your life. That’s all you are obligated, expected, and most importantly, qualified to do.
The bottom line is that if your marriage is adversely affected by anyone else’s marriage (straight or queer), you probably have a pretty crappy marriage.
That should be cause for great worry, and it’s probably something you should pray on.
Outside of your spouse, the only person who can really damage or devalue your marriage is you.
So, Happy Pride Month, and Happy Mind Your Own Damn Business Month.
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