| It's a long one.
Necessary background information: 1) My mother is bisexual.
2) She has been in a committed relationship with a woman for nearly 10 years.
3) This woman’s name is Margie. 4) Margie has been/continues to be a parental
force and role model in my life. 5) Margie is the youngest of nine children in
a family that was (yep, you guessed it) raised Catholic. 6) As you may have
guessed, Margie has many nieces and
nephews; Among them is Jesse, one of the oldest. 7) He’s about 24 years old and
recently married. 8) He has never questioned my mother’s or my membership in
the family and has always been one of our “favorites” (in the way that family
members can be favorites).
That’s a lot of background, I realize, but I need to get
something off my chest, so bear with me.
My mom and Margie are planning a commitment ceremony which
will happen in February. They had invited Jesse (a professional musician, he
plays the trumpet) to play as a part of their ceremony. Today, Jesse and his
wife (who’s name I know, but I can’t spell, so I’m not going to embarrass
myself by trying) came to visit, something which was long overdue. They hadn’t,
yet, given an answer to whether he would play (or even attend). Today, as part
of the visit, Jesse and his wife told us that they, for religious reasons,
would not be able to attend the ceremony.
They expressed everything very gently, considerately, and
with a great deal of love and respect. Essentially, their message was as
follows: We love you very much, we want
to be there, but we believe the bible to be the literal word of God and we
can’t just ignore the parts we don’t like. We love and respect you but we
cannot be at the ceremony. I want to emphasize the fact that never once did
they say or try to say that my mom and Margie shouldn’t have a wedding or anything like that. No proselytizing occurred at
all. They simply expressed their beliefs and explained that they wouldn’t be
able to attend. They could have, just as easily, said that they were too busy
(which would also have been true), but they thought it would have been wrong to
lie. Jesse at one point actually said, “To lie to you wouldn’t have been loving
you.”
Before I say how I feel in response, I need to make some
rationalizing excuses. First, I respect the fact that they were up front and
had the courage to tell the truth. Second, I realize that this isn’t my ceremony. But it means a lot to me. A
lot. No one, not anyone, deserves a celebration of their relationship like my
mom and Margie do. They have always been, for me, a model of care and respect
in their relationship. Not to mention, after the year they’ve had (Margie’s
been battling breast cancer since February 1st) they just deserve a
party. Any party. Third, I don’t want
to imply, in any way, that anyone’s religious beliefs are wrong.
Ok. My reaction is this: I’m so sad; for a number of
reasons. I’m sad that my mom and Margie will not have some of the people they
love there to celebrate with them. I’m sad that Jesse and his wife interpret
the teachings of Christ to mean that they can’t participate in a gay wedding.
I’m sad that this isn’t the first, nor will it be the last, such conversation
my parents will have about their ceremony. I’m sad that the one person in the
Cook family who has never failed to make my mom and myself feel included will
not be there.
That’s all for now. There may be more on this subject later,
but this is already a lot and I’ll let you back to your life. If you’ve
actually stuck with this until the end, thank you for reading. I needed to say
something. I realized my neglecting of this blog means many people won't read it, but it isn't for anyone else. It is for me.
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