Love is the Doctrine

Copyright © 2010, Rev. Barbara and Bill Hamilton-Holway

Listen Now! Watch the video!

Valentine’s Day fills me with memories of couples, on the terrace, in the atrium, and on this chancel, making their promises to one another. In those beautiful moments, so full of hope in love’s possibilities, love seems easy.

But, all of us know, love takes effort. Love sustained over time, love of self, of mate, of family, of neighbor is a discipline, an on-going practice.

Love means stretching your boundaries, extending your limits, opening to love more.

Scott Peck defines love as “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.”

Love takes paying attention, listening and being conscious as we choose to speak and act.

Love is a choice to reach beyond your limits.

Love extends beyond those you like and with whom you agree.

Love is the doctrine of this church. That covenant from our Universalist heritage has been spoken by congregations since at least 1935.

That covenant goes back centuries and is the heart of Christianity. Jesus was a Universalist, loving unconditionally beyond language, gender, class, and age.

Love is the core of all the world’s religions.

We practice loving in this community when stay in relationship even when we don’t always like each other and when we disagree.

Though we fail at love again and again, love is our doctrine.

We are here to practice love.

“We’re gay; we’re straight; we like to go to church together.”

That’s not the typical chant you hear at the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade, this high camp celebration where people are clad in leather and latex, feathers and balloons, formal gowns and skimpy underwear.

The religious group who gets the most notice at the Pride Parade is the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, not a band of Bay Area Unitarian Universalists.

Among us, someone started the chant.

And it caught on.

We kept chanting because it’s true.

We’re gay, we’re straight, we like to go to church together.

We’re a rich diversity of backgrounds, experience, and beliefs; we like to go to church together.

We like to be in community together—learning, having fun, caring, growing to love one another. Loving one another we grow to love more.

Today Unitarian Universalist congregations are holding Standing on the Side of Love services to promote equality through the transforming power of love.

We’re proud that for over 40 years, Unitarian Universalist ministers have celebrated same gender weddings.

1970 the Unitarian Universalist Association passed a resolution on ending discrimination against gays, lesbians, and bisexuals.

1973 The Office of Lesbian and Gay and Concerns was established at the denominational headquarters.

1988 the delegates passed a resolution supporting legal equity for gays and lesbians.

1989 on Mother’s Day the Television News Show 20/20 wanted to show a positive experience of two moms and their child. The show featured our members Mary Ann Simpson and Cynthia Asprodites with their 7 year old daughter Aija, following them through their weekend, including the Sunday service here.

1990 the UUA established the Welcoming Congregation Program for each congregation to look at issues of homophobia within the life of the congregation. This congregation completed the program and was officially designated a Welcoming Congregation.

1999 Eric Evans and Matt Clark chose to be married in a Sunday Service. This congregation embraced Matt and Eric when their families did not. This congregation gave them the strength to declare publicly their love. At the point in the service when we asked for all who pledged their love and support to say, “I do,” there was a spontaneous cheer and long loving applause. Though Eric and Matt moved to Philadelphia, their love is supported by this congregation’s embrace.

1999 we hosted a gathering here honoring interfaith clergy who preside at same gender weddings. Some of those clergy courageously defy their religious traditions to follow their conscience and do what they believe their beliefs call them to do.

2000 we stood with other Unitarian Universalists in California on the No on Knight Initiative.

2004 we joyously celebrated members’ weddings at San Francisco’s City Hall.

January 2005 this congregation hosted a marriage equality celebration with Kate Kendell, Executive Director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and brides and activists Molly McKay and Davina Kotulski, along with lots of singing, music, and documentary films. The gathered community placed our hands on the shoulders of same gender committed couples, and we said, “With all our hands, we offer our support to your sacred act of commitment in the face of the country’s discrimination. We believe that your love is good for you and for us all. Your choice of commitment affects us all.

Your commitment strengthens our fidelity to one another.”

Throughout these years couples’ weddings, gay and straight, were celebrated joyfully in this congregation.

We sent Valentines to the Governor asking for his support of marriage equality.

May 2008 after the California Supreme Court decision, we celebrated weddings in county courthouses. We were able to say “Now by the power vested in us by the State of California, and by the power of your love and commitment, we pronounce you legally married!”

We signed legal marriage licenses for gay and lesbian couples.

October 2008 we celebrated nine couples’ weddings in the Sunday services and announced others. Some couples were married for the first time and legally, others were having their third and fourth marriages to each other.

We hosted phone banks and worked to defeat Proposition 8. When it passed, the legal right to marry was restricted.

Now we have couples in this congregation whose love we witness, yet are not able legally to marry them. Not being able to perform legal marriages infringes on our religious freedom. That’s why this month an Amicus Brief was filed by our Unitarian Universalist Legislative Ministry of California in the current federal court case in San Francisco. This brief clearly states Proposition 8 is an infringement on religious freedom.

The question of marriage equality may land in the Supreme Court so today our children are sending valentines to Supreme Court justices asking them to stand on the side of love.

And today at the social justice table you can sign letters to California state legislators in support of Mark Leno's bill which would clarify the distinctions between civil and religious marriage and make clear no religious leaders would be forced to perform ceremonies against conscience.

Step by step by step…Bless us all in our perseverance.

Unitarian minister and abolitionist Theodore Parker said and Dr. Martin Luther King echoed, “The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”

We take a stand for marriage equality out of fairness and justice.

Our Unitarian Universalist principles call us to reach for the understanding of each human being as a person of inherent worth and dignity.

We are called to love and to keep extending the boundaries of our love.

Dr. Martin Luther King said, “When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up…”

in the command to love God with all your mind and heart and strength and to love your neighbor as yourself.

Love is the doctrine.

So, it is painful to hear so-called religious leaders demean people who are lesbian or gay and deny equal rights. Their words incite fear, suspicion, and hate.

And it is all to easy for us to hate them.

Dr. Martin Luther King was insulted, spat upon; he received hate mail and threatening telephone calls. His home was firebombed, his precious children’s lives at risk.

Still he preached, “hate multiplies hate… The chain reaction of evil-hate begetting hate…must be broken… Hate scars the soul and distorts the personality. Mindful that hate is an evil and dangerous force, we think of what it does to the hated…[but]hate is just as injurious to the person who hates…[only] Love creates and transforms”

This road to marriage equality stretches us to love.

If love is your doctrine, what must you do?

If we ridicule our enemies, if we become bitter and hateful, we poison our noble cause of justice, and we poison our own spirits. We have to keep learning to love.

Now you know loving your enemies didn’t mean for Dr. King holding back on the truth. Dr. King spoke truth to power. He was bold, strong, demanding, non-violent, respectful, loving.

Love leads us to speak and act for marriage equality.

And love is what sustains us for the long road of justice.

Thank you for extending yourself for love. Thank you for working for marriage equality.

You have given money, written letters, made phone calls, petitioned, rallied, told your stories, changed hearts and minds.

Marriage equality may feel like it’s a long time coming.

But marriage equality will come.

Keep the faith, keep on keeping on.

Each step along the way, each rippling word and deed, brings us closer.

Dr. King believed we were called to this difficult task of loving so we could be in relationship, in partnership with God. We are called to be instruments of justice and love.

The Spirit of Love relies on each of us, partners with all of us, moves in us to make more love possible, to create the beloved community, to build the promised land.

Even though we fail at love again and again, the Spirit continues to call to each of us to love again, to raise our voices for justice, to love our enemies, our neighbors, ourselves.

Remember your power to both change and bless the world with you love!

The Doctrine is Love from UU Church of Berkeley on Vimeo.